Ucin1122310471.Pdf (566.2

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date:___July 25, 2005___

I, Manuel Martínez, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in: The Department of Romance Languages & Literatures of the College of Arts and Sciences It is entitled: A Place of Our Own: The Representation of Space in Te di la vida entera, La novela de mi vida, Animal Tropical & Dreaming in Cuban

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: Luciano Picanço ______María Paz Moreno ______Carlos Gutiérrez ______

A Place of Our Own: The Representation of Space in Te di la vida entera, La novela de mi vida, Animal Tropical & Dreaming in Cuban

A dissertation submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.)

in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures of the College of Arts and Sciences

2005

by

Manuel Martínez

A.A., Miami-Dade Community College, 1985 B.B.A., University of Miami, 1987 M.B.A., University of Miami, 1992 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2000

Committee Chair: Dr. Luciano Picanço

Abstract

Martínez, Manuel (Ph.D., Romance Languages and Literatures) A Place of Our Own: The Representation of Space in Te di la vida entera, La novela de mi vida, Animal Tropical & Dreaming in Cuban. Abstract of a doctoral dissertation at the University of Cincinnati

The present study analyzes the representation of space in four contemporary Cuban novels (Te di la vida entera, La novela de mi vida, Animal Tropical, Dreaming in Cuban). For the purposes of this study, space is defined as a zone of political and cultural negotiation. This definition is based on the concepts set forth by Edward Soja in his book Thirdspace and Homi Bhabha in his book The Location of Culture. The study bases its textual analysis on the theoretical work of Fernando Ortíz, Antonio Benítez Rojo, and Gustavo Pérez Firmat. These theoreticians suggest that there is a particularly Cuban way of negotiating with Cuban and non-Cuban space. This study seeks to identify patterns of representation in the four novels and analyzes them. Patterns are analyzed in the representation of Havana, exile, and the use of nostalgia. This study also suggests a mechanism whereby one can identify degrees of representation as being either relatively closer or farther away from the model suggested by the three theorists.

© 2005 Manuel Martínez All Rights Reserved

Este es un regalo para Mónica

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A dissertation would not be possible without the contributions of a talented scholar that dedicates his time and analytical skills to enter into dialogue with the text.

Dr. Luciano Picanço has been that reader and partner. It is thanks to him that this dissertation was nurtured into its present form. I will never be able to thank him enough for his guidance.

The writing of a dissertation is a long process and I have had help all along the way. Dr. Kirsten Nigro was with me from the very beginning. Her encouragement and feedback proved invaluable. Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez has been a pillar of support and contributed greatly to my project through his comments and advice. Dr. María Paz Moreno contributed excellent suggestions which strengthened the final version of the dissertation. I will be in their debt always.

A project of this sort is also not possible without the kindness and friendship of those near and dear; of those who are no longer with me and those who are with me still. They are all here; in these pages.

First and foremost, however, above all, is the story of my life with Mónica and our son Tomás. She has accompanied me, faithful and beautiful, every step of the

way. He has given meaning to the words in this dissertation and to my life.

Lastly, there is Cuba. A space which I have never left and which has never left me. Martínez 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 2

Chapter 1 – La Habana 39

Chapter 2 – Exile & Return 112

Chapter 3 – Nostalgia and the Limits of the Ajiaco 222

Conclusion 289

Bibliography 315 Martínez 2

Introduction

How does one relate to one’s spaces? The plural is

used intentionally for the purposes of this dissertation.

On a basic level, space1 can be defined as the three

dimensional area that surrounds an individual. This could

be, for instance, one’s home, one’s city, or one’s country.

There are other levels as well, however. The culture that

imbues the physical space of the home or the city can be

thought of as a space. Relations of power can be thought of

as the space between two individuals where conflict and

negotiation takes place. Finally, one can think of the

pages of the novels that will be analyzed as yet another

space.

1 The concept of space to be used in this dissertation is based on the

concept of space as a zone of cultural and political negotiation as

elaborated by Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space, Edward Soja in

Thirdspace, Fredric Jameson in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of

Late Capitalsim, and Homi Bhabha in his essay “Cultural Diversity and

Cultural Differences”, as well as his book The Location of Culture. It is interesting to note that Soja, Jameson and Bhabha have used the term

Thirdspace (Bhabha actually writes it Third Space). While each word represents a differenct concept, they both concern themselves with the in between space of negotiation. Martínez 3

Although many spaces will be addressed in this dissertation, the one that runs through them all is culture. It is culture that helps to determine the social, physical and political organization of space. It is culture that influences the negotiations of power that take place within the physical and symbolic spaces of the society.

Further, it is culture that reveals itself in the pages of its literature even as it seeks to represent space.2

By the same token, however, space also helps to influence culture. Proximity to the ocean or the montains, arguably, influences the development of culture. It is not the experience to live in a colonial city, than it is to live in a modern suburb.

The question that lies at the root of this investigation is if there is a particularly Cuban way to relate to space. More specifically, however, the questions to be considered in this dissertation are: How is space represented in the four novels that will be analyzed? Is there a pattern that can be identified, and can a conclusion be drawn from these observations?

2 According to Homi Bhabha in “On Cultural Choice”, Culture is the symbolic realm through which we enact a range of imaginative aspirations that may subvert our mundane lives or exercise alternatives that supplement the leaden prose of the world.” (181) Martínez 4

In this study, space, be it physical or social, will not be analyzed in abstract or essentialist terms for its own sake. Space here will be considered from the point of view of how the authors represent it in their novels, how the characters are represented relating to it, and how the culture informs the on-going negotiation with the space that takes place.

The axis of the analysis of the representation of space will be the characters’ interaction with their surrounding space, be it home, city, or nation. It is through the interactions of the characters with their surroundings that patterns of representation can hopefully be deciphered. Interactions between characters and their environment will further be analyzed as a series of negotiations.

As in any negotiation, the individual involved has three options before him or her whether he or she is at home or abroad. Although these options are always available to a person Dominica Radulescu synthesizes them in terms of the choices open to an exile in a foreign land and society.

In her essay “Theorizing Exile” she describes how the exile attempts to adapt to his new environment

(1) by reconstructing memory even more

stubbornly… (2) by reconstructing traditions and Martínez 5

creating replicas of one’s physical environment;

(3) by going in the totally reverse direction and

merging oneself to oblivion in the new

environment of the adoptive country… (194)

In other words, one can (option #2) retreat from and ignore the surrounding space by creating a cultural cocoon that serves as a shield from outside influences, (option

#3) abandon one’s culture of origin, or (option #1) negotiate a position somewhere along the continuum between the extremes of the second and third positions.

Although Radulescu frames the three alternatives within the specific circumstance of the exile experience, it is valid for the purposes of this dissertation for two reasons. First, her formulation succinctly summarizes the three alternatives which apply in any given negotiation.

Second, this quote raises the issue of exile which looms so large in Cuban culture.3

3 My family left Cuba for the United States in December of 1970. From the time I was a child until now, I have experienced first hand the vicissitudes of exile. That experience implicitly informs this investigation. Although I have spent the majority of my life outside of

Cuba, I have remained in touch with those members of my family who stayed behind. I have also returned to the island various times. From these experiences it has become obvious to me that the experience of exile does not just touch the lives of those who left. Martínez 6

Now, as was mentioned earlier, this dissertation is

not concerned directly with an anthropological or social

historical description of Cuban culture. It is concerned

with Cuban culture in as much as it informs the

representation of space within the space of the novel. To

that end, several theories that elaborate a framework for

the study of Cuban culture will be considered in an attempt

to discern patterns of representation in the texts.

Although there are many theories that deal

specifically with Cuban culture, this dissertation will

limit itself to considering, principally, the proposals of

three theorists: Fernando Ortiz, Antonio Benítez Rojo, and

Gustavo Pérez-Firmat.

Fernando Ortíz was chosen because of his formulation

of a definition of Cuban culture based on the metaphor of

the ajiaco that focuses on the processual. He does not

offer an essentialist view of Cuban culture. Rather, he

describes a dynamic that is not tied to a closed list of

traits and characteristics. The ajiaco metaphor4 describes the mixed and fluid character of Cuban culture. It is this

4 Fernando Ortíz discusses the concept of the ajiaco in Contrapunteo

cubano del tabaco y azúcar. He also wrote El engaño de las razas, as

well as numerous essays on Cuban culture. Martínez 7

theoretical observation about Cuban culture that will

underpin the whole of this dissertation.

Gustavo Pérez-Firmat was chosen for two reasons; the

first being tied to the second. First, his formulation

coincides with Ortíz’s because it is an extension of it. He

restates the metaphor of the ajiaco in terms of

translation, which he views as a style which characterizes

Cuban culture. This view also focuses on the processual.

The second reason is that Pérez-Firmat discusses this

“translation style”5 within the context of the Cuban

Diaspora; specifically Cuban-American culture. He sees this hyphenated culture as an extension of Cuban culture on the island. His theory is useful also because he offers a mechanism whereby one can hopefully map the boundaries and limits of the dynamics of Cuban culture. In other words, it allows one to explore the limits of the ajiaco and when it ceases to be?

Antonio Benítez Rojo was chosen for inclusion because his work is recognized as a turning point in the discussion concerning Cuban culture. His theoretical proposal, from a

5 Gustavo Pérez Firmat discusses the concept of translation style in his

two books The Cuban Condition (1989) and Life on the Hyphen (1996). Martínez 8 postmodern perspective,6 opens up new possibilities of interpretation. That along with placing Cuban culture within the mainstream of Caribbean culture permits greater flexibility in the analysis of text. The postmodern perspective of Benítez Rojo will be supplemented throughout the dissertation by the observations of other theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Silvio

Torres-Saillant, Stuart Hall, Wilson Harris, Jean Bernabé,

Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Edouard Glissant,

Simon During, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said.

In addition to these theorists, this dissertation will also include the observations of theorists on exile. These will include, as already mentioned Dominica Radulescu, along with Joseph Brodsky, Bettina Knapp, Abdul JanMohamed,

Johannes Evelein, and Robert Edwards, among others.

Still, the touchstone for this dissertation will be the theoretical proposals of Fernando Ortíz.7 In his essay

6 The postmodern perspective is here considered in terms of Lyotard’s definition of the postmodern in his book The Postmodern Condition: A

Report on Knowledge, 1984. In it, he states that “I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” and “To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosopy” (xxiv)

7 Fernando Ortiz is the Cuban intellectual who first introduced the concept of the ajiaco into the cultural discourse. His essay “Los Martínez 9

“Los factores humanos de la cubanidad” he makes a series of observations on what it means to be Cuban. He focuses his discussion on what makes Cuban culture different from other cultures and what makes a person Cuban.8

His text can be read on two levels. First, he begins with a discussion of what is cubanness. In doing so he realizes that one term or concept cannot capture what it is that he is trying to describe. He therefore posits three separate concepts which he calls “cubanidad, cubanismo, y cubanía.” Cubanismo is defined as that which is considered typically Cuban. For example, he cites a particular way of speaking or dressing. He says that “Cubanismo es todo carácter propio de los cubanos, aun fuera de su lenguaje.” factores humanos de la cubanidad” discusses Cuban identity in terms of a heterogeneous, and unstable, mix of diverse cultural ingredients.

This essay marks a departure from the previous discourse, which emphasized “el cubano”, to focus on “lo cubano.” It also emphasizes the process of transculturation as opposed to acculturation. Despite his focus on a mixture of cultures, Ortiz doesn’t include a discussion of the Diaspora as an element in the cultural mix.

8 Otiz’s concept is used with the awareness that concepts of cubanness have undergone changes since the Cuban revolution. Although these changes have taken place, they do not diminish the foundational role of

Oritz and his concepts. In addition, Ortiz’s concepts are useful when considering the role of the diaspora. Martínez 10

(Ensayo cubano del siglo XX, 75) Cubanidad, on the other hand, is a concept that is less precise because it goes beyond typical cultural accoutrements or even place of birth. As Ortiz says,

La cubanidad es principalmente la peculiar

calidad de una cultura, la de Cuba. Dicho en

términos corrientes, la cubanidad es condición

del alma, es complejo de sentimiento, ideas y

actitudes. (77)

In contrast, cubanía is a wider concept that includes within it cubanidad, because cubanía implies an awareness of being Cuban and the desire to be so.9

The second level which can be read in Ortiz’s text includes the premise that all cultures are dynamic. If this is so, then any attempt to offer one static definition runs into the problem that what is true today may not hold true tomorrow. The definitions of cubanidad, cubanismo, and cubanía begin to dissolve into a dated temporality. To be more specific, what was first offered as an attempt at an

9 It is important to emphasize here that although these concepts imply permanence, culture is in constant development. It is kept in a constant state of mutation given that everything that touches it alters it in some way. Martínez 11 atemporal definition, recedes into what Bakhtin described as a chronotope.

However, having moved to this level, the text can explore the metaphor of Cuba as an ajiaco. The use of this metaphor permits Ortiz to do several things. First, it allows him to dissolve any essentialist meaning that can be derived from concepts such as cubanidad. Second, in the measure that the ajiaco is a dish that is shared by many cultures, it allows him to recognize that there is nothing that is originally Cuban.10 Third, it permits him to refer to Cuba as a “cazuela abierta” in which what predominates is the heterogeneity of the ingredients that are cooked in it, the importance of the foreign ingredients and the continuity of the cooking process. This process is at the same time integrative and disintegrative. Based on this,

Ortiz is able to affirm that:

Lo característico de Cuba es que, siendo ajiaco,

su pueblo no es un guiso hecho, sino una

10 Some of the ingredients that appear in a Cuban ajiaco include, yellow malanga, white malanga, boniato, ñame, yuca, calabaza, green plaintains, semi-ripe and ripe plaintains, among others. There are many versions of this stew that carry the name ajiaco but vary from one country to the next. In contrast to the Cuban ajiaco, the ajiaco bogotano from Colombia for example, contains none of these ingredients. Martínez 12

constante cocedura. Desde que amanece su historia

hasta las horas que van corriendo siempre en la

olla de Cuba es un renovado entrar de raíces,

frutos y carnes exógenas un incesante borbor de

heterogéneas sustancias. (81)

The above quote would lead one to believe that it might be impossible to escape the trap of essentialism given that the process might be viewed as an essence in itself that has now replaced an essentialist definition.

However, that turns out not to be the case because Ortiz recognizes that what he states about a Cuban cultural process can be said about other cultures. What makes Cuba different is the propensity toward heterogeneity and a multiplicity of elements which have come into contact and mixed. In addition, he observes that this has taken place in a very reduced space, the island of Cuba.

What is most important about Ortiz’s work for this dissertation then, is the concept of the ajiaco. This is because he envisions Cuba as a “cazuela abierta.” It is this openness to new elements that places the ajiaco metaphor somewhere on Radulescu’s continuum between the two extremes. That is to say that the ajiaco metaphor implies, Martínez 13 necessarily, a negotiation.11 In terms of the present work, the ajiaco metaphor can help to elucidate how elements combined together within the pages of the novels. Beyond that however, this theory offers a framework against which to compare the dynamic described in the novels.12

There are two final points on Ortiz’s theory that should be commented on before continuing. In his book

Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, he introduces the concept of transculturation,13 as opposed to

11 For a discussion of the concept of negotiation as it applies to

culture see the Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha, Routledge, 1994.

12 One of the problematic aspects of the ajiaco metaphor, and by

extension the work of Gustavo Pérez Firmat, is that it does not take

fully into account the idea of resistance in a power relationship.

While the ajiaco metaphor emphasizes the harmonious coexistence of

elements, the dynamic tension of the give and take inherent in any

relationship cannot be ignored. This issue will be more fully discussed

in the conclusion of this dissertation.

13 In Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar Cátedra (2002), Ortiz states the following about the concept of transculturation: “Entendemos que el vocablo transculturación expresa mejor las diferentes fases del proceso transitivo de una cultura a otra, porque éste no consiste solamente en adquirir una distinta cultura, que es lo que en rigor indica la voz angloamericana acculturation, sino que el proceso implica también necesariamente la pérdida o desarraigo de una cultura precedente, lo que pudiera decirse una parcial desculturación, y, Martínez 14

acculturation, as a way of studying Cuban culture.

Transculturation refers to sincretic processes, especially

the mixing of the races, religions, and cultures which has

taken place in Cuba. He expresses the most interest in

Afro-European sincretic processes that took place after the

establishment of slavery. He states that these latter

processes have been excessive, violent, and have taken

place over a short period of time. The result has been a

state bordering on chaos.

Ortiz’s text also proposes that a study of a culture

like Cuba’s requires the application of a model like the

one offered by the counterpoint. Key to the notion of

counterpoint is improvisation, dialogue, and rhythm which

are fundamental. Antonio Benítez Rojo in chapter four of La

isla que se repite which is titled “Fernando Ortiz: el

Caribe y la posmodernidad,” observes that the concept of transculturation proposed by Ortiz should not be understood to be a final and harmonic synthesis in the Hegelian sense.14 Rather, it is a blend of elements which come

together in a violent way. In this observation, Benítez

además, significa la consiguiente creación de nuevos fenómenos

culturales que pudieran denominarse de neoculturación.” (260)

14 The Hegelian concept of synthesis, as a part of a dialectical scheme,

is used in marxist analysis. Martínez 15

Rojo agrees with Gustavo Pérez Firmat who also does not see

in Ortiz the idea of synthesis but rather turbulence.

Although Ortiz’s Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el

azúcar can be read on the surface as a study of the importance of sugar and tobacco in the economy and culture of Cuba, Benítez Rojo observes that references to sugar and tobacco in the text are not just literal but metaphorical as well. He points out that these two elements can also signify, among others,

al mito y a la historia, al negro y al blanco, al

esclavo y al plantador, al arte y a la máquina, a

la pequeña propiedad rural y al latifundio, al

cultivo intensivo y al cultivo extensivo, a la

calidad y a la cantidad, al capital nacional y al

capital extranjero, a la criollez y al

cosmopolitismo (178)

This emphasis on counterpoint is mentioned here for

two reasons. First, although the ajiaco metaphor will be a

key element to be employed in the analysis of the texts, it

will not be placed at the center. Rather, it will be held

slightly off center, from where it will be used in

combination with other theoretical observations, including

the proposals of Benítez Rojo, Pérez Firmat, as well other

post-colonial theorists. The analysis itself then will Martínez 16 proceed in a contrapuntal fashion. Second, counterpoint is a key element in the theoretical proposal of Benítez Rojo.

While his view of Cuban culture is different than that of

Ortíz, this is one of the points that they have in common.

Benítez Rojo, commenting on the contrapuntal nature of

Caribbean discourse asserts that it has an aquatic culture that is fluid and changeable, and it is marked by representation, ritual, rhythm, supersincretism, and by the aesthetic of non-violence. He goes on to describe Caribbean discourse as pre-modern and contrapuntal, as opposed to the modern and post-modern discourse of the West. He says that:

El discurso caribeño, en cambio tiene mucho de

premoderno; además, para colmo, se trata de un

discurso contrapuntístico que visto a la caribeña

parecería una rumba, y visto a la europea el

flujo perpetuo de una fuga del Barroco, donde las

voces se encuentran sin encontrarse jamás. (xxx)

It is not surprising then that like Fernando Ortiz,

Antonio Benítez Rojo15 does not consider that there is a

15 Antonio Benítez Rojo is an academic and writer who has lived in exile since 1980. His book, La isla que se repite: El caribe y la perspectiva posmoderna is considered a seminal work on Caribbean cultural identity.

In this book he combines elements of chaos theory with concepts taken from the theories of Deluze and Guattari. He reevaluates the notion of Martínez 17

Cuban essence. In his book La isla que se repite, he comments on the so called “Caribbean countries.” While

Ortíz limits his meditations to a strictly Cuban context,

Benítez Rojo expands his vision and places Cuba within the mainstream of the Caribbean.

The basis for his work in this book is chaos theory.

According to this theory, even in the midst of seeming chaos one can identify patterns which repeat themselves.

Thus the title of his book. He uses this theory to observe and identify the dynamics of the regularities that repeat themselves within the fragmentation and diversity that exists in the Caribbean. His observations are applicable to

Cuba to the degree that it is part of the Caribbean and subject to the currents that affect the other islands.

In his comments, Benítez Rojo recognizes that the idea of the Caribbean as a cultural unit is a recent phenomenon and responds to the interest of outsiders to categorize it.

It also responds to the interests of some in the Caribbean to define it as a cultural whole as a way of arriving at a

Caribbean cultural identity by proposing a new interpretation of authors such as Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás

Guillén, Fernando Ortiz, Wilson Harris, and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá. Martínez 18 self definition.16 The author considers the Caribbean to be

“un conjunto discontinuo” (iii) and “un meta- archipiélago..., y como tal tiene la virtud de carecer de límites y de centro.” (v) That being said, although he recognizes diversity and heterogeneity, within that diversity there exists an island that repeats itself. It transcends the geography of the Caribbean and has a global reach.17

Benítez Rojo also suggests that the Caribbean has functioned as a fundamental axis of history as well as the economy of the capitalist world. It is for this reason that he proposes another metaphor to describe the role of the

Caribbean. He speaks of “la máquina Caribe.” This would be a machine in which other machines operate which has

16 This is not the case with all however. In their essay “In Praise of

Creoleness”, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant suggest that the Francophone Caribbean is different than the Spanish speaking Caribbean. They write that “As Creoles, we are as close, if not closer, anthropoligically speaking, to the people of the

Seychelles, of Mauricus, or the Reunion, than we are to the Puerto

Ricans or the Cubans.” (257)

17 One can speak of the Caribbean having a global reach in the sense that its culture has been spread far and wide through its diaspora. One can point to Puerto Ricans in New York, Cubans in Miami, Jamaicans in

London, Martinicans in Paris, and Arubans in Holland. Martínez 19 functioned throughout history. Among these he identifies three machines. Columbus’ machine, of discovery, was first established in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Its main function was to ship riches back to Europe. The machine of the fleet is defined as a perfection of Columbus’ mining machine. This machine assures the arrival of New World treasures in Europe and gives rise to colonial cities. The machine of the plantation, considered by Benítez Rojo as the most important in the shaping of the Caribbean, was created, controlled and reproduced by European mercantilists. This last machine is given such an important place in the author’s theory because he asserts that it is the only one which is still “functioning.” According to him the plantation, besides generating products, also “suele producir Plantación, la mayúscula para indicar no sólo la existencia de plantaciones, sino también del tipo de sociedad que resulta del uso y abuso de ellas.” (xii)

At the same time, Benítez Rojo identifies that

Caribbean literature is constituted by different local literatures written in different languages. Despite this heterogeneous mix of literatures and languages, he again is able to identify within Caribbean literature that “isla que se repite”, those common dynamics that mix and assimilate themselves into the cultural contexts that have made their Martínez 20 way to the Caribbean such as the African, European,

Asiatic, and the Indo-American. Some of these recurring dynamics in the literature of the Caribbean are a displacement toward theatricality, mythology and ritual, a tendency toward carnivalesque laughter, texts in which rhythm is fundamental and which has varied sources from

Africa, Europe, America, and Asia (that is why it can be considered as polyrhythmic), finally, a peculiar hybridity where the resultant mix serves to accentuate the identity and distinctiveness of the constituent elements.

This ability of the elements to retain their distinctiveness makes this formulation similar to the ajiaco metaphor. Gustavo Pérez Firmat in The Cuban

Condition suggests that “even if the diverse ingredients form part of a new culinary entity, they do not lose their original flavor and identity.” (24)

Benítez Rojo points out that although one must recognize that the Caribbean is unpredictable and is marked by fragmentation and instability, one cannot simply say that fragmentation and instability are its essence. He warns therefore that one can neither essentialize nor idealize the Caribbean. The islands of the Caribbean Martínez 21 coexist together but are different. What is clear is that in the Caribbean one cannot pin down a stable identity.18

To summarize, according to the views of Benítez Rojo, the Caribbean is a cultural space in which “certain” dynamic regularities can be identified. These recurring patterns, however, never result in a stable and definitive cultural identity. For that reason, study of a region like the Caribbean requires the use of theoretical models that help interpret the flow, mobility, and repetition of culture. It is for this reason that Benítez Rojo utilizes chaos theory. At the same time, he indicates that the

Caribbean should be studied using paradigms which at first glance seem contradictory. He speaks of three paradigms of knowledge which he utilizes. One is “de los pueblos del mar”19 which is original, mythic, magic, poetic knowledge.

The second is that of modernity which represents European scientificity. The third one is post-modernism. Benítez

18 It must be noted that this lack of a stable identity is not unique to the Caribbean. For a discussion of this phenomenon and the roots of the contemporary tendency to separate peoples based on nationality see

Poetics of Relation by Edouard Glissant, 1997.

19 It must be remembered that the Arawaks and Caribs perceived the

Caribbean and its islands as one entity or unit. They did not perceive it in the contemporary sense as being divided by national frontiers or ethnic differences. Martínez 22

Rojo indicates that although he combines all three in his analysis his book has a post-modern focus because post- modernism coincides with Caribbean traits such as paradox, absence of a center, and displacement. Benítez Rojo affirms that:

La fuga ad infinitum de significantes textutales

que ocurre en una región dada no es totalmente

desordenada ni tampoco absolutamente

impredecible, sino que responde al influjo de

grandes atractores en cuyo interplay las

dinámicas tienden a seguir determinados

movimientos y, por tanto, a dibujar ciertas

figuras vagamente repetitivas y

autoreferenciales. (311)

The observations of Benítez Rojo are relevant for this dissertation then, not only because his consideration of counterpoint coincides with Ortiz’s, but because they share an even more important commonality. In his emphasis on heterogeneity and repeating patterns, he echos Ortiz’s ajiaco. Key to the ajiaco is the heterogeneity of its ingredients. Further, the ajiaco can be viewed as one of those recurring patterns of which Benítez Rojo speaks.

Within La isla que se repite are other repetitions. In the Martínez 23 case of Cuba, according to Ortíz, the ajiaco is one of them.

The third Cuban writer whose theories are included is

Gustavo Pérez-Firmat.20 He is included because, although he considers the question of Cuban culture, as do Ortiz and

Benítez Rojo, he also considers the question of Cuban culture as it pertains to émigré communities. He writes extensively on the liminal space between Cuban culture and

American culture. For the purposes of this dissertation, it is important to explore the boundaries of the representation of space from a Cuban perspective, as a means of better understanding that representation. What

Pérez Firmat can help make clearer is when a representation of space stops being ‘Cuban’ and becomes something else. In this sense, including his observations will permit the dissertation to consider the Cuban Diaspora and consequently the elasticity of the Cuban concept of space

20 Gustavo Pérez Firmat is a Cuban-American writer who has written extensively on Cuban culture and literature. He has included in these writings a discussion of Cuban-American culture as being a part of

Cuban culture on the island. As part of his theories he has discussed the so-called 1.5 generation and used it as an example to consider the reach of Cuban culture within Cuban émigré communities and its literature. Martínez 24

as it is represented in the four novels that will be

analyzed.

He writes that Cuban culture has no indigenous

models.21 As a result of the physical elimination of the

entire Indian population, Cuban culture has been nourished

and molded by foreign models. He highlights his point in

The Cuban Condition by quoting Jorge Mañach22 who states that “Cuba tuvo que partir de una tabla rasa, o poco menos.” (2) Since the indigenous population did not leave a deep or lasting mark on Cuban culture, foreign models were adopted.

This lack of an “original” indigenous culture was later reinforced, according to Pérez-Firmat, by Cuba’s condition as a way station. Cuba was not a destination in

21 One must be aware here that there is an opposition on this point

between Benítez Rojo and Pérez Firmat. The latter considers the

indigenous legacy as almost completely forgotten and supplanted while

the former sees it as a model for the future development of a Caribbean

culture.

22 Jorge Mañach was a politician and writer who is best known as the

principal theoretician in the Cuban vanguard movement. He is the author

of a well regarded biography of José Martí and an essay titled

“Indagación del choteo” (1928) in which he analyzes Cuban humor. It

should be noted that Jorge Mañach had an evolutionist perspective which

viewed the indigenous people as barely civilized. Martínez 25 and of itself but rather a crossroads on the way to somewhere else. This gave Cuban culture a “provisional, makeshift character” (2) and did not allow it to develop a

“sense of cultural autonomy” (3) until the beginning of the

19th century.

According to Pérez-Firmat’s reading of Mañach, Cuba was never able to fully develop her national identity because of this constant coming and going of people and influences. The constant flow of influences made it difficult for the Cuban character to “set.” Pérez-Firmat concludes by stating that this lack of permanence “made it difficult to hold the sustained intramural discussion required for national self-definition. For him [Mañach]

Cuba suffers the consequences, not of neglect, but of contagion.” (4)

Pérez-Firmat goes on to explain that unlike Mañach, he does not view the presence of foreign elements as something that prevents Cuban culture from developing an identity.

Instead he believes that Cuban culture has a “style.”23 He

23 Jorge Mañach had an essentialist view of cultural identity. He used concepts such as “original”, “authentic”, and “autochthonous”. It was because of this that he was unable to think in terms of a hybrid identity or an identity built around the act of “translating” the way that Pérez-Firmat does. Martínez 26 asserts that the flow of people and influences that Cuban culture has been exposed to has forced it into a position of having to “translate” these “voices” into something new and in the end something “Cuban” which lead it to develop a

“translation sensibility” (4). In order to define this characteristic, however, he does not focus on the end product of the translation but rather the process itself.

As he says, “Cuban style is translation style.” (4)

Pérez Firmat takes from Ortiz the idea of transculturation as the concept that best defines the

“Cuban condition.” (23) He does so because to him it implies “uprootedness”24, change, transition, and syncretism. The idea of translation refers to the project of searching for a “Cuban expression,” a “Cuban voice.”

Given that Cuba never developed an insular identity and maintained itself open to foreign influences, Pérez Firmat believes that Cuban writers and artists developed a

“translation sensibility.” (4) These artists were forced to translate those foreign voices into a Cuban vernacular.25

24 In her essay “Theorizing Exile” Dominica Radulescu states “Once uprooted always uprooted” (189)

25 In Caribbean Poetics, Silvio Torres Saillant asserts that “Enough linguistic nativization has occurred in the Hispanophone Caribbean to Martínez 27

Now, this does not mean that Pérez Firmat thinks that this translation is the same as copying or plagiarizing.

For him, this translation is a creative act in which the translator keeps the original at a critical distance while processing its information into an “originally” Cuban expression.26 It is the product of this process, and indeed the process itself, that Pérez Firmat sees repeated over and over again in Cuban cultural expression. From popular songs, to literature, to everyday speech, it is a pattern that approximates what Benítez Rojo identifies as a dynamic regularity in the Caribbean machine. Its openness to new elements and its emphasis on the processual bring it in line with the “cazuela abierta” and constant “cocción” of the ajiaco.

Pérez Firmat in fact acknowledges his debt to Ortíz by commenting on the processual characteristic of Cuban

instill in writers there need to explore in their works the distinctive flavor of their local language variety.” (79)

26 This interpretation of translation as something original is an idea that is commented on by Jaques Derrida in his essay “Des Tours de

Babel”. In it, he states that “Translation is neither an image nor a copy.” (115) See Jaque Derrida. Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge,

2002). Martínez 28 culture as represented by the ajiaco.27 He says that by combining the meats and vegetables that one happens to have on hand it represents “the ethnic diversity of Cuba.” (24)

This ethnic diversity is maintained because the ajiaco is constantly cooking and constantly open to new ingredients.

He says that

ajiaco is indefinitely replenishable, since new

ingredients can be added to the stew as old ones

are used up. In this respect, this dish

27 Jorge Duany in his essay “Reconstructing Cubanness - Changing

Discourses of National Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora

during the Twentieth Century” gives a good summary of metaphors that

have been proposed for Cuban national identity. He discusses the ajiaco

metaphor of Fernando Ortiz, along with Cintio Vitier’s proposal of a

Cuban literary essence, the sugar plantation metaphor of Manuel Moreno

Fraginals, Pérez-Firmat’s own contributions about hybridity, as well as

others. (see Fernández, Damián J. and Madeline Cámara Betancourt. Eds.

Cuba, the Elusive Nation - Interpretations of National Identity.

Gainesville: U P of Florida, 2000.) Another text in which there is an exhaustive study of the different ways in which, historically, Cuban identity has been defined is Cécile Leclercq’s El lagarto en busca de una identidad. Cuba: Identidad nacional y mestizaje. Madrid: Editorial

Iberoamericana, 2004. Finally, Afro-Cuban Voices - On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba. Edited by Pedro Pérez Sarduy and Jean Stubbs.

Gainesville: U of Florida Press, 2000, gives an overview of what

contemporary Cuban writers believe with respect to Cuban identity. Martínez 29

symbolizes the continuing infusion of new

elements into the Cuban cultural mix, those

“continuous transmigrations” (24)

What this quote highlights is, again, the emphasis on the processual. Although we always have the ajiaco as an end result, that end result is continually changing.

Essentialist descriptions are valid only until a new ingredient is added. It is not the dish so much as its continual preparation. As Pérez-Firmat states, “With Cuban culture the operative term is not fusión but cocción…” (25)

He comes close to stating this explicitly when he says that:

As a symbol, the ajiaco signifies less a

particular substance or combination of substances

than a certain openness or receptivity to

multiple and unpredictable ethnic and cultural

permutations… Because of a peculiar combination

of historical circumstances, Cuba is fated to

suffer - or enjoy - a never ending state of

ferment that manifests itself in all spheres of

Cuban society (26)28

28 The fact that Pérez-Firmat’s proposals were chosen to be included in the dissertation responds to the need to avoid an essentialist view of

Cuban culture that at the same time would take into account the role of Martínez 30

In Pérez-Firmat’s formulation, Cubans do not just inhabit a liminal zone where culture is always in flux.

They are also in the center where the cooking of the ajiaco takes place. In this reading then, Cubans are on the margins and in the center.

Still, after these observation, one is left with the doubt of when an ajiaco ceases to be an ajiaco. Even an ajiaco, being as receptive as it is, can only be so open before it becomes another type of stew. It is an important question because the Cuban Diaspora now extends all over the world and constitutes nearly 20% of the world’s total

Cuban population. Among this group of emigrants and exiles are writers who may or may not be considered to be Cuban authors.

In order to begin to answer this question Pérez-

Firmat’s work on Cuban-American culture has been chosen for

the Diaspora. This does not mean however that the limitations and ancillary problems inherent in Pérez-Firmat’s work are ignored. For example, he puts too much faith in the openness of the ajiaco metaphor.

As any cook knows, there are limits to the ingredients that one can put in any soup before it becomes something else completely. On a personal note, as one who has had to negotiate between two cultures, I find his view is too optimistic when it comes to understanding the complexities and difficulties of assimilating two cultures at the same time. Martínez 31 this dissertation. In his book Life on the Hyphen, Pérez-

Firmat discusses the Cuban-Americans who were “Born in Cuba but made in the U.S.A., they belong to an intermediate immigrant generation whose members spent their childhood or adolescence abroad but grew into adults in America.” (4) In order to describe them he borrows the term “the-one-and-a- half” generation from Cuban sociologist Rubén Rumbaut.

While Rumbaut asserts that because of their status they are marginal to both the American and Cuban cultures, Pérez-

Firmat believes quite the opposite. He asserts that “only the 1.5 generation is marginal to neither culture.” (4)

While he does concede that “one-and-a-halfers may never feel entirely at ease in” either culture (5), they are able to access the resources of either culture effortlessly.

This comfort with both cultures makes them “both first and second generation. Unlike their older and younger cohorts, they may actually be able to choose cultural habitats.” (4-

5)29

29 One must realize that Pérez-Firmat’s proposal responds to his position as a one and a halfer himself. He therefore tends to minimize the dislocation that is inherent to inhabiting a liminal space. In Life on the hyphen he says that “When pondering the shakiness of my foundations, the mobility of my cultural home, I take consolation and courage from the knowledge that insular Cuban culture also rests on Martínez 32

In the definition of this one-and-a-half generation one sees the same tendency which Pérez-Firmat says is present in Cuban culture in general. Namely, there is an openness to the “other”. While Rumbaut emphasizes the marginality of the one-and-a-halfer’s condition, Pérez-

Firmat focuses on the opportunity for openness and translation. He supports his claim by citing the example of

Desi Arnaz. Pérez-Firmat views Arnaz as the founding father of the one-and-a-half generation because, “He embodies an openness to otherness, a liking for unlikeness that defines

Cuban America as a whole… Like Cuban-American culture, the mambo is a music of acceptance, not resistance” (12).

As with his definition of Cuban culture, Pérez-Firmat emphasizes the open characteristic of Cuban-American culture. It is a culture of hybridity and constant negotiation. One has to be open all the time or one risks being one or the other and not this and that. Cuban-

Americans then are both at the center of both cultures and marginal at the same time. This positioning facilitates shifting grounds. (15) In other words, he has a vested emotional interest in on the one hand establishing a cultural continuity between

Cuba and Cuban-America and on the other hand of recognizing the cultural debt that he owes to his adopted country. He therefore has a need to posit that the hyphen is “not a minus sign but a plus.” (16) Martínez 33 their ability to translate and at the same time opens them up to new influences.30

Pérez-Firmat places Cuban-American culture on a continuum that stretches back to, and includes, the culture on the island. Speaking of himself as a Cuban-American he says that:

For this reason, I do not find only discontinuity

between “Cuban” and “Cuban American.” The Cuban

American, and in particular the one-and-a-halfer,

is one of the possible forms that the Cuban

talent for hyphenation can assume. Cuban America

is also an ajiaco, (16)

Still, the question of when the ajiaco ceases to be an ajiaco remains unanswered. While Pérez-Firmat does not offer a definitive answer he does suggest an approach that gives some guidance at least in terms of the literature

30 While Pérez Firmat chooses to emphasize the harmonious aspect of this position, there is also conflict, as was mentioned in an earlier note.

What is important about this is the concept of positionality and translation. Since the subject can change positions and is forced to translate, one cannot speak of a static identity. As Stuart Hall states in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, “We cannot speak for very long, with any exactness, about ‘one experience, one identity’, without acknowledging its other side – the ruptures and discontinuities which constitute, precisely, the Caribbean’s ‘uniqueness’.” (394) Martínez 34 which is the main concern of this investigation. In his view, Cuban-American authors can either write “towards”

Cuba or “towards” the United States. This speaks directly to the writing subject taking a subjective position towards a particular space, be it Cuba or the United States. The perspective of the writer, his or her style and focus, are either more American or Cuban depending on which direction he is writing towards and how far along that spectrum he or she is. Consequently, Pérez Firmat seems to imply, there are gradations of representation.

In order to explain this concept, Pérez-Firmat uses the example of Oscar Hijuelos. In Life on the Hyphen he analyzes Hijuelos’s first two novels, Our House in the Last

World and Mambo Kings. In them he finds an Anglocentrism that he sees reflected in both the language of the texts as well as in the distance that is established with regards to

Cuban culture. Pérez-Firmat asserts that, unlike other

Cuban-American authors who write in English, in Hijuelos’s work both the language and the underlying rhythm and accent are English. He cites examples of this and contrasts them with the writing style of Robert Fernandez’s Raining

Backwards, which does exhibit a Cuban sensibility and aesthetic even though it is written in English. In addition, in Hijuelos’s work, there are numerous errata in Martínez 35

the Spanish words that are used as well as in the names of

historical figures.

Beyond the use of language, however, Pérez-Firmat

finds that Hijuelos distances himself from Cuba and its

culture in other ways. In Our House in the Last World, for

example, Cuba and Spanish are viewed in terms of a disease.

This distancing is achieved in Mambo Kings through the use

of Eugenio, the nephew, as the narrative voice of the work.

As Pérez-Firmat comments:

Even if Eugenio is not always responsible for the

specific verbal shape of Cesar’s recollections,

he is at least generally responsible for the

memoirs as a whole. Eugenio’s name already

indicates that he is the source, the genitor of

the account. (147)

This point is important because, in the case of this

novel, “The anonymous third-person narration of Cesar’s

recollections functions as a kind of filter for their

sensibilities.” (147) It is for these reasons that Pérez-

Firmat asserts that “Hijuelos’s second novel, Mambo Kings is written “from” Cuba but “toward” the United States.”

(153) The idea of writing toward Cuba or toward the United

States is a useful one. This formulation avoids the necessity to definitively state whether someone is a Martínez 36

“Cuban” writer or not. It is a more nuanced approach that offers a way of viewing the text as not closed.

The question of who is and who is not a Cuban writer, as suggested earlier is not one that will be taken up in this dissertation. However, it is a question that was taken into account when the texts to be analyzed were selected.

If the idea is to test the theory that certain peculiarly

Cuban patterns in the representation of space within contemporary Cuban novels can be identified, then certainly one would wish to select “Cuban” books and authors. Still, in order to test the theory, a range of books needed to be selected in order to be representative.

La novela de mi vida by Leonardo Padura Fuentes was selected because he is an author who continues to reside on the island. He is not openly opposed to the regime in power and therefore has been able to travel outside of Cuba. That not withstanding, he has never emigrated and continues to write on the island.

By way of contrast, Animal Tropical was also chosen.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is an author who resides on the island but, unlike Padura, openly questions the communist government. This means that his ability to travel has been limited since his opposition became clear. Martínez 37

Zoé Valdés is a Cuban writer who lives in exile in

Europe. Her novel Te di la vida entera was chosen because it was published outside of Cuba and openly questions the communist organization of Cuban society.

Dreaming in Cuban, alone among this group, was written by an author who grew up outside of Cuba. Cristina García, did not even grow up in a Cuban enclave in Miami or New

Jersey, but rather in New York. She also writes in English.

In order to compare the works of these writers this dissertation will present three chapters and a conclusion.

In chapter 1, the representation of Havana is considered from various perspectives. It begins with an analysis of first encounters with the city and how they are portrayed.

From there, the chapter proceeds to consider certain elements that are presented as being connected to or representative of the city.

Chapter 2 discusses the issue of exile. In all four novels characters either choose to or are forced to leave

Cuba for a period of time. This chapter analyzes how these characters’ relationship with Cuba is portrayed both before they leave and once they return. In addition, the chapter also delves into the question of how these characters are shown as interacting with the foreign culture and space once they arrive in their new home. Martínez 38

While Chapter 2 will touch on the limits of the negotiation that can take place with a non-Cuban space,

Chapter 3 will further analyze the limits of the ajiaco metaphor. This chapter will comment on the liminal space where the ajiaco dynamic begins to break down. It will then suggest cases where the ajiaco dynamic ceases to function completely.

In the concluding remarks, it is hoped that a pattern can be definitively identified in the representation of space in these four novels. Further, it is hoped that that pattern will be a reflection of the repeating pattern of the ajiaco dynamic within the larger Cuban cultural context as posited by Fernando Ortíz, Antonio Benítez Rojo, and

Gustavo Pérez Firmat. Martínez 39

Chapter 1

La Habana

The introduction, began by preparing the ground for the analysis of the novels themselves. The introduction also proposed a way in which the theory would be applicable to the four novels which have been chosen for the dissertation. In this present chapter, the analysis will go to the heart of the matter; the intersection of literature and space. This chapter will first address how the theory helps elucidate the point at which the theory and the space converge.

In the center of the Cuban imaginary is what many consider to be the Cuban space “par excellence”. La

Habana.31 The name in Spanish is used advisedly here. While

31 Since its founding during the colonial period, the city of Havana has been a center of economic, social and cultural activity on the island.

Like many Latin American countries, Cuba’s national life has been marked by the Capital-Province dichotomy. This division has had many important effects, not only in terms of resource distribution, but also in abstract terms as well. Havana has had a big impact on the Cuban imaginary as a symbol of progress, sophistication, and aesthetic beauty. This division was criticized and addressed by the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro which was interested in displacing Havana from its central role. Nevertheless, Havana continued, and continues to Martínez 40 the word “Havana” will be used when appropriate from here on out for stylistic reasons, it should be made clear from the beginning that this “Havana” is not the Havana of the

American imaginary,32 although American influences infuse

play a role in the construction of a novelistic tradition. Within this tradition one can identify such writers as Alejo Carpentier, Cabrera

Infante, Eliseo Diego, Gertrudis Avellaneda, and Zoé Valdés among others. For a more detailed discussion of Havana see La ciudad de las columnas by Alejo Carpentier, “La ciudad criolla, La Habana según Marta

Traba” by Luis Correa Díaz, Yolanda Izquierdo’s book Acoso y ocaso de una ciudad: La Habana de Alejo Carpentier y Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Emma Álvarez-Tabío Albo’s book Invención de La Habana.

32 The Havana of the American imaginary is an ahistoric vision of the

city that has mainly been molded by its portrayal in the popular

culture. One can point to such movies as Robert Redford’s “Havana” or

Francis Ford Coppolla’s “The Godfather”. In this view of the city, the

image that predominates is one of vice amid an exotic landscape that

according to a postcard from the 50’s is “so near and yet so foreign.”

According to Homi Bhabha “colonial discourse produces the colonized as

a social reality which is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable

and visible.” (The Location of Culture, 70-71) America’s representation of Havana responds to the characteristics of colonial discourse that identifies the ‘other’ with generalizations and exotism. Bhabha identifies the objective of this discourse as positing the colonized as a “degenerate” type in order to justify its control. (70) Martínez 41

Cuban culture.33 The space which is about to be addressed

belongs to a peculiarly Cuban cultural process of which the

“American Havana” is only a part.

This distinction is important if one takes into

account Stuart Hall’s observations about identity in his

essay “Negotiating Caribbean Identities.” He asserts the

role of representation in the construction of an identity.

For him, the search for identity is not merely the

elaboration of historical traits. It is rather a

“selective” exercise in which something is strategically

forgotten in order to emphasize something else. It is a

forward looking narrative based on those elements which we

choose to preserve for the future. He states that “it is

always about narrative, the stories which cultures tell

themselves about who they are and where they come from.”

(283)

Therefore, one cannot baptize this space Havana

without an explanation. Such an exclusivist appellation

33 As a result of its colonial experience, Cuban intellectuals have

sought to construct an identity in contrast with Spain and the United

States. These ideas can be traced, for example, in the writings of José

Martí, Fernando Ortíz, Jorge Mañach, and Antonio Benítez Rojo, among

others. Cécile Leclercq’s book El lagarto en busca de una identidad offers an exhaustive study of this question. Martínez 42

would be to concede territory to a language that brings

with it meanings that are not Cuban. It is, in effect, to

permit the establishment of a beachhead of appropriation

which is problematic, especially in this dissertation.

Ceding meaning to a foreign representation of Havana

is problematic because what is under consideration in this

dissertation is the representation of Cuban space by Cuban

writers. Frantz Fanon deals with this issue of self

definition when he states that

A national culture is the whole body of efforts

made by a people in the sphere of thought to

describe, justify, and praise the action through

which that people has created itself and keeps

itself in existence. (188)

Implicit in this is the idea that the national

conversation on culture takes place within the national

cultural context. This concept is echoed by Bernabé,

Chamoiseau, and Confiant when they discuss, in their

manifesto on Créolité, the need to develop an interior34 vision and eschew the exteriority imposed by colonial thought and practice.

34 It is interesting to note that this emphasis on an interior vision,

which is focussed on the native culture, is an implicit distancing from

Fanon’s emphasis on Africa and its culture. Martínez 43

According to the view of Cuban culture proposed by

Fernando Ortíz, Antonio Benítez Rojo and Gustavo Pérez-

Firmat, the city, and especially Havana should function as a space where a recombination of elements should be possible through a process of negotiation.35 That “space” is the space of the negotiation itself. As Homi Bhabha has argued in The Location of Culture, “it is the ‘inter’ – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in- between, the space of the entre… that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.” (38) It is this space with which this dissertation will concern itself. It is what Bhabha refers to as a “Third Space.”

It is important to clarify at this point that although

Cuban authors were chosen to be analyzed, and Cuban theorists are used in the analysis of those authors, it should not be interpreted to mean that only Cubans can authentically speak to the issue. The choice of these authors and theorists responds to this work’s focus on the

“interior vision” of Cuban culture. As Fanon states that,

“the native writer progressively takes on the habit of

35 Despite the historic role of Havana as a “center”, in novels such as

Tres tristes tigres, by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, it is not a repository of “essence.” It is not a static space but rather one where many elements come into play. Martínez 44 addressing his own people. It is only from that moment that we can speak of a national literature.” (193)

The city of Havana, represented as a recombinatory space, can be seen in many instances in the four novels.

The promise of this possibility, however, is nowhere more clearly articulated than in the first encounters described in the various texts.36 An example can be found in the following epigraph with which Zoé Valdés opens her novel.

Habanidad de habanidades, todo es

habanidad...

Dos desmadres tengo yo, la ciudad y la

noche. Recordar es abrir esa caja de Pan-

dora de la que salen todos los dolores, todos

los olores y esa música nocturna...

Guillermo Cabrera Infante (12)

This quote from Cabrera Infante’s Tres tristes tigres which serves as a touchstone for the novel. With this quote

Valdés evokes a lost world while at the same time paying

36 The descriptions of these first encounters are important for two reasons. First, before that first physical encounter with the city the relationship of the person to that space is symbolic and imaginary. The first encounter serves as a moment of comparison between that preconception and the perception of that reality. Second, those first impressions can then be read to see if there are any commonalities. Martínez 45

homage to the earlier work. It also pays homage to that

“night” and that “space” that Cabrera Infante captured in

the pages of his novel. Cabrera Infante represented Havana

before the revolution as a ludic space where the

recombinatory game can be read as an ajiaco. From the

opening line of her novel, Valdés is clearly signaling that

she too views Havana in this way.37

However, the quote serves another function as well. It suggests that in the Cuban imaginary Cuba has been

Havanized.38 This means that the culture and the space of

Havana have overlaid and appropriated the national space.

In Cubans’ minds, Cuba becomes Havana and Havana becomes

Cuba. Thus, the city is transformed into an important

37 By invoking the earlier novel, Valdés is positioning herself

symbolically as a part of a narrative tradition but at the same time

opening a space where she can, at the same time, distance herself from

that tradition. She uses Cabrera Infante in order to emphasize the idea

of Havana as a ludic space with its own aesthetic. What distances her

work from Cabrera Infante’s is its explicit political dimension. She

wants to portray the decay of Havana in order to make a political

statement by contrasting the before and after. For a further discussion

of this topic see Carmen Faccini’s article “El discurso político de Zoé

Valdés: ‘La nada cotidiana’ y ‘Te di la vida entera.’”

38 Both Reinaldo Arenas and Eliseo Diego, among others, have written

about this phenomenon. Martínez 46 symbol of Cubanness. What is important at this point is to emphasize the importance of Havana as a symbol of

Cubanness.39

One can read this “Havanization” as a part of an effort to create a national culture. As Frantz Fanon points out “A national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism…” (188) In order to define a national culture, he suggests, one must take into account all of the “efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence…” (188)

Although the effort to elaborate a Cuban national culture has not been restricted to the elevation and representation of Havana, it has been an important part of it. It is for this reason that this dissertation concerns itself with the question of the representation of Havana, among other questions, in the four novels.

To that end, the analysis of the representation of

Havana in the novels will begin with the descriptions of first encounters. These would be descriptions of characters coming upon the city for the first time. The distinction is

39 Havana as a symbol of Cubanness has a metonymic effect in that it displaces the rest of Cuban geography. Symbolically, the city is bigger than the island. Martínez 47 made here between a true first encounter and the encounter of a character rediscovering the city after a long absence abroad.

In Te di la vida entera, the protagonist is Cuca

Martínez, the daughter of a mulatta and a Chinese immigrant. At fifteen she moves to Havana in order to work as a maid. It is in the city that she meets Juan Pérez, the love of her life. The romance between her and the Uan, as she refers to him, is intense but short given that he has to flee the island at the onset of the revolution. Cuca decides to wait for his return for the next twenty years.

Shortly after Juan’s departure, Cuca gives birth to a daughter, María Regla40 her only child. María Regla grows up within the context of the revolution and therefore did not get to know her mother’s Havana. The novel presents us with the progressive deterioration of Cuca and the city, as well

40 This is a name with obvious religious connotations. On the one hand it refers to the Virgin Mary and on the other to the Virgin of Regla.

The former is a virgin brought to Cuba by the Spaniards, while the latter is local. This duality is representative of the idea of Cuba as a hybrid. On another level however, the name functions within the novel to reinforce the view of Cuca as a character tied to tradition. Martínez 48 as the growing disillusion of María Regla.41 The climax of the novel comes when Juan is forced to return to Cuba after twenty years and reencounters Cuca. It is after this reunion and subsequent second abandonment that Cuca realizes that she has sacrificed her life for nothing. The man of her dreams has disappeared along with the Havana that she knew.42

It is the Havana43 that is longed44 for that Valdés first presents to the reader. Although Valdés does not immediately allow her protagonist to give her first

41 Damián J. Fernández, in his essay “Cuba and lo Cubano, or the Story

of Desire and Disenchantment”, traces the history of the representation

of disenchantment in Cuban thought.

42 Throughout the novel, Valdés establishes a mirroring dynamic between

Cuca and Havana. It is through this connection to Cuca that Valdés

invests the city with a corporality that furthers her objective of

bringing Havana to life as a character.

43 In chapter 9 of her book Voces de mujeres en la literatura cubana,

Raquel Romeu contrasts the descriptions of Havana made by the Condesa de Merlín and Zoé Valdés. In the chapter, she attempts to show how

Havana has served as a central referent for Cuban writers from the 19th century to the present day.

44 In addition to representing Havana as a character in her novel,

Valdés also associates the city with nostalgia, sentimentality, and

longing. Havana is associated with a sense of loss; a lost paradise.

There is an incessant need expressed to recover what no longer exists. Martínez 49

impression of Havana directly, the author doesn’t wait long

to let the reader know how she feels. Her first words on

the matter are that “Cuca Martínez no recuerda sus primeras

impresiones sobre lo que fue la capital más bella de

Latinoamerica.” (19) While no description is immediately

forthcoming, Valdés does telegraph a very important

message. She views Havana as “la capital más bella de

Latinoamérica”. This is the “Habana, tan bella, tan nueva y

radiante.” (28) This idealization is confirmed by a long

inventory of characteristics in a long passage.45 In it she

catalogues what she perceives as the wonders of the city.46

First, we have its length and structure. It is almost overwhelming in its inclusiveness. This is by design.

Valdés includes so many elements in order to give a glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the elements that come into play in Havana. Extending the metaphor of Havana as a body, she begins by describing the stereotypical body of a Cuban

45 This passage begins on page 31, at the beginning of chapter 2 and

continues until page 37.

46 Many of the references, which she portrays as emblematic, are taken

from popular culture. The food she describes is “stereotypical”, the

music she cites are standards, the people are archetypical like the

sensuality of the mulatta. Martínez 50 woman.47 She infuses her description with an intense sexuality.48 Valdés does this by highlighting, and to some extent, exaggerating the physical attributes of the prototypical Cuban woman. They have small breasts but prominent buttocks, they display their bodies prominently and use make-up to accentuate that effect. Finally, they move and walk in a sexually suggestive way.49

The author then goes on to discuss the food that was available in the Havana of yesteryear. She lingers over the descriptions of the food in the same suggestive way that

47 In Cuban popular culture, the stereotypical body of a woman features

wide buttocks and smaller breasts. This type of body is usually

associated with the mulatta.

48 Raquel Romeu analyzes the use of sexuality, eroticism and their

connection to politics in her book Voces de mujeres en la literatura cubana. She deals specifically with this topic in chapter 9. Another

discussion of Zoé Valdés’ use of sexuality can be found in “La retórica

del discurso amoroso en la poesía de Zoé Valdés” by Adriana Castillo de

Berchencko.

49 According to Jeffrey Weeks, in his book chapter “The Body and

Sexuality” in Modernity-An Introduction to Modern Societies, there is a

connection between sexuality, power, and politics. He analyzes gender

difference in the same way that others have analyzed race or class

differences, and how it informs relations of power. Martínez 51 she did with the description of the women.50 In fact, she uses innuendo to establish a connection between the two.

This can be clearly seen in the following come on line that men would use: “¡Curucucucho de mamey! Mi natillita de vainilla, mi flancito de calabaza, mi arroz con leche espolvoreado de canela, ven acá, mi tocinillo del cielo!”

(32)

She distances herself from sex51 when she begins to take a mental tour of the city through her description of certain typical types of characters that could be found in the city. However, she doesn’t stray far. In the middle of this tour of people and places she writes that “¡Ay, los habaneros, listos para ser acariciados, para ser besados!”

(36) As she comes to the end of this long elegy to the city she begins to progressively interweave these elements closer together as if the disparate strains of her discourse were spiraling together toward a common point.

50 It is interesting to note that Valdés intentionally gives Havana’s body a gender. It is no accident that she feminizes the city in the way that she does. In so doing she is eroticizing the cityscape and turning it into a space of desire.

51 It should be pointed out that even when Havana is not represented as a female body Valdés still portrays it as a corporeal body through which one transits. Martínez 52

That culminating point is a piece of music which she cites.

By doing so, she makes explicit what had been implicit in the passage. The rhythm and structure of her words are now given explicit recognition in the words of the song. Her dance of love with Havana is here recognized as such. “Yo quiero bailar contigo”, goes the song, echoing what the author herself had already implied.52

Second, she includes elements which on the surface seem incongruous. She includes elements as disparate as food, music, architecture, characters, French, color, smells, sex, and the sea.53 By juxtaposing these elements in her novel, she is also attempting to recreate the dynamic combination of elements in the space of the novel that she imagines were at play in the Havana of times gone by. She is here recreating that, and idealizing it in the space of her novel. In either case, this clearly functions as an ajiaco. She is combining elements that may not normally be

52 Here one can identify the idea of need and absence associated with nostalgia and the desire to posses that which is out of reach.

53 These types of elements, such as food, smells, sex, and the sea, connected to Havana are not particular to Valdés. These elements recur in the works of other Cuban contemporary female authors. See “The Sea, the Sea, Once and Again: Lo Cubano and the Literature of the novísimas” by Nora Araújo in Cuba the Elusive Nation. Martínez 53 thought of as going together and yet, in her discourse, they do. They come together in a particularly recognizable way. One can almost smell the narrative ajiaco as it is being cooked.

It is not just a question of the combination of different elements, however, that makes Valdés’ description like an ajiaco. There is also the question of the rhythm of the narrative. She throws the elements together at an almost breakneck speed. One can also think of the elements bubbling to the surface in a fast and continuous fashion.

This ongoing mixing and cooking distances the ajiaco and its discourse from colonial discourse. There can be no mimicry54 here. Although this ajiaco accepts new elements, its attention is necessarily inward and not outward as is required in mimicry. If there is mimicry, it is incidental and, most importantly, transitory as new elements come into play.

Simon During can be helpful at this point. Zoé Valdes’ language in this case, its content and its form (the ajiaco), is not only a representation of identity but also serves to reinforce it. According to During,

54 The concept of mimicry is used here in the form proposed by Homi

Bhabha in his book The Location of Culture. Martínez 54

The question of language for post-colonialism is

political, cultural and literary, not in the

transcendental sense that the phrase as differend

enables politics, but in the material sense that

a choice of language is a choice of identity.

(458-59)

In La novela de mi vida by Leonardo Padura we have the second example of a first impression of Havana. This novel actually contains two novels in one, with a third story line that is related to the first two. Although the two main story lines can be separated to have two distinct novels, the chapters of both are interspersed. On the one hand, Padura presents a novel supposedly written by the

Cuban poet José María Heredia55 which is a type of novelized autobiography.56 It is written in the first person. This is the “lost” novel of the poet which is never found. The

55 José María Heredia (1803-1839) was born in Santiago and is considered

Cuba’s “national poet”. He spent the majority of his life outside of his beloved island. His passion for Cuba was such that a recurring theme in his poetry is the longing for Cuba. He died in Toluca, Mexico where he spent the last years of his life.

56 Autobiographical literature constitutes another tradition in the literary history of Cuba. In particular one can point to Cuban writers in exile like Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and Reinaldo Arenas as examples. Martínez 55

second “novel” concerns Fernando Terry, a contemporary

Cuban poet and university professor who is forced to

abandon the island. He returns to the island in search of

Heredia’s “lost” novel. This section of the novel is

written in the third person. The third, and shorter story

line concerns the son of Heredia, and his attempts to

adequately dispose of his father’s novel. The sections on

Heredia and Terry closely mirror each other. They describe

a coming of age, a fall from grace, exile and, eventually,

return.57

It is in Heredia’s section of the novel that Padura

describes the poet’s first encounter with the city that

would mark his career and the rest of his life.58 The author

57 In terms of writing technique the sections on Terry and Heredia

function as two haves of a progressive puzzle. They are part of the

mystery but serve to drive the plot forward collaboratively to its

conclusion. The section on Heredia’s son serves to bridge the span

between the first two sections when necessary. In all the three

sections work together and can be read as a detective novel for which

Padura is so well known.

58 As in Te di la vida entera, in La novela de mi vida the encounter with Havana is existentially determinant for the main characters.

Likewise, in both novels, the physical deterioration of the characters is mirrored in the decadence which Havana achieves by the end of both texts. Martínez 56

begins his description of the city by comparing its

particular smell to that of other cities which he has

visited. He pays close attention to the varied elements

that mix together to produce that specific odor. He

includes people, animals, things, and of course the sea.

While the description of the smells of the city forms the

central axis of the passage, Padura uses it as a base from

which he also goes on to include sex and food.

What is most striking about this passage is its

similarity to the one previously cited from Te di la vida

entera. Both protagonists discover the city in adolescence and both authors choose to describe this first impression by cataloging a list of diverse elements. It is also striking to realize that both characters are drawn to the city. In other words, the dynamism and chaos do not repel the characters. They assume the city as theirs from the start.

Beyond this however, what is most significant is that

both lists closely parallel each other. They both include,

food, color, smells, characters, sex, and the sea. This

listing serves the same function as in Valdés’ novel. It

gives the reader the impression of dynamism and abundance.

It creates in the mind’s eye the representation of a space

where elements combine and recombine freely. Padura adds to Martínez 57 this impression by describing the city as “caótica y avasallante” (17) and a “caleidoscopio” (28). By using these words, he is achieving the same effect that Valdés was creating with the length of her description. He is trying to communicate the sense of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of elements and influences at play in this space. This sentiment is echoed in the following quote where Heredia says that, “Además del olor, La Habana me sorprendió con el maravilloso descubrimiento de que allí se vivía con una lujuria y un desenfreno tal como si al día siguiente fuese a llegar un huracán.” (18)

This passage is similar to the long passage in

Valdés’s book in that it evokes a certain rhythm which is innate to Havana. There is a sense of energy evoked by the word “desenfreno”. The net effect is that, again, Havana is portrayed as an ajiaco and the author recreates this in the pages of the novel in order to do so.59

The structure of both passages deserves mention for their similarity of structure. These two passages do not just simply list out elements whose connection happen to be

59 Whereas in Valdés’s novel Cuca lives the city intensely, it is not she but rather the author that describes Havana as an intense experience. In contrast, Padura allows Heredia to verbalize what he views as a characteristic of Havana; its intensity. Martínez 58 that they can be found in the city of Havana. Both authors present these elements within a textual structure that binds them together. Valdés weaves her elements together in a suggestively sexual way and with a certain textual rhythm. Both the rhythm and sexual innuendo are further contextualized as being Cuban. Padura achieves the same cohesive effect by using smell as the unifying concept.60

There is one more thing that these two quotes have in common. They both portray Havana as a special and unique place. It is not in the listing of diverse elements that one finds the uniqueness of Havana. Every city, as Henri

Lefebvre stated is necessarily a “possibilities machine”

(Soja 81). What makes Havana special is the way it has of combining elements into a cultural ajiaco. That is why it is so significant that the lists put together by Valdés and

Padura are similar. The recombinatory process is important but the elements are as well.61

60 In both cases there is an erotization of the city of Havana. The city, as a symbol of the nation, extends the process of erotization to the island as a whole.

61 This observation is based on Fernando Ortiz’s elaboration of the concept of the ajiaco where he emphasizes the importance of its constituent ingredients. The concept is seen working here in the novels on two levels. In both novels we not only see a process of Martínez 59

While the Havana that is presented in Pedro Juan

Gutierrez’s Animal Tropical is not viewed through the eyes of someone seeing her for the first time, one sees the same basic principle of diversity at play.62 The constant state of change is established early on in the novel when the protagonist states that,

Leía en los pocos instantes de tranquilidad y

sosiego de que disponía en medio de una ciudad

especialmente vertiginosa y caótica. Un sitio

estrepitoso donde nada permanece inalterable por

mucho tiempo. (17)

Here one sees the suggestion of chaos once again. It is confirmation of the city’s propensity to bring together disparate elements. Gutiérrez quickly follows the previous quote by stating that one cannot write slowly while living in a place like Havana. Nothing lasts in this city and one has to constantly be searching for more. recombination of elements but we see the same elements appear again and again.

62 It is important to emphasize that despite using a different narrative technique and that Gutiérrez’s character does not come upon the city for the first time within the pages of the novel, Havana marks him in a profound way just as it does Cuca and Heredia. In this case the opposition set up is not countryside vs. the city, but rather Europe vs. Havana. Martínez 60

Gutiérrez is alluding to that which makes Havana a special place. However, in the following quote he goes to the heart of the matter and identifies the culture itself as the source of the difference. He does so by comparing

Cuban culture with that from Europe.63 He states that an

European writer has the luxury of meditating over his work and taking his time. This is possible because his culture permits it. That culture is experienced as if it were the culmination of a process. Since it is perceived as a destination, the writer can calmly reflect on the process that has already occurred and is not forced to think and reflect as the process occurs.

En cambio, yo pertenezco a una sociedad

efervescente, que convulsiona, con un futuro

absolutamente incierto e impredecible. En un

sitio donde hace sólo quinientos años vivían

hombres en cuevas, desnudos, que cazaban y

pescaban y apenas conocían el fuego. (18)

63 It is not the first time that this is done in the history of Cuban literature. Alejo Carpentier utilized the opposition Europe/Latin

America in his elaboration of the theory of the Marvelous Real. In his theory, the contrast with Europe is used to establish difference and construct an identity. See the introduction to his novel El reino de este mundo. Martínez 61

The Cuba that is represented in this quote is remarkably like the one described in the novels by Valdés and Padura. Again one sees the allusion to a certain energy that is here evoked by the words “efervescente”,

“convulsiona”, “incierto”, and “impredecible”. Implicit in this passage is, again, the idea of Havana as a unique place. In this, its representation is consistent with that of Padura and Valdés.

The treatment of Havana in these three novels stands in stark contrast to the one given, or better yet not given, to the city in García’s novel.64 Of the four novels,

64 To point out the absence of Havana in this text is not to somehow

disqualify it as not contributing to the construction of a national

culture. On the contrary. Within the Cuban national dialogue are many

voices from different perspectives. One of these perspectives is that

of the diaspora. One cannot speak of Cuban national identity without

including a discussion of the diaspora. Not only because nearly 20% of

Cubans live outside the island but also because exile has a long

tradition in Cuban history and thought. It is no accident that all four

novels deal with exile in one way or another. It is for this reason

that an entire chapter of this dissertation is dedicated to this topic.

Further, a discussion of Caribbean identity cannot be complete without

a consideration of the diaspora. As Stuart Hall says, the “Caribbean is

the first, the original and the purest diaspora.” (284) It was critical

to this dissertation that it include a narrative voice that, not only

is not writing “in” Cuba, but in a different language as well. Martínez 62

Dreaming in Cuban is the only one in which the city is not

given a central role. In the other three novels the city is

described extensively as are the interactions of the

characters with her. In García’s novel, however, Havana

only gets a passing mention. Most of the novel takes place

either in the United States or in the provinces. In La

novela de mi vida and in Te di la vida entera the

respective protagonists’ first introduction to the city is

presented as a life changing experience. In Animal Tropical its role is no less important. In Gutiérrez’s novel, Havana assumes a central role in the life of the protagonist. In

García’s novel, in contrast, La Habana “brilla por su ausencia”,65 as the saying goes in Spanish, compared with

the other three novels.

García describes Celia’s initial reaction to Havana.

The description of the city is conveyed through the eyes of

65 Pointing out that, symbolically speaking, Havana does not figure

prominently in García’s novel should not be taken as a pejorative

comment. It is important to point this out given that the city does

loom large in the other three novels. It is important to consider that

García positions Havana within Cuba and is therefore not a symbol of

the nation. Since it does not represent Cuba it is not a space that

needs to be “recovered”. In the end, her characters do not come to find

a lost space but to find themselves. Martínez 63 a girl who has not yet come of age.66 She describes her aunt’s dress and a street scene before moving on quickly to listing some of the activities that she enjoyed as a child while in the care of her aunt. It ends with a description of a procession to the church of Saint Lazarus.67

At first glance this description is similar to

Valdés’s when she attempts to give the reader a sense of the Havana that Cuca encountered. However, this surface resemblance hides deeper and more substantial disagreements. The difference with the other descriptions in the other three novels, is marked. First, although

García includes a variety of elements in her description, the list is not as long or as varied as that put together by the other three authors.68 As has been shown, in the

66 See page 93.

67 Havana is represented as a place where things occur but not necessarily as a space that generates these activities. The action is overlaid onto the city like paint on a canvas. The action does not spring forth as from a fountain. Neither is it represented as a living body with a particular way of being that imbues its space with difference.

68 It is clear that in Dreaming in Cuban, Havana does not appear as a national symbol nor as a symbol of a lost fatherland. It is for that reason that García does not resort to hyperbole in order to represent

Havana. The other three authors employ the technique of exaggeration as Martínez 64 other cases, the authors dedicated a relatively large amount of space to this first description of the city. They included a great amount of detail and emphasized the heterogeneity of the elements that are to be found in the city as well as their interaction. The descriptions also shared the characteristic of being emotionally charged and intense. In the case of Cuca and Heredia, this initial encounter is linked to an emotional and sexual coming of age. In Gutiérrez’s novel the city is not only linked inextricably with sex, but also with an undefined energy.

In all three cases the view of the author is wide and panoramic and that offers a sweeping view. Further, in

Dreaming in Cuban one does not get the sense that these elements could somehow come into contact and combine themselves in order to produce something new. Despite the listing of the elements, you do not get the impression that you are being presented with a “possibilities machine” where a cultural ajiaco is possible.

There are other differences as well. This initial description is not tied together by a common thread that belongs to Havana like Valdés does with sex and rhythm,

Padura with the smell of the city, and Gutiérrez with the a mechanism to recover that which is momentarily absent. In her case, symbolically what is absent is not the nation but family history. Martínez 65

city’s energy as a central referent and sex as an

expression of that. In all three cases, characteristics

that make the city unique are tied together by a unique and

coherent theme that also belongs to the city. What unifies

the description in García’s novel is the view of the

character.69 What ties the elements of the description

together is that they were chosen for mention because they

were important to the viewer and not necessarily because

they were somehow unique or emblematic of Havana. The focus

is on the character and not on the city.

This view of Havana is further emphasized in other

parts of the novel. It is echoed at the very end of the

novel at the point at which Celia is about to commit

suicide. She says that:

I remember my first day in Havana. I arrived

precisely at noon and the air rang with a

thousand church bells. My Tía Alicia was waiting

for me in her wide skirt and petticoats, the

peacock brooch at her throat (243).

69 What ties her narrative together is not only the perspective of the

character but also what is not there. While the erotic is an important

component in the other three novels it is absent in Dreaming in Cuban.

Whereas the other three novels eroticize the city, García dis- eroticizes it. Martínez 66

The quote begins with “I”70 and it is the self that is front and center here, not the city.

Havana in García’s view, when seen at all, is a reduced space tightly delimited to certain fleeting references. The focus instead of opening wide is progressively limited. In her description, it is precisely midday and there is but one sound, the church bells. And finally then, our gaze is not expanded to encompass the cityscape but rather focused onto Tía Alicia.

This view of the city is confirmed in an earlier observation where Celia remembers Havana as being like

Pinar del Rio.71 She says that,

70 The treatment of that “I” in Dreaming in Cuban merits further commentary. First, the personal perspective displaces the city from the symbolic center of the novel. Whereas Havana appears as a center around which the characters orbit, leave and return to, in the other three novels, it does not serve this function in García’s novel. This is so because at the center of her novel García has placed this first person perspective. Apart from this, that “I” constantly shifts from one character to another. The story is told from the perspective of many characters. Even when one arrives at what appears to be a center one finds that that center has been displaced.

71 Pinar del Rio is the capital of the province by the same name. Pinar

del Rio is the westernmost province of Cuba. Martínez 67

It reminds me of Havana when I was a girl.

Hibiscus grew everywhere, as if painted by

legions of artists. The pace was slow and there

were rambling houses with columned verandas. (53)

The Havana in this quote is seen as almost bucolic.

Certainly it is not being portrayed as a dynamic and ludic space. Neither is it a space where elements can freely associate.

The only scene in which García portrays Havana in a similar fashion to the way the other three authors is when she describes the invasion of the Peruvian embassy just prior to the Mariel exodus.72 García describes a chaotic scene of cars and people. The police are out in full force surrounding and containing the would be refugees to the area around the Peruvian embassy. The defectors already in the compound shout at both the police and others who are trying to gain access to the embassy. Pilar73 and her

72 During the Mariel exodus over 125,000 Cubans left Cuba for the United

States. It began on April 4, 1980 when more than 10,800 Cubans occupied the Peruvian embassy in Havana and demanded to leave the island.

73 It is significant that García chooses to name the character that grew up in the United States, like herself, Pilar. Pilar is the name of

Ernest Hemingway’s fishing boat in Cuba. The contrast with Valdés’ choice of names is striking. Valdés names the character with which she identifies María Regla, a thoroughly Cuban grounded name. García, on Martínez 68 grandmother have come to this place in search of Ivanito who they fear is trying to defect, but they do not find him.

What García presents is a scene of chaos. However, it is not the same type of chaos that is presented in the other three novels. In the other examples, the chaos that the authors describe is a creative chaos where there is always the possibility that something new can emerge, in a nevertheless positive light. Further, in the descriptions, this chaos is associated with a strong sense of belonging to the space. The chaos is symbolically appropriated and internalized by the protagonist. The main character views himself as forming a part of the chaotic process that is the normal and comforting daily routine of the city.

In contrast, the chaos in Dreaming in Cuban is not creative at all but rather destructive. This is emphasized when Pilar gets hit in the head with a rock and begins to bleed profusely. Further, nothing new can come from this chaos. It is foreign to the city and accordingly the police establish a “cordon around the compound” (240) in order to isolate it. This is a special and unique event that is not a part of the city’s daily routine. It is an event that the other hand, chooses a name that is connected to Cuba through the

United States. Martínez 69 lies outside of the city’s recombinatory game.74 As such, it is not viewed in a positive light. Whereas in the other examples, the chaos is associated with a sense of belonging, this event generates opposite feelings.

Lastly, and perhaps more significantly, whereas in the other three novels the eye of the beholder is that of an insider, in García’s novel, the scene is viewed through the eyes of an outsider. Pilar, like García herself, did not grow up in Cuba. While some of its culture is familiar to her it has been internalized through the mediation of another cultural experience.

Aside from the differences already mentioned one could list other details that are left out of the description that are included in the other novels. García does not mention food for example. The absence of food is noteworthy in the sense that it is mentioned in the other novels either in terms of longing or at the very least to comment on its absence. Although García does mention the sea in her novel, and it is omnipresent, it is not tied to a description of the city as it is in the other novels. In the other three novels the sea is an integral part of the

74 This makes sense in terms of the ajiaco dyanamic since the chaos is being generated by people wishing to abandon the homespace. They want to opt out of the game at any price. Martínez 70 city. When she does evoke the sea, García does so in order to emphasize its role as a border that separates Cuba from the outside world. It is a space of possible menace as is evidenced by Celia’s vigil in expectation of an invasion by the Americans.75

The third element that she leaves out of her description is sex. Sex is one of the key elements in the lists put together by Valdés and Padura.76 In these two novels, the protagonist is initiated in sex in Havana. It is also an important element that appears extensively in

Gutiérrez’s novel. Sex after all, is a combinatory element and Havana is closely associated in the texts with sex.

75 The sea is used as an element that is an integral part of the

description of the city by the novísimas. For them, the sea is an

aesthetic element that is to be praised for its beauty. Further, the

novísimas posit that the fact of living on an island surrounded is a

point of differentiation with others who live on the mainland. In

contrast, in García’s novel the sea is seen as a threat and is in fact

where Celia commits suicide.

76 Antonio Vera-León identifies a narrative tradition in recent Cuban

literature that uses vulgar language in conjunction with cultural

references. Although it is not always tied directly to sex, when sex is

the subject then these writers use explicit and graphic language in

their descriptions. He identifies both Cabrera Infante and Zoé Valdés

in this group. See his article “Narraciones obscenas: Cabrera Infante,

Reinaldo Arenas, Zoé Valdés.” Martínez 71

It is in Havana where Cuca Martínez becomes a woman.

It is where she meets the Uan and lives the happiest moments of her life. It is where she gives birth to María

Regla.77 In essence, Valdés represents Havana as a fertile space where love can flourish. Valdés does this through her descriptions of the sexual encounters between Cuca and the

Uan. In the description of the first sexual encounter, the author manages to connect fertility, Cuca and the city.

Ocurrió en una terraza inmensa como salón de

bailes de sociedad, frente al mar, con viento

furibundo, y salitre en los labios, muy cerca del

cielo, al gusto de ella, dominando el paisaje,

como un vigía. (88)

The way the lovemaking is described one gets the impression that it is taking place over the city as if the two were inextricably linked. At the same time, one also has the impression that Cuca is offering herself to Uan and the city on an altar all in the same act. One cannot reach any other conclusion after reading that they had shared

77 Valdés sets up contrasts in her novel between a glorious past and the decadence of the present. This episode of fertility is no different.

Fecundity, in Valdés novel, ends with the triumph of the revolution.

Not only does Cuca not have anymore children but María Regla has no children either. Martínez 72 sixty nine orgasms. She was sure of the number because during each one he had sworn “que se moría de amor por ella. Y por su ciudad. Como si mujer fuera sinónimo de ciudad. Y la ciudad tuviera útero.” (90)78 The passage goes on to describe how they continued to make love with wild abandon. They made love for a week straight and employed every sexual position imaginable and in every corner of the apartment.

What one sees in this passage is a representation of a wild passion that transcends limits and boundaries. Their love and lovemaking eventually leads to the birth of María

Regla. There is an air of inventiveness and creativity to the lovemaking that leads to fertility and birth. All of this fits into the combinatory game.

Before moving on, it would be useful to comment on one more characteristic of the lovemaking that Valdés describes that makes it fit neatly into the analogy of the ajiaco.

Beyond linking sex and love with the city, and describing its inventiveness, what makes the sex between el Uan and

78 In his book, La poética del espacio, Gaston Bachelard states that “El espacio captado por la imaginación no puede seguir siendo el espacio indiferente entregado a la medida y a la reflexión del geómetra. Es vivido. Y es vivido, no en su positividad, sino con todas las parcialidades de la imaginación.” (28) Martínez 73

Cuca work as an ingredient of a Cuban ajiaco is its public nature. This public aspect is implicit in the representation of the lovemaking as a ritual.79 Not only does it take place in the city, but it also includes the exhibitionistic element of being performed on a balcony.

This exhibitionism is announced in the novel in the passage at the beginning of the book when Cuca first arrives in Havana. Sharing a room with Mechu and Puchu, she is a spectator of their lovemaking. Thus, the exhibitionistic quality of sex, that includes the whole city as a spectator, is first metaphorically treated in this passage.

But there is another aspect of this public sex that is more subtle. This can be seen in the following passage where Valdés describes an apartment building where the

79 The word ritual is used here to further emphasize the connection between sex and the city but also the ritualistic nature of the act itself. There are several elements that contribute to this impression.

The balcony where the scene takes place, as mentioned on the previous page works as an altar. It is also significant that at the moment that she loses her virginity in this sacrifice, the gods respond with a rain shower. Beyond that, Valdés uses the word “templar” (88) which brings with it echoes of the word templo and synthesizes in that one word the connection between ritual, sex, and the city. Martínez 74 sound of lovemaking travels freely between floors and walls:80

Por el hueco del pasillo, adonde dan todas las

ventanas abiertas de par en par, escalan hacia

nuestros tímpanos los sucesos sexuales de cada

inquilino, en inesperada sinfonía de gritos,

voces y quejidos, (259)

The sex act itself takes place behind closed doors. One cannot see what is taking place nor who is involved. What one can perceive is the sound. One receives certain information about what is going on, but it is incomplete.

The listener is forced to fill in the missing information and imagine the rest of the scene. The “observer” mentally fills in the missing pieces. In doing so, the scene that is created is not the one that is actually taking place. It is not a reproduction, but rather something new that is loosely based on the real events. At this point there are three elements at play: the two people making love, and the person listening in. The new scene that is mentally

80 This “public” nature of lovemaking is not something that is

“traditionally” Cuban. It responds to the exigencies of living in spaces that were meant for fewer people than actually inhabit them. As such it is a phenomenon that is peculiar to the revolutionary period where living units are in short supply and urban overcrowding the norm. Martínez 75 constructed by the listener functions also as a metaphor for the ajiaco. Thus, the lovemaking scene serves as a microcosm of the ajiaco in Havana.

In La novela de mi vida, one again sees the themes elaborated by Valdés used by Padura. Heredia is initiated into sex by a Brazilian prostitute called Betinha.81 Padura begins to describe his sexual initiation by praising

Betinha’s sexual prowess and knowledge, which she used to satisfy his desires.

Por eso, desde la primera noche de nuestra

relación, cuando mi virginidad murió entre sus

piernas, los deseos de volver a encontrarla se

convirtieron en mi obsesión. (47)

In this quote one sees parallels with the deflowering scene in Valdés’s novel. First there is the element of wild passion. The object of Heredia’s passion becomes an

81 With the inclusion of this character, Padura makes reference to a common practice at the time, in Latin America, of having boys be initiated into sex by a prostitute. Emilio Bejel in his article “Cuban

CondemNation of Queer Bodies” points out that prostitution was a recurring practice in late 19th century Havana. In the article he cites an article written in 1888 by Dr. Benjamín de Céspedes titled “La prostitución en la Ciudad de La Habana.” This latter article describes the different types of prostitution which were practiced at that time. Martínez 76 obsession.82 Second, there is the allusion to the inventiveness of the sexual act when he states that she has an “habilidad... para satisfacer las demandas de otro cuerpo.” (47) This initiation into the world of sex leads, however, to other outcomes as one would expect of the model of the ajiaco. Heredia goes on to say that Betinha helped him to develop an ability to summon a feigned love which would facilitate his ability to write.83 Creative sex nurtures a creative literary process. Betinha acts as a

82 Ruth Behar, in her article “The Erotics of Power and Cuba’s

Revolutionary Children”, suggests that sexuality appears as a common

element in artists and writers that grew up within the revolution. She

indicates that the treatment of sexuality in their works allows them to

confront the revolution’s contradictions with respect to gender.

Further, sexuality offers them a sense of belonging and home. This

latter point is important because according to Behar, the failures of

the revolution have contributed to a sense of alienation which is

ameliorated through sex. She states that “If diasporic consciousness,

nomadism, and a sense of multiple identity define the post-utopian

moment of Cuba’s revolutionary children, it is no surprise to discover

that the body, and sex itself, have become the home-away-from-home, the

resting point for so much homelessness.” (145)

83 “Justo es reconocer, a fuer de honesto, que con su experiencia

Betinha me ayudó a concebir aquella pena de amor fingida y que, tendido

en su lecho caliente, las ideas fluyeron a mi mente con la misma

facilidad con que el agua brota del manantial.” (46) Martínez 77 sort of muse for the poet. Here is the third parallel with

Valdés: in her case the sex act is linked to fertility; to a creative fertility. In this case however, it is creative fertility. What is missing from this scene that is present in Valdés’s book is love. While Heredia’s juvenile passion quickly leads him to believe that he has fallen in love,

Betinha gently corrects him. After an afternoon of lovemaking he professes his love only to have her tell him:

“Tu amor imposible no puede estar en un burdel, sino en un palacio.” (47)

The exalted love of which Betinha spoke would be found in the arms of Lola Junco, the love of Heredia’s life.

Later in Padura’s book one sees the same sexual initiation replayed once again but this time with Heredia as the expert partner leading the initiate. The other difference in the scene with Betinha is that passion cedes its central role and is replaced by love in the scene with Lola. In

Padura’s description of the interaction between Heredia and

Betinha, the sex is the most important element into which love never fully is admitted. They do develop a genuine and deep affection for each other but that is as far as it goes. In the interaction with Lola, love comes first and Martínez 78 only later culminates in a sexual relationship.84 Still, the intensity of the lovemaking mirrors that which Heredia shared with Betinha and echoes it in yet another way: novelty. With Betinha, Heredia was initiated into sex. With

Lola he is the initiator. He asks himself if anything could be better than to know that

es nuestra mano la primera que, aceptada por

amor, acaricia el rostro tibio y sedoso de una

joven? ¿Puede imaginarse mejor regalo que sentir

la explosión de un corazón, junto a nuestro

pecho, dinamitado por la fuerza de una pasión al

fin desatada? (167)

Examples of the double elements of sexual inventiveness and love can also be seen throughout Pedro

Juan Gutiérrez’s novel Animal Tropical.85 In this work, sex is omnipresent and in many forms. If a sexual practice is not described in detail, there are nevertheless allusions

84 Culturally speaking the prostitute represents an objectified body meant for sex. In contrast, the virgin daughter of the upper class is a fitting repository for the poet’s love.

85 Although Antonio Vera-León does not mention Pedro Juan Gutiérrez in his article on the vulgar in Cuban narrative, Gutiérrez’s novel fits the definition proposed by Vera-León. Apart from the writers previously listed as being mentioned in the article, he also includes: Carlos

Montenegro, Novás Calvo, Virgilio Piñera, and Norberto Fuentes. Martínez 79 to it. In the very first page of the novel, the author describes photos that were taken of him in the nude which he later sent to a Swedish woman that he was in the process of seducing over the phone. He says that during the photo shoot:

empecé a quitarme la ropa. Siempre me sucede:

cuando me miran desnudo se me para. Y mucho más

si es con una cámara. Normal. Las fotos quedaron

muy buenas: yo en la nieve, totalmente desnudo,

con la verga tiesa.86 (15)

The novel describes the relationship between Pedro

Juan and two women. One is Gloria, a mulatta who lives in his building in Centro Habana.87 The other is Agneta, the

86 Although both Leonardo Padura and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez are both

writers of the same generation one can see how the language that they

use differs when they describe sexual situations. The contrast is even

more striking when one compares the scenes between Pedro Juan and

Gloria with the scenes between Fernando Terry and Delfina. They both

take place in modern day Havana but are very different in their style.

Whereas Gutiérrez can be placed within the tradition described by Vera-

León, Padura is clearly outside of it.

87 Whereas Zoé Valdés set up a contrast between pre-revolutionary Havana

and the decadence that came after, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez only focuses on

the here and now. He does not idealize Havana’s aesthetic beauty. That

is why it so significant that he places his action in Centro Habana. Martínez 80

Swedish woman that he seduces.88 Although all of the characters in this novel are experienced in the art of lovemaking there are two scenes in which Gutiérrez introduces these relationships to the reader. They can serve as contrasts with the scenes from the other two novels. The reader is first introduced to Gloria and the author in the first pages of the novel. The reader is then almost immediately presented with the first of many sex scenes between the protagonist and Gloria. Gutiérrez writes that, they had been lovers for three years and that slowly their relationship had grown to become an obsession. He

This is arguably one of the most run down sections of the city. The contrast with Old Havana, a tourist center, which is nearby is striking. Gutiérrez however is not interested in praising the architecture but rather the energy of the city, the activity that takes place within it.

88 Pedro Juan Gutiérrez chooses here two female characters which are

opposites. This opposition exemplifies the division Europe/America and

White/Mixed Race. It is interesting that the writer makes Gloria a

mulatta and not black. His opposition is not White/Black. We have a

reference here to the process of creolization. For a discussion of the

mulatta as a Cuban national symbol see Vera M. Kutzinski’s book Sugar’s

Secrets – Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism as well as Madeline

Cámara Betancourt’s article “Between Myth and Stereotype: The Image of

the Mulatta in Cuban Culture in the Nineteenth Century, a Truncated

Symbol of Nationality.” Martínez 81 goes on to say that he would like to write a book with her as the heroine: “Quizá se titule Mucho corazón. Por suerte me lo cuenta todo. Conmigo no se inhibe.” (25)

Before proceeding to the details of the description, it would be beneficial to examine the opening sentence.

Lovemaking here is described as a “locura” in which one loses “la cabeza”.89 The element of passion then, is central to the sex act just like in the scenes of initiation described earlier. However, there is another element at play here. That element is love. He is very clear when he says that the sexual passion is not the only thing. He states that with each passing day they love each other more. The title of his proposed novel about Gloria is A lot of Heart. In this brief passage then one sees the two basic elements that one finds in the two previously discussed novels, sex and love.

In addition, Gutiérrez establishes a connection between his lovemaking with Gloria with his writing. She inspires him to plan a book around her. As one sees throughout the book, his feelings for her drive him to write on various occasions and she is also the source of ideas for projects that do not include her. In this sense

89 Translation – crazyness, or losing one’s head. Martínez 82 she is a muse for him in a similar way that Betinha is for

Heredia or Delfina is for Fernando Terry.

Whereas the lovemaking in Padura’s novel tends more toward the romantic and lyrical, and Valdes’ novel accentuates a bit more the carnal over the romantic;

Gutiérrez’s novel clearly emphasizes the sexual. He does so not only by dedicating a significant amount of space to its description but also by how it is described. It is presented in detail and with a naked realism that lends a unique intensity to its retelling. Although there are many examples in the book, a representative one can be seen in the first lovemaking scene in the book.90 This is the first time that Pedro Juan and Gloria are described making love.

It is graphic, crude, and related with a certain frenetic energy. It sets the tone for the novel and clearly communicates the depth, intensity, and complexity of their relationship.

The second introductory love scene takes place when

Pedro Juan travels to Stockholm at the invitation of Agneta

90 The scene begins in the following way: “En dos minutos estamos desnudos sobre la cama. Hacemos un sesenta y nueve para entrar en calor.” (25) Martínez 83 whom he has been seducing over the phone91. In contrast to the scene with Gloria their lovemaking is not immediately described in the first person. Rather, the author refers to it in summary fashion. He says of Agneta that, “Sólo tengo que apretarle un poco los pezones, besarla, y ya está húmeda, cierra los ojos gimiendo y se va. Vuela. Juego con ella. La chupo, la beso, la masturbo.” (116)

There are many striking differences with the sex scene which featured Gloria. First, there is a lack of detail.

Obviously, this sex is not as good as the one with Gloria and one way that he shows this is through a lack of detail.

It is as if it is not worth mentioning. Second, despite that there is not much detail he still could have infused the description with a sense of intensity. Again, this is lacking. The sex is straightforward and definitely unoriginal. This lack of originality is emphasized when he requests that she perform fellatio on him. Agneta resists

91 The difference between the tropics and Europe is here put forth as being inscribed on the body and in the act of lovemaking. Sex and sensuality is here reinforced as something that marks Cuban culture. In an interview with Claudia Bertollini-Ciano in Lavox.com, Zoé Valdés emphasizes the importance of sensuality to Cuban culture. She states that “Ser un isleño te agudiza los cinco sentidos; y crea un sexto, el de la sensualidad.” Martínez 84

this request out of a sense of disgust. She is not only not

used to performing this act, she had not considered it

based on her personal preferences and perhaps cultural

interdictions. In any event, she is seen here placing

limits on the kind of lovemaking that she will engage in.92

Now, one may say that the tentativeness of these first encounters may be wholly the result of two people learning to be intimate with each other for the first time.

Certainly there is some truth in this observation. However, although their lovemaking does eventually gain in intensity and creativity it never progresses beyond a certain point that is established by her. This can be seen in her insistence in not engaging in anal sex. There are limits which she will not transgress. This attitude stands in stark contrast to the sessions of lovemaking that the

92 In this give and take between Pedro Juan and Agneta one can read the

episode as a metaphor of the imposition and resistance to colonial

discourse. The lovemaking takes place in Europe and Pedro Juan actively

attempts to transgress the normative limits imposed by Agneta. Pedro

Juan can be read as a Maroon. He is in flight from home but also from

the normative discourse as well. By putting this struggle in the pages

of his novel Gutiérrez is offering a form of resistance that resists

covertly. Edouard Glissant touches on this when he says in his essay

“Closed Place, Open Word.” that “texts were striving for disguise

beneath the symbol, working to say without saying.” (272) Martínez 85 author describes between the protagonist and Gloria that take place in Havana both before and after the stay in

Sweden.

This framing of the Swedish interlude only serves to highlight the differences between Agneta and Gloria in terms of their approaches to sex. With a Cuban partner, there are no limits. The sex act is placed squarely within the Cuban cultural current. Like all cultural expressions it responds to the recombinatory game represented by the ajiaco.93 With each new coupling something new emerges.94

93 Antonio Benítez Rojo in his article about creolization titled “Three

Words Toward Creolization” suggests that a text is Caribbean because of

its “poetics-structure, theme character, conflict, technique, language-

which I call performance. It is this performative quality which can be

identified in the sex scenes described by Gutierrez. Beyond the act

itself, which is a performance, one can point to the rhythm with which

the author relates the scene. Rhythm and performance are two of the

three words which Benítez Rojo uses to express the notion of

creolization; the third being plantation. In this emphasis on

performance his proposal comes close to that of Bernabé, Chamoiseau,

and Confiant when they say that Créolité is “a question to be lived.”

(255)

94 The intersection of sex and the recombinatory game of ajiaco is

nowhere better expressed than in Fernando Ortíz’s elaboration of his

concept of transculturation. In it he states that “the result of every

union of cultures is similar to that of the reproductive process Martínez 86

While Pedro Juan can approximate this with Agneta it never fully functions in the same way. While he terms it as being adequate, it does not yet measure up to the sex that he shares with Gloria or with the typical Cuban woman for that matter. He describes it in the following way:

a la cama con la amante sueca. Esperaba algo

peor. Pero no… Se emociona mucho. Con todo. No es

tan exigente como las Cubanas, que necesitan la

pinga tiesa, durísima, y que les llegue a la

garganta, y que no se caiga por lo menos en una

hora. (117)

This contrast between sex with a Cuban woman in Cuba and sex with a non-Cuban woman tends to reinforce the connection of sex and the city. In these passages, Havana is again the space where recombinatory games are played out. It continues to function as an ajiaco just as it does in the novels by Valdés and Padura.

between individuals; the offspring always has something of both parents but is always different from each of them.” (57) It is important to point out that at many points during sex, Gloria yells that she wants

Pedro Juan to impregnate her. The Cuban coupling holds out the possibility for insemination and birth. This is never the case between

Pedro Juan and Agneta. In their scenes, the possibility of pregnancy is never mentioned much less desired. Martínez 87

The three treatments of the issue of sex then are

quite similar. All three novelists resort to detailed

descriptions that are associated with passion and also

love; all of which are closely tied to Havana.

This contrasts with the treatment that Cristina García

gives the subject.95 In Dreaming in Cuban, sex is not only

represented in a different way than in the other three

novels, it also has a different function in the novel. Like

Cuca in Te di la vida entera, Celia in Dreaming in Cuban has an affair that marks her for the rest of her life. Now, whereas Valdés takes great pains to set the scene for the encounters between Cuca and el Uan, García merely suggests the details of the romance, much less the sex, that Celia and Gustavo briefly shared. The relationship between Celia and Gustavo is presented, flourishes, and ends in a little over three short paragraphs. We infer that they had had sex by reading that “Gustavo sang to her beauty mark, the lunar

95 Maite Zubiaurre, in her article titled “Hacia una nueva geografía

feminista: Nación, identidad y construcción imaginaria en Dreaming in

Cuban (Cristina García) y en Memory Mambo (Achey Obejas)” suggests that

there is a difference in the way that Cuban exiles represent sex and

the way in which Cuban-Americans do so. She believes that Cuban-

Americans focus their desire on Cuba which displaces it from being

focused on sex. Exiles, on the other hand, having a more recent

relationship with Cuba tend to put the focus of desire on sex. Martínez 88 by her mouth”. (36) García also includes the following between paragraphs two and three:

Ese lunar que tienes, cielito lindo,

junto a la boca . . .

No se lo des a nadie, cielito lindo,

que a mí me toca. (36)96

There is an interesting play on words here in the last word. “Toca” here is used first and foremost in the sense of ownership. The singer is claiming it as his or her own.

However, it can also be interpreted in the sense of touching as well. Since it is next to the mouth it touches the singer when he or she touches his beloved. There is a strong suggestion of physical intimacy implicit in both usages of the word.

If one were to put the passage in which Valdés describes the deflowering of Cuca Martínez along with the comparable passage about Celia Almeida, what stands out immediately is the absence of the city.97 True, García

96 The use of music, and especially the bolero, is a characteristic of

Cuban female writers of García’s generation. Zoé Valdés cites extensively from boleros. See “Te di la vida entera, una versión en bolero de la Revolución cubana” by Seung Hee Jung.

97 It is important to mention that García has stated that “I have no memories of Cuba prior to going back in 1984.” (65) Having left at two Martínez 89 mentions that Celia works in “El Encanto,98 Havana’s most prestigious department store”,(35) but that is a mere aside. Just because the sexual union is placed by the author within the city does not mean that it takes place in the context of the city. This means that the act itself is not intimately associated with Havana. In the cases of Te di la vida entera and La novela de mi vida, the sexual awakening takes place within the context of getting to know, or becoming reacquainted with, the city. In Dreaming in Cuban, the sex act is coincidentally in the city. It might very well have taken place in Granada, from where

Gustavo is. In fact, the closest García comes to associating this relationship with Havana is in Celia’s first letter to Gustavo; letters that she will never mail.

She writes to Gustavo that she is to marry Jorge in two weeks.

years of age, she has no memory of Havana or its urban landscape. It may be that the absence of the city in this text may respond to this fact. See her interview in Face to Face – Interviews with Contemporary

Novelists.

98 Before the revolution El Encanto was Cuba’s largest department store.

It was known for its high end merchandise and beautiful saleswomen. It was located on Galiano between San Rafael and San José. It was destroyed in a fire in April 1961. Martínez 90

I’ve told him about you, about our meetings in

the Hotel Inglaterra. He tells me to forget you.

I think of our afternoons in those measured

shafts of light, that spent light (49)

The Hotel Inglaterra99 is in Havana but, again, this is

purely incidental to the relationship. In this passage, as

in the previous one, García provides no details100. The

reader is not told the particulars of what went on in the

hotel room nor what special role the hotel played in the

relationship beyond the functional one of providing a place

to meet. The sex act, then is not even rooted in a

particular space within the city, much less the city

itself.

García’s choice not to tie sex to a location is not

just limited to this one case however. One sees the same

99 The Hotel Inglaterra is the oldest functioning hotel on the island.

It was inaugurated in 1875 and was the backdrop for many of historical

events in the life of the city. It has been declared a national

monument.

100 The effect that this lack of detail has on the reader is that it does not permit him to trace his way back to Havana. The focus is not on a re-encounter with the city or the nation, it is on a re-encounter with the family. The city need not be recovered because it was never lost.

Since there is no sense of loss, there is no need to recreate it in the pages of the novel. Martínez 91

characteristic in her description of the relationship

between Lourdes and Rufino, between Pilar and her

boyfriend, between Felicia and Hugo.

Up to this point this chapter has dealt with two areas

of cultural negotiation between a character and his space

and between two or more characters in the four novels under

analysis. First the initial interaction and negotiation was

described and analyzed as it occurred in the four novels.

Later a specific form of negotiation, sex, was explored and

analyzed as it referred to Havana. As was demonstrated with

the section on sex, a cultural negotiation with the space

can be carried out through many activities. One of the most

ubiquitous in society, and in these novels is music.101

In The Cuban Condition, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat describes

a scene from a Jewish wedding. In it, the Cuban-American

singer Willy Chirino102 gave a Cuban rendition of Hava-

101 Music works as both a marker of self-identity and as metaphor for the process of transculturation. These themes are elaborated in “Boleros,

Divas, and Identity Motels” by José Quiroga as well as “The Musicalía of Twentieth-Century Cuban Popular Musicians” by Raúl Fernández.

102 Willy Chirino is considered to be one of the pioneers of the “Miami

Sound”. He was born in Consolación del Sur in the province of Pinar del

Rio. He arrived in the United States through Operation Peter Pan. Martínez 92

Nagilah.103 Pérez-Firmat uses this example to support his

theory that Cuban style is translation style.104 He could

just as easily have used the episode to substantiate his

claim that Cuban culture is like an ajiaco. In the case of

the Jewish-Cuban song, two elements were dynamically

combined to produce something new and different and yet

recognizably based on its antecedents.

Music has traditionally been one of the elements that

invariably is included in any essentialist definition of

Cuban culture.105 From the son to the mambo, Cuban music has

been used as a signifier, with the signified being “Cuban

culture”. The interest here is to investigate whether the

role of music in these novels fits with the larger pattern,

which one already sees emerging, of the ajiaco, and to

investigate if the same dynamic is at work in the

representation of music as well.

103 It is interesting to note that the syncretism extends in this case to the word itself, in as far as it contains the word Havana.

104 Pérez-Firmat’s theory of translation style is a reworking of Fernando

Ortíz’s theory of transculturation.

105 For an exploration of the role of rhythm in the expression of Latin-

American culture see Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of

Latinidad. Martínez 93

Now, on its simplest level, one could argue that just

the mere fact that musical references are included in the

texts is significant in and of itself. Music is just one

more element that is thrown into the pot to further the

coción of the ajiaco. It is just one more element that can

enter into the recombinatory game. Beyond its mere

inclusion as an element, however, it is important because

perhaps more than other elements, like say food, music can

be much more evocative of other meanings and sentiments.

Music has the power to draw into the text worlds of

associations, in an intertextual way. In a similar fashion,

it also has the power to elicit from the reader emotional

responses and place him in the text. In this way, music

acts as a conduit through which new elements come into play

in the space of the novel, thus contributing to the

creation of the ajiaco.106

When, for example, Valdés includes a particular Cuban

standard it brings into the space of the novel not only its

particular specific contribution to the wider Cuban

culture, but also all of the ideas and sentiments that

106 It is worth remembering at this point Fernando Ortíz’s insistence, not only on the process of the cooking of the ajiaco, but the nature of the ingredients themselves. What is being cited in these novels is, for the most part, standards of Cuban popular culture. Martínez 94

Cubans have attached to that particular song. This, in and

of itself would be enough to contribute to the dynamic of

the ajiaco. However, Valdés does not stop there, she

includes songs from other traditions as well.107 An example

of this is when she places Edith Piaf in the pages of the

novel and quotes one of her songs. To cite another example,

she includes a song written by Irving Berlin.

Still, generically speaking, this can be said of most

novels that include musical references. Further, as has

been stated by many other theorists,108 the novel itself is

an amalgam of all other literary genres. What is of

interest here is to see whether the use of musical

references is particularly different in a Cuban novel that

differentiates it from any other.

107 The idea of bringing into a Cuban context “foreign” musical styles is not new to Zoé Valdés. One can point to the ethnographic studies of

Fernando Ortíz where he places the base of Cuban music as being outside of Cuba. He points specifically to the African roots of this music.

Alejo Carpentier does similar work in his novel Concierto barroco

(1974).

108 Theories about the novel can be found in such books as The Rise of

the Novel by Ian Watt, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach by

Michael McKeon, The Dialogic Imagination by M. M. Bakhtin, and The

Theory of the Novel by Georg Lukacs. Martínez 95

The analysis will begin by addressing the use of music

in Zoé Valdés Te di la vida entera. First of all, this

novel was chosen to begin with because of the four, it

makes the most extensive use of musical references. Valdés

begins each chapter with an epigraph from a popular song

for example. Indeed, the very first thing that Valdés

offers the reader is not her own words but rather a quote

from a song sung by Juan Arrondo.109 She also cites songs

extensively within the chapters themselves.

In her novel, Valdés uses musical references in a far

more complex way than one would guess at first glance. The

musical references function on several planes at the same

time but always responding to the dynamic described by

Pérez-Firmat.

As the analysis proceeds it is important to establish

that Valdés does identify music with Havana. After all,

what good would it do to assert that the music in this

novel contributes to the recombinatory game of the ajiaco

if it were not in the context of the city, or worse yet,

not tied to any space at all.

109 Juan Arrondo Suárez was born in 1914 and died in 1979. He was a singer of Cuban popular music and was known as the “bardo enamorado” and the “bohemio espontáneo.” Martínez 96

Just like the lovemaking scene which she describes

between Cuca and Juan Pérez in which she ties them and

their love to the city, she similarly does so with the

music. She does this in three ways, principally. First, and

most obviously, music is almost ubiquitous in the novel. It

opens and almost closes the novel. It can be found in

references throughout and is also used in many of the

scenes within the novel. For example, Cuca meets Juan Pérez

in the nightclub Montmarte.110 The first thing that they do

is dance together to the song from which Valdés takes the

title of the book. Valdés conjures up a scene of magical

enchantment. Cuca is transported by the music and Juan’s

arms to a place outside of daily life. The singer is Beny

Moré:111

110 It is important to emphasize at this point the diversity of elements at play in 1950’s Havana according to the vision of the city set forth by Valdés. In the text she combines Irving Berlin, Montmarte, and Beny

Moré. She is mixing an American composer, a French cultural reference and a Cuban singer. It is worth mentioning that at this point in history Beny Moré was actively innovating and mixing musical styles and rhythms. It further emphasizes the recombinatory game at play in

Havana.

111 Beny Moré was born in 1919 and died in 1963. He is considered by many to be the greatest singer of Cuban popular music. His influence on

Cuban popular music has been extensive. Martínez 97

Entonó, con voz de brisa de cañaveral, la canción

que marcó la primera y única historia de amor de

Cuquita Martínez:

En este bar te vi por vez primera,

y sin pensar te di la vida entera,

en este bar brindamos con cerveza,

en medio de tristeza y emoción. (42)

The connection to Havana here is obvious. It is not so

much that the scene takes place in a bar in Havana. What is

more important is in front of whom the scene takes place.

If Cuban music has a patron saint he is surely Beny Moré.

This impression is reinforced by the detail that she

provides of the scene. She describes his suit which places

him, and the scene in a particular time and place. There

can be no stronger chronotope112 or connection established between the music and Havana than that represented in this scene.

Still, Valdés is not satisfied with this. She unambiguously links the music and the city together. It is important to consider again the quote that was cited earlier where she expresses her desire to dance with the city when she says that “quiero bailar contigo”. (37) She

112 The word chronotope here is used in the way proposed by Mikhail

Bakhtin in his essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” Martínez 98

goes on to express how her neighborhood had a certain

tonality depending on the hour. During the morning the

softness of the sounds were reminiscent of a danzón.113

Midday was spiced with timbales114 and its hard percussive

sounds. Afternoon was a son115 and the night was ruled by

the filín116 and the guaracha.117 The chachachá118 she almost

forgets to tell the reader is perfect for lunch.

In this passage Havana becomes the music itself. The

music penetrates every nook and cranny of everyday life.

Time and space itself are equated to the music. But not

just any music. Valdés doesn’t equate Havana with jazz or

Rock ‘n Roll. Havana is a guagancó,119 guaracha, son and

113 Danzón is heavily influenced by European ballroom music. This type of music was traditionally associated with the upper classes.

114 Timbales are drums which were developed in Cuba. They are placed on stands and are beaten with sticks.

115 Son is a musical style which originated in Cuba in the latter half of the 19th century. It combines elements of Spanish music with African rhythms and percussive instruments.

116 The word filín comes from the English word feeling. It is a musical style which is influenced by American jazz.

117 Guaracha has a similar rhythm to the Son but combines this with satirical lyrics.

118 Chachachá is a musical form derived from the rumba and the mambo. It is played in 4/4 time.

119 Guaguancó is a form of rumba. Martínez 99 danzón. On another level, this passage is also of interest for the way in which Valdés combines the music and the city. Music melds into the elements that make up the city itself so that one does not know where the sounds end and the danzón begins. This is a perfect example of the author creating an ajiaco on the page that mirrors the ajiaco of the city.120

120 Food is another element, like music, that is invariably included in lists which attempt to describe a particular culture. Food in Valdés’ novel functions in a very similar fashion to the way that music does.

First, she identifies food with the city. Consider the following quote in which she states that “Ésa era la ciudad azucarada, miel de la cabeza a los pies, música y voces aguardentosas, cabareses, fiestas, cenas, comida típica cubana: carne de puerco asada, con mojo.” (32-3)

As in the case with music, the city becomes the food and vice versa.

Beyond associating food with the city she also clearly positions food within the recombinatory game of the ajiaco. This comes through in the following quote where she says that, “¡Y cuantas recetas más, cuántos olores! La Habana con sus sabores, mezcla de salado con dulce, arroz con frijoles y plátano maduro frito, y como postre cascos de guayaba con queso crema ¡Ay, La Habana, tantos goces inefables, del paladar”

(35) Havana she says is a mixture of salt and sweet. Like music, again, food is also associated with the language of the city. In a listing of pick-up lines she includes the following: “-¡Curucucucho de mamey! Mi natillita de vainilla, mi flancito de calabaza, mi arroz con leche espolvoreado de canela, ven acá, mi tocinillo del cielo!” (32) I include this discussion of food here because although I think it Martínez 100

These examples alone would suffice to establish that

Valdés connects music and Havana. But to stop here would not give a full picture of just how extensively she does so. One can see this connection also reflected in her use of choteo.121 Since Cabrera Infante’s novel, which Valdés evokes, uses many examples of choteo,122 it is not

surprising to also find its use in her own novel. More

significant in terms of Valdés’ work, food does not appear in as a significant a way in the other three novels. At any rate, food is not treated as an element of the ajiaco in the other novels.

121 Choteo is a word game in which the participants make up phrases, use foreign words, and oblique references in order to communicate with others in the know. Choteo is very much like jazz in that its aim is to stray from the central melody while never losing a fluid and coherent line of communication. It is communication that is always at the point of falling into incoherence. What it also shares with jazz is its improvisational character and its openness to new influences. Jorge

Mañach produced a study of Cuban choteo titles Indagación del choteo which first appeared in 1928.

122 Commenting on the need of local artists explore and capture the peculiarly local ways of linguistic expression, Silvio Torres Saillant states in Caribbean Poetics that Guillermo Cabrera Infante, among others, has engaged in an “effort to find in the island’s peculiar use of Spanish a means to express the sociocultural values that contain their cubanidad, that which can be regarded as unmistakably local.”

(79) Martínez 101

specifically, one finds an example of this in combination

with a song. In the nightclub scene just described, where

Cuca first meets Juan Pérez, her friend Puchunga becomes

envious of how well the neophyte has learned to dance and

also that she is with a handsome man. While a song plays,

she ad-libs some unflattering comments about Cuca:

A Prado y Neptuno, iba una chiquita, (barriotera)

que todos los hombres la tenían que mirar.

(putañera)

Estaba gordita, muy formadita (esquelética)

era graciosita, en resumen, colosal (cocomacaco)

Pero todo en esta vida, se sabe, (guachinanga)

sin siquiera averiguar, (chismosona)

se ha sabido que en sus formas, (deformá)(46)

What makes this an example of choteo,123 and not some

other kind of word game, are three things. First,

123 According to Edouard Glissant “the Creole language has another, internal obligation: to renew itself in every instance on the basis of a series of forgettings.” (273) This forgetting can be interpreted as being a forgetting of the colonial discourse of both Spain and the

United States. What they are speaking is not exactly Castilian Spanish and neither is it exactly jazz. It is something else that becomes new with each round of the word game. Stuart Hall speaks to this point when he says that “Far from only coming from the still small point of truth inside us, identities actually come from outside, they are the way in Martínez 102

Puchunga’s contributions to the lyric are done

spontaneously. Choteo functions in a similar

improvisational way to jazz. Second, choteo must be clever.

One can see this cleverness in the associations that are

established between the lyric and Puchunga’s ad-libs. Take

for example the second line. It refers to a beautiful woman

that men can’t keep their eyes off of. Puchunga replies

with “putañera”. With this one word, she transforms the

beauty queen into a whore. Line three is another example.

The line evokes a woman who is voluptuous. Puchunga turns

her into a skeletal figure. Third, choteo must be, if not

outright funny then at least, amusing. This passage works

on this level as well.124

which we are recognized and then come to step into the place of the

recognition which others give us. Without the others there is no self,

there is no self-recognition.” (285-86) In choteo, the self-recognition

comes in the process of the give and take implicit in the word game. As

each partner contributes to the dialogue he is contributing to

reinforcing the identity of the other as he reinforces his own.

124 There is an additional layer of meaning here that ties this analysis to the previous one on sex. It is important to remember that Puchunga is a lesbian. Her ad-libs are more complex than a first reading may suggest. The subaltern which is speaking here is not just a Cuban who is engaging in choteo. Puchunga draws a contrast between the young and thin Cuca and herself; an older and larger woman. There is a subversive Martínez 103

What makes the connection to Havana doubly strong is the double reference inherent in the quotation. First, the song is a Cuban standard quickly recognizable as such.

Second, Valdés includes a play on words, choteo, that is recognizably Cuban as well. Once again, music, culture and space converge and what emerges is something new.

Finally, Valdés opens the novel with a quote from a song, which she later evokes near the end in order to close the novel. The quote at the beginning of the novel is as follows:

Si en un final tuviera que escribir

lo que ha sido mi mundo,

si en un final tuviera que anotar

los días más profundos,

sería de ti como compensación

de quien más escribiera

porque tú eres amor, alegría, ilusión,

sentimiento y quimera.(De Juan Arrondo.

Interpretada por Clara y Mario.) (7)

quality to her presence and voice in this scene. She is a lesbian, black, and fat. By including this character here Valdés steps outside the “National Narrative”. For a discussion of this see “Cuban

CondemNation of Queer Bodies” by Emilio Bejel. Martínez 104

What is interesting about this quote is its ambiguity.

Valdes’s novel is supposedly about the love between a man

and a woman. On another level however, it can be read as a

love letter from Valdés to her125 Havana. That is why it is

important to point out that she opens the novel with a song

which declares her love for Havana. It is yet another way

in which she establishes a connection between the music and

the city.

In contrast to Te di la vida entera, Animal Tropical does not contain as many references to music. Its musical references do not infuse the work and yet are present nevertheless. Like Valdés, Gutiérrez includes the lyrics of certain songs, mainly boleros, in his work. The first example that one sees of this in the novel is early on when

Pedro Juan visits Gloria’s apartment, which is in the same building as his, and finds her sister Minerva there. He asks to play a song on Gloria’s cassette player in anticipation of asking Minerva to dance. He goes to the cassette player and puts on a song by Luis Miguel, titled

“La media vuelta”:

Te vas porque yo quiero que te vayas,

125 It is termed her Havana for two reasons. First, Valdés represents herself in the novel through María Regla. Second, she introduces her own voice directly into the novel near the end. Martínez 105

a la hora que yo quiero te detengo.

Yo sé que mi cariño te hace falta,

porque, quieras o no, yo soy tu dueño (34).126

After this quote he describes the scene as they dance only to later insert a more extensive quote from the lyrics.

This quote in the novel serves a different function than the one which was analyzed in Valdés’s work. There is no particular connection to Havana at all. Luis Miguel is a

Mexican singer. The lyric does not refer to Havana or Cuba.

And the situation is not iconic like the one described by

Valdés. Another difference is that it does not contribute to the creation of an ajiaco. What the quotation does do is

126 One can draw the contrast here between Valdés’ previously cited use of a musical reference with Gutiérrez’s. Valdés used the opportunity to give voice to a character who has traditionally been marginalized in the “National Narrative”. Puchunga, a lesbian, is empowered to speak and enter into the game of choteo where Cuban self-identity is defined and reinforced. In contrast to this, Gutiérrez’s choice of music reinforces the male centered discourse of that “National Narrative”.

The lyric makes the man the owner of the woman. This is consistent with

Gutiérrez’s portrayal of both Gloria and Agneta. On the one hand,

Gloria is portrayed as a prostitute which according to Spivak is the maximum expression of powerlessness. On the other hand, Agneta’s relationship with Pedro Juan is based almost exclusively on sex. In this sexual relationship, it is the man that is always shown to have the initiative. The woman is the subject of his sexual attentions. Martínez 106 highlight or accentuate the action of the scene. It serves as mere background music. There are other examples like this in the novel as well as others where a song is quoted in order to make a point. In these cases the author might as well have quoted from a poem or a novel.

It is reasonable to assert then, that music in Animal

Tropical does not serve to recreate an ajiaco within the pages of the novel in quite the same way as in Te di la vida entera. This use of music in the novel is unremarkable and can be found in many novels. Where Gutiérrez’s work is similar to Valdés’s is in how he portrays music as being a part of the city. It is in this representation that one can glimpse the functioning of the ajiaco dynamic in Havana.

In Gutiérrez’s representation, music ignores all boundaries and permeates the city. Music is not limited to a certain space but rather expands out to include disparate elements. In the following quote, Pedro Juan describes the function of music in Gloria’s household:

Es la casa del caos. Música. Mucha música.

Bolero, salsa, rancheras. Que yo te quise y tú me

abandonaste. Que yo te perseguí y tú me diste la

espalda. ¿Por qué me haces sufrir, mi amorrrrrr?

¿Por qué, por qué, por qué, mi amorrrr? La música

siempre ahí. (24). Martínez 107

He goes on to list contemporary singers, the traffic of

people in and out of Gloria’s apartment, and the variegated

racial make-up of her family. He gives this description in

a way that almost reaches the level of a stream of

consciousness.

In a sense, this description is the opposite of the

one presented by Valdés because it does not evoke the past

but the present. Also, it doesn’t conjure up an idyllic

past but rather the grubby existence of today. However, it

is similar in that it does portray a mixture of elements

with music leading the way. There is that word again,

chaos.127 This word represents that constructive

deconstruction that is the ajiaco. Everything about this

listing is heterogeneous. His list of singers includes

artists from different countries. This list of diversity

culminates with the listing of the racial mix of the

family. Gutiérrez is here describing a portion of his

127 As previously suggested, Gutiérrez’s discourse is hegemonic in that it tends to reinforce a male centered view. However, it can be read as subversive if one considers that the rhetoric of the Cuban revolution expounds a unitary and unifying vision of Cuba and its culture. What

Gutiérrez seems to be suggesting by his emphasis on “caos” is that

Cuban culture is in a process of atomization. There are so many elements at play, from so many directions that achieving a neo- culturative synthesis seems all but impossible. Martínez 108 vision of Havana and that vision is presented within a dynamic that fits the description of the cultural ajiaco.

What is also interesting about this passage is that

Pedro Juan describes it from his apartment which is on the top floor of the building. The point here is that the music is not contained within the confines of Gloria’s apartment.

No. It breaks out into the city and wafts out over her.

This same sense of expansiveness is further reflected in a later episode where Pedro Juan is at the beach and describes a scene of a family vacationing in a bungalow. He says that,

Al parecer los triunfadores eran los que ocupaban

una casita pintada de magenta, amarillo y verde,

con las puertas y ventanas en azul. Habían

colocado dos grandes bocinas en el portal y a

todo volumen gozaban, y obligaban a gozar a los

demás, una pieza selecta del hit parade del

momento. (40)

One can see then that music is being described as an element that enters into the recombinatory game of the ajiaco by being forcefully inserted into the cityspace.

Music from apartments penetrates into others, or into public spaces where the listener can form his of her own ideas about what is going on inside or can be moved by the Martínez 109

music in a very different way from the person listening in

the apartment. The social context in the apartment can be

quite different from the one where the music eventually

ends up. This can lead to unintended consequences and new

combinations of elements. Just like the sound of sex,

described by Valdés, being overheard can create the

possibility of an ajiaco, so too does the music. In any

event, while Valdés identifies the music with the city,

Gutiérrez describes it at play in the city. In either case,

its contribution to the creation of a cultural ajiaco is

clear.

In La novela de mi vida music is mentioned only in

passing and almost never in reference to itself. If it

appears at all it is always in the context of something

else. One might think that it does not appear because in

Heredia’s time Cuban music, like the culture itself, had

not yet begun to gel around elements that could be clearly

identified with the island.128 Nevertheless, references to

music do not appear in the half of the book that takes

place in the present either.

128 It is principally after the work of Fernando Ortíz that music enters

Cuban discourse as an element of Cuban identity. The Afro-Cuban movement begins to gain support after Ortiz’s work as well. Martínez 110

In Dreaming in Cuban music plays much the same role that it does in Padura’s book, which is to say that it is usually not mentioned. There are certain scattered references but always as a background element. In the novel, both Celia and Pilar play musical instruments but this is not a major part of the plot and has little impact on the story.

In both of these latter cases, music appears in such a limited way so as to make it difficult to identify a pattern. One cannot say whether music in these two novels functions as an element of the ajiaco because it simply does not appear often enough for one to draw a conclusion.

What is clear is that in these last two novels, music is not included as an element that contributes to a definition of Cuban identity.

In a broader sense, however, it is clear that Havana does appear as a symbol of Cuban identity in three of the four novels under consideration. Further, in his or her own way, Zoé Valdés, Leonardo Padura, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez each represent Havana as a unique place with its own particular rhythm. What is striking is the similarity of the three representations. In one way or another, they all represent Havana as having a particular recombinatory dynamic that approximates the ajiaco metaphor. What gives Martínez 111 this representation depth and coherence is that, as has been shown, most of the component parts of that representation also function as a cultural ajiaco. Martínez 112

Chapter 2

Exile & Return

In his observations on the work of Fernando Ortíz,

Gustavo Pérez-Firmat analyzes the differences between the

concepts of Cubanía and Cubanidad.129 The former refers to

Cuban identity as a generic condition. The latter concept refers to a “spiritual” condition that implies a desire to be Cuban; in other words Cuban identity is constructed “as the product of deliberate desire.” (30)

The concepts of Cubanía and Cubanidad can be seen as part of a project to define Cuban cultural identity within the framework of a national culture. According to Stuart

Hall, identities are constructed as a result of the production of meaning about “the nation” with which individuals can then identify. Hall ties his definition to

Benedict Anderson’s definition of an “imagined

129 Gustavo Pérez-Firmat points out that these two concepts are not

“original” to Fernando Ortíz. Rather, that Ortíz was inspired by the ideas of the Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno. This intellectual debt is explicitly acknowledged by Ortíz in the Factores

humanos de la cubanidad. This is used by Pérez-Firmat as an example of the “trans” character of Cuban culture. Martínez 113 community.”130 In this sense then, Pérez-Firmat is clearly attempting to link Cuban identity to Cuban culture as opposed to race or ethnicity.

Pérez-Firmat’s focus on the nation, rather than other factors, is due to his view that there is no definite origin that one can point to when speaking of Cuban identity. On the contrary, Cuban culture is marked by a certain mobility that has characterized it since the discovery.131 If this is so, then the process of defining a national identity is necessarily problematic for Cubans.132

130 Hall’s essay can be found in “The Question of Cultural Identity” which appears in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies.

131 For an extensive discussion of this phenomenon in Cuban history see

Antonio Benítez Rojo’s La isla que se repite, Nancy Morejón’s Nación y mestizaje en Nicolás Guillén, and Cecile Leclerq’s El lagarto en busca de una identidad.

132 In the article “The Question of Cultural Identity” in Modernity An

Introduction to Modern Societies, Stuart Hall talks about 5 different

“elements,” or discursive strategies, among others, that are central to how nations have been narrated as “imagined communities”. The first element of the five contains the following: nation narrated in the media, national histories, literature, and popular culture. The second element includes a narrative of the nation and is based on an emphasis on tradition, continuity, timelessness and origins. The third element is based on the “invention of tradition”. The fourth element is based on a foundational myth. And, finally, the fifth element is the Martínez 114

It is even more problematic when one throws in the experience of exile. Pérez-Firmat addresses this directly when he speaks of negotiating a national identity while in the midst of another country’s culture.133

It is this focus on negotiating identity, that takes into account the exile experience, that makes Pérez-

Firmat’s observations relevant, quite apart from the narrative of the nation based on the idea of the “folk”, the “pure” and

“original people”. In the case of Cuba, strategies one, two and three have been especially prevalent. Whereas four and five appear particularly problematic taking into account the early disappearance of the indigenous people. Nevertheless, some attempts have been made to identify, in the African component, a foundational role (the works of

Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier seem to move more in that direction).

133 The notion of exile and the idea of insularism has appeared in many works that analyze Cuban culture. The experience of exile has been common to many intellectuals both in pre and post-revolutionary Cuba.

José Martí, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Fernando Ortiz, Alejo

Carpentier, Jorge Mañach, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas,

Zoé Valdés, just to mention a few. José Lezama Lima discussed at several public talks the notion of “teleología insular,” as a component which would differentiate Cuban culture from others. In chapter 6 of his book On Becoming Cuban, Louis A. Pérez Jr. presents an extensive list of Cuban intellectuals who have lived abroad in exile. He specifically focuses on those who moved to the United States and or studied there. (411) Martínez 115 contributions of Ortíz and Benítez-Rojo. Exile looms large in Cuban history and letters as an experience shared across generations. This shared experience has informed Cuban identity.134 According to Robert Edwards in “Exile, Self, and Society” “Exile does not simply magnify personal separation to a collective displacement; rather, it intensifies the dialectical relation of the individual within the social.” (17)

One sees this sentiment clearly stated in La novela de mi vida when José María Heredia relates that when he arrives back in Cuba as a young man he discovers the possibility of belonging to a place like he had never belonged to a place before. Cuba, where he would come of age, was becoming a necessity for him. He goes as far as saying that the island was irreplaceable to him. He concludes by asking the following rhetorical question:

¿No hubiera sido mejor para mi fortuna, mi salud,

hasta para mi poesía elegir otra patria que no

fuera aquella isla en cuyo seno conviven, en su

grado más alto y profundo, las bellezas del

físico mundo y los horrores del mundo moral? (81)

134 In Caribbena Poetics, Silvio Torres Saillant writes that “Exile was and still is a constant element of the Caribbean experience,” (25) Martínez 116

While this passage highlights the free will of the

protagonist to “elegir” his status as Cuban, it also points

up the other side of the coin of the wanting to be Cuban.

Once one has cubanía, distancing oneself from it is

painful.

This distancing is not only painful, however; it is

acutely so because of something that the above quote

highlights. He uses the term “insustituible en el corazón”.

What this passage alludes to, of course, is the singular

character, as viewed by Cubans, of the homespace. Exile is

not just a leit motif in Cuban history just because of its

apparent omnipresence in all periods of that history. It

looms large in Cuba’s national consciousness, also, because

of the intensity with which it is felt and expressed in its

letters.135 From José María Heredia to José Martí to Zoé

Valdés herself, it is perceived by Cubans to be a

particularly dolorous process.136 The word process is used

135 This process corresponds to what Edward Said describes in

Orientalism. He says that, once in exile, our homeland constitutes an

imaginative geography and history. He explains that exile sets in

relief what is close at hand and what is far away, at home.

136 This is the way Cuban writer José Kozer describes the experience of exile: “Exile, that chic word, that lousy word. It means an expulsion.

You leave the womb as you leave Eden, as you leave the island. And live burdened by a vivid awareness that death has a hold on you; you Martínez 117

consciously here. Exile, at least for most Cubans, is not a

one time event that denotes the leaving or expulsion. It is

a word charged with the long time suffering implicit in the

forced separation. It is an estrangement that ends only

with an eventual return or death.

This view of exile as a visceral, rather than an

intellectual experience is a view shared by Dominica

Radulescu. In her essay “Theorizing Exile” she comments on

the subject in terms of her own exile from Romania. She

decries the tendency to “overtheorize” the subject of exile

which distances it from the realm of “palpable reality.”137

She also argues against treating the world as text since

this wrests importance from the texts themselves. (188-89)

One can argue that it is this view of exile that

predominates in the novels under discussion. It is a view

meditate daily on death having a hold on you. That is exile. The bitch

bites you in many different places.” (209) From “The Bite of Exile” in

ReMembering Cuba.

137 A more radical approach to exile appears in Edward Said’s

“Reflections on Exile,” where he asserts that to think of exile as beneficial is to minimize its mutilations. “For exile is fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past.” (177) Martínez 118 that treats exile with a sense of immediacy which derives from its omnipresence in society.138

Viewed another way, the word exile is hopeful. It does not have the ring of finality that say banishment has.139

Implicit in the word exile is the possibility that the condition may one day end with the much dreamed of return.

One therefore has in Cuban literature, along with exile, the concurrent phenomenon of the return. Whether the exile is temporary or permanent, there is a recurring theme of leaving and returning. Sometimes the return is for good and other times it is temporary. Whichever the case, this leaving and homecoming is an important aspect to be taken

138 Louis A. Pérez, although referring specifically to the experience of exile in the United States, states that “the social function of exile shaped the meaning of the experience, of course, but it was always possessed of a mixture of nostalgia and melancholia, being and becoming, a way to fall back to prepare to advance forward. Indeed, exile in the North persisted as one of the principal means by which

“Cuban” was constructed… So familiar was the experience that it was incorporated as a normal part of the Cuban condition.” (416)

139 In her book, ReMembering Cuba, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera presents a

compilation of different perspectives on exile by Cuban writers. Some

talk about “The interior exile,” some view it as “a spur for

creativity,” some as a bitter experience that has made them become

culturally ambiguous, some declare themselves as perpetually

dislocated. (Introduction, xvii-xxxiii). Martínez 119

into account when studying the culture’s relationship with

its space.

This journey to the outside world poses interesting

implications for the question at hand. These includes the

type of relationship that the protagonist establishes with

the space outside of Cuba. The nature of this new

relationship should tell much about Cuban attitudes toward

the homespace (Cuba). It should also shed light on the re-

encounter with Cuba and the relationship with the space.140

Before embarking on an analysis and description of how

the authors present their characters as they prepare to

leave the island, their journeys abroad and their eventual

return, it is essential to contextualize this whole

process. Leaving one’s homeland is never easy. It is

140 If one assumes that national identity is tied to national politics, then one has to recognize that both the desire to achieve great goals and the frustration at not reaching them are elements that are repeated in Cuban history. These characteristics are reflected in Cuban attitudes toward the homespace. In his article “Cuba and lo Cubano, or the story of Desire and Disenchantment,” Damián J. Fernández gives examples of the movement between idealism, dissatisfaction, and repetition. Fernández mentions two contrasting discourses that recur in contemporary Cuban literature. In this literature, there is a tension between desire and disenchantment which is exacerbated by political exile. Martínez 120

difficult under the best of circumstances.141 One of the

elements that heavily influences this whole process is of

course the relationship of the person about to be exiled

with his home country. This relationship, and its depth can

shed light on the experiences that come after. As Edward

Said says in his essay “Reflections on Exile”, exile is an

“unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native

place, between the self and its true home…” (173) With that

in mind, it is necessary to begin by describing how the

authors present their characters’ relationship with their

homespace before the possibility, or threat, of a

separation is presented to them.

In Te di la vida entera, Valdés presents us with what

is supposedly a story of unrequited love that a woman, Cuca

Martínez, feels for a man, Juan Pérez. On another level,

however, it can also be read as the autobiography of Valdés

love for Havana. This is suggested by the epigraph which

opens the book.

141 Writing in “Theorizing Exile”, Dominica Radulescu says that “…the experiences of one’s past in one’s motherland are usually idealized and turned to those “happy times” while the present, though often economically or politically and socially superior to the past, may be regarded by the exiles as the times of “misery.” (191) Martínez 121

This epigraph can be read on one level as a reference

to the love that Cuca feels for Juan Pérez. But it can also

be read as referring to the author’s love for Havana as

well.142 This is true for several reasons. First, the lyric

says that it would be “de ti como compensación de quien más

escribiera.” Obviously this unnamed entity could be a

person, Juan Pérez. After all, much is written about el Uan

and the consequences of his actions. However, if the amount

of writing is the standard, then Havana is as, or more,

present in the pages of the novel than is Juan Pérez.

Second, this lyric is evoked again in the next to last page

of the novel. This serves to bring the reader’s attention

back to the original epigraph and its ambiguity. It reads

as follows:

142 References to the painful experience, highlighted by song lyrics

(especially boleros) appears frequently in Valdes’s novels. In La hija

del embajador (1997), for example, the author dedicates the book “A

Ricardo y a Luna, conmigo en la distancia”, which she follows with the

following lyric, “Contigo en la distancia” by César Portillo de la Luz.

In Café nostalgia (1997), there are various examples of this. There is

the song by Omar Hernández sung by Albita which says,

“Ay, qué barrio allá donde yo nací,

ay, mi pueblo aquel pobladito feliz…

muchacho travieso que hacía maldades

para reírse…” Martínez 122

Si en un final tuviera que escribir

la historia de mi vida,

si en un final tuviera que expresar

las horas más sentidas,

sería de ti por ley de la razón

de quien más escribiera,

sería de ti porque en mi corazón

eres tú la primera.(361)

If the confusion persists at the beginning of the

passage, then it begins to clear with the final line. The

reference to “la primera” cannot be to a male. It can only

be a reference to a female.143 The answer to this question

of who this line refers to is offered on the next page

where the novel ends with a final quote. It reads:

¿Tú Habana capitulada?,

¿tú en llanto?, ¿tú en exterminio?

¿Tú ya en extraño dominio?

143 The feminine characteristic of the object of desire makes reference here to the feminization of the “fatherland” which is represented in

Spanish by the word “patria”. One sees here the idea of the “Madre patria”, longed for from exile. This is accompanied by the resorting to memory, the Romanization of the past where the times were happier. It is worth remembering that in La nada cotidiana, the protagonist is

named Patria. Martínez 123

¡Qué dolor! ¡Oh Patria amada! (362)

It is striking that in a novel whose plot revolves

around a love story, the final two words are “Patria

amada.”144 The novel is framed then, by an homage to the

beloved fatherland. What stands out about this framing and

conclusion is its fervor. These quotes suggest a depth of

feeling for Havana that borders on obsession. It is this

deep seated love for the homespace that is repeated again

and again in Te di la vida entera and to varying degrees in

the other three novels.

In La novela de mi vida, both Heredia and Fernando

Terry express a deep love for Havana. Although the fervor

of the love that they feel for the city does not reach the

heights expressed by Valdés, they do express a love for the

city that is driven by its uniqueness. In the case of

Fernando Terry, Padura manages to describe Havana’s

uniqueness145 and Fernando Terry’s relationship to her,

144 In her text Foundational Fictions, Doris Sommer identifies the

connection between romantic novels and eroticism on the one hand, and

the idea of nationalism on the other. This constitutes a tradition in

Latin American literature since the nineteenth century. In the novel

Zoé Valdés can identify how “Romance and republic” (Sommer 7) are

connected.

145 Leonardo Padura is here clearly identifying himself with a long literary tradition (as he himself mentions Heredia, Casal, Diego, Martínez 124 through literature. In one passage in particular he relates how, as a boy, Terry dreamed of visiting the New York of

Whitman and Lorca, the Paris of the symbolists and the surrealists, the Buenos Aires of Borges, the Andalucía of

Alberti, and the Castilla of Machado. In the end however:

terminó por enamorarse de La Habana de Heredia y

de Casal, de Eliseo Diego, Lezama y Carpentier,

aquella ciudad plagada de metáforas y

revelaciones insondables a la cual viajaba en sus

más arduas lecturas, apropiándose golosamente de

olores, luces, sueños y amores extraviados

(21).146

Lezama y Carpentier) which refers to a certain Cuban exceptionalism in general and to Havana in particular. The singular nature of Havana necessarily generates a greater sense of loss in as much as it is irreplaceable and irrecoverable. Experiences with other cities only serves to accentuate the sense of loss. Stuart Hall writes in “Cultural

Identity and Diaspora” that “We all write and speak from a particular place and time, from a history and culture which is specific. What we say is always ‘in context’, positioned,” (392) It is clear that both

Fernando Terry and José María Heredia speak from a sense of loss and absence.

146 In this novel, literature appears as a space through which Fernando

Terry comes to know Havana. It is through its representation by those authors that Terry becomes enamored of her, despite living in the city.

This experience is not unusual if one takes into account Benedict Martínez 125

In this passage Havana is an irreproducible experience and is something that can exist in only one space. Further, it is only in that place that the character can find a sense, not only of well being but, of who he is.

There is a similar passage in the Heredia section of the novel. In it, Heredia echoes the previous passage about

Fernando Terry. Heredia emphasizes not only Cuba’s uniqueness but also the act of appropriating it for his own. He says that Cuba belongs to him, not because of an accident of birth, but because of its uniqueness. It is unique because,

sólo allí había percibido yo que la luz, el aire,

la gente, los desarraigos, la comida, los

paisajes, las esperanzas y los olores me hablaban

Anderson’s work on the link between an imagined community and writing.

In the case of Latin America, the relationship between nation and narration has been explored by Doris Sommer. In the case of Cuba this link has been analyzed by Antonio Benítez Rojo in his article “Cirilo

Villaverde, the Seeker of Origins” and also by Roberto González

Echevarría in his article “Colón, Carpentier y los orígenes de la ficción latinoamericana” and Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin

American Narrative (1990). Martínez 126

en el oído, con un idioma propio que yo entendía

aún en los silencios. (365)147

He finishes the passage by reaffirming that it is his

fatherland because that is what he had wanted.

In Animal Tropical we have a slightly different

dynamic at work than in the other two novels just

mentioned. Gutiérrez’s novel is much less sentimental and

overtly romantic than are the other two. In his novel, for

example, one would never read a direct homage to the city.

Because of his hyper-realistic and gritty style, that type

of open and romantic tribute to the city would seem out of

place. Nevertheless, one can read between the lines to

discern that here too, the author has deep feelings of love

and belonging toward Havana.148 One can see this in the

147 This quote shows that the character constructs his cultural identity based on his personal relationship with a specific space. That is to say, he does not identify with Cuban culture because he shares with the collective a pre-existing and ahistoric fixed essence. Rather, it is because Cuban culture speaks to him in a language that is familiar. It is a language that he does not have to translate or interpret. This in turn offers him a comfortable place in which he can position himself as a subject with a clear sense of belonging.

148 Although the narrative of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez does not idealize

Cuba’s past, it is clear that the intensity and multiplicity of experiences has produced in him a sense of belonging. This feeling is Martínez 127 following passage which he prefaces by describing the scene before him. He lights a cigar with boleros playing behind him and the decaying city before him. He tells the reader that one loves a city if one has been happy and have suffered in her.

Si has amado y odiado. Y has estado sin un

centavo en el bolsillo, luchando por las calles,

y después te recuperas y le agradeces a Dios que

todo no es mierda. Si no tienes historia donde

vives eres como un grano de polvo volando al

viento. (37)

Given that Gutiérrez spends most of the book describing how he has indeed been happy, suffered, loved, hated, and been without money, in Havana, then, by his own definition, he does love Havana.

strengthened when he travels to Sweden. Gutiérrez, like Zoé Valdés,

Fernando Terry, and José María Heredia seem to respond in different ways to what Joseph Brodsky describes in his essay “The Condition We

Call Exile.” He writes that “...a writer in exile is, by and large, a retrospective and retroactive being. In other words, retrospection plays an excessive (compared with other people’s lives) role in his existence, overshadowing his reality and dimming the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup. (27) Martínez 128

This sense of belonging and of place149 is very strong

in Animal Tropical and more than makes up for the lack of overt feeling that is expressed for Havana. It is as if that by not being overt the author is telegraphing that this love and sense of place exists beyond the realm of the obvious where some doubt can be attached to its presupposition. This attachment is so profound as to lie outside, and beyond the reach, of any questioning whatsoever. It is an attitude that is assumed not out of some romantic notion of the homespace but because it is a condition sine qua non of existence. When Pedro Juan returns from Sweden, he and Gloria have an exchange about his habit of always returning to Cuba. She insults his intelligence and calls him a fool for not taking the opportunity during one of these trips to defect. He tells her that he doesn’t want to live anywhere else and she mocks his sentimentalism. He responds by saying that:

-No es sentimentalismo, es decisión.

-Es una estupidez. Por ahí puedes vivir mejor que

aquí. ¿Por qué no te quedaste en Suecia?

149 Pedro Juan establishes his sense of belonging in relation to his personal history. The culture with which he identifies is that in which he has constructed the history of his life. In that way, to exist in and inhabit a place combine to define his Cuban cultural identity. Martínez 129

-Yo vivo bien aquí.

-¿Bien? ¿Vendiendo un cuadrito cada seis meses y

yo jineteando a los yumas?

-Así y todo. Aquí estoy bien. (248)150

Gutiérrez here not only implicitly affirms his love for

Cuba but, like Heredia, emphasizes that it is his decision to do so.151

As has been the case in other instances, the contrast to these three examples is provided by Cristina García. Her novel is different from the others in a very basic way. In

Dreaming in Cuban none of the characters152 start off in

150 Jineteando and yumas are words from contemporary Cuban slang. A jinetera is a prostitute. Jinetear means to engage in prostitution.

Yuma is Cuban slang for the United States. Yumas usually refers to

Americans but may be used to refer to foreigners in general, especially

Americans, Canadians, and Europeans.

151 Again, one can see here an example, of Stuart Hall’s proposal in

“Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, of cultural identity as a construction, a representation, and as positioned. That is why Pedro

Juan reiterates to Gloria that his cultural identity and his fidelity to Cuba are a decision. That is to say, he is taking a position on the subject of his experience with another culture.

152 A clear contrast between García’s novel and the other three is that the point of view about and towards Cuba is presented from the perspective of many characters. In the novel, being Cuban, having left, having returned, or having stayed, mean different things for each of Martínez 130

Cuba and then return. When the novel begins, the characters

are either in the United States or in Cuba. Their trips are

one way, within the context of the novel. Therefore,

Lourdes’ “exile” is related to the reader in flashbacks.

The novel describes her return but one is not shown the

complete cycle within the confines of the novel. Pilar

barely remembers Cuba and therefore her trip is one of

discovery and not a homecoming. Lourdes’ father leaves for

good, has no desire to return, and does so only as a ghost

after death. Ivancito leaves during the crisis at the

Peruvian embassy.

This take on the leaving and return is quite

consistent with García’s personal biography.153 Of the four authors she is the only one not to have grown up and come of age in Cuba. Her ties to Cuba are ones of birth and family. She has not had a direct relationship with the

the characters. There is no single experience of exile and return,

rather, there are different levels of experience with Cuba and its

culture. Likewise, there are different decisions taken with respect

leaving and returning.

153 For details about Cristina García’s personal history see her interview in “A Fish Lives in My Lungs.” The novel expresses what

Edward Said defines as a “need to reassemble an identity out of the fragmentations and discontinuities of exile.” (“Reflections on Exile”,

179) Martínez 131

homespace as an adult. Her trips were also one way. She had

a one way trip to the United States and then a one way trip

to rediscover her roots just like Pilar. These are called

one way trips in order to emphasize that they are not part

of a larger cycle. The return trip is not tied to the

original departure, primarily because she had not spent the

intervening years yearning to go back as do the characters

in the other three novels or like Zoé Valdés herself.154

This attitude is reflected in her characters. Lourdes never really wanted to go back. She felt compelled to do so after the death of her father. Pilar felt similarly compelled as a way to define herself. Lourdes’ father never wanted to go back either.

In consequence, one does not find in the pages of

Dreaming in Cuban, a clearly expressed love for Cuba or

Havana. The space is treated more as backdrop within which

pleasant or unpleasant things occur, but, in contrast to

the other three novels, it is not treated as an element

154 Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), in his book The Hero with a Thousand

Faces, writes about the cycle of the hero. In this view of the hero

myth, the hero goes out from home, he has adventures which transform

him, and he returns home. During his adventures it is understood that

he is trying to return home. This cycle can be seen at work in Valdés’,

Gutierrez’s, and Padura’s novels, but not in García’s. Martínez 132 apart. Something to be longed for and desired in and of itself.

Beyond the overt love for Cuba and Havana, there is also the question of how these characters relate to Havana on a day to day basis. At this point the analysis will move beyond the initial impression of Havana to analyze how the authors present the relationship with the city after that initial introduction.

In Te di la vida entera, Valdés presents pre- revolutionary Havana as a magical place that was alive with possibility right from the beginning.155 That first impression that she gives one of the city is the same that will hold up until the triumph of the revolution. From the first time that she experiences the city until the end of

1958, Cuca Martínez will experience Havana as an enchanted place that functions according to the recombinatory rules of the ajiaco.

This experience of enchantment is reaffirmed when

Valdés writes about Cucá’s second encounter with the city.

It turns out to be even more enchanting than the first time she saw her because,

155 There is a direct connection here with Tres Tristes Tigres by Cabrera

Infante. Martínez 133

Eso tiene La Habana, mientras más la caminas, más

la quieres. Nunca te aburres, más bella la

encuentras, porque en cada ocasión te aguarda una

aventura distinta, una seducción que te hace

batido de mamey del corazón. (72)

In this quote one can identify the same elements that are

present in the depictions of Havana by the first time

viewer. First, it is a magical place. Notice the use of the

words “encanto” and “maga”, for example. Second, the

passage as a whole can be read as an expression of love;

but it is in the details that we see that Valdés is

depicting Havana as love and sex itself. Just as she did

with the love scene analyzed in Chapter 1, she inextricably

links Havana with love and sex. She writes that “mientras

más la caminas, más la quieres.” According to Valdés the

city offers the citizen, or in this formulation the lover,

“una aventura” and “una seducción.” The citizen responds in

kind and “la acaricias.” Third, Havana is full of

possibility because of all the elements that it contains.

This is alluded to, again, through choteo. Notice how

Valdés plays on the name “Lezama Lima”156 with “Lamama Mima”

and “repito” with “reputa.” The words not only rhyme but

156 José Lezama Lima was a Cuban poet and is considered by many critics and writers, along with José Martí, as one of the greatest Cuban poets. Martínez 134

they refer to the sexual tone of the passage as a whole so

that it rounds it out.157

This brief passage encapsulates the representation

that Valdés established with Cuca’s first impression of

Havana. The city is full of recombinatory elements that not

only exist within her but are her. Havana is an ajiaco

while acting to create that space at the same time. The

passage also gives one a view of how the city is

experienced by the characters, and by extension, the

author. The person has a personal, and even an intimate

relationship with Havana. It is a relationship that is

experienced first hand and continuously on a daily basis.

Contrast this depiction with that offered by García and the

difference is stark. It is the difference between something

held so close as to be a part of one, as opposed to

something viewed at a distance. It is the difference

between reaching out and touching the contours of the

157 There is another element at play here that is worth mentioning.

Valdés includes in this passage yet another way of experiencing Havana.

She writes that “Y si la recorres en los libros escritos para ella, donde la ciudad aparece como una maga…” (72) In this she is using an element that was also used by Padura and that is Havana through literature. One of the ways in which Fernando Terry develops a relationship with Havana is through literature as evidenced by an earlier quote. Martínez 135 beloved instead of being able to reach out to something that is beyond our grasp and having to caress the curves of the other with our mind and not our hands.

Leonardo Padura presents Havana in much the same way as does Valdés. Even after the first emotion filled impression, Havana maintains its power to enchant and create new possibilities. The city is a fountainhead of fertility. He has Heredia say that, “Para escribir poesías prefería sentarme en cualquiera de las plazas y paseos de la ciudad. La ebullición que se respiraba en la calle me servía de estímulo...” (48)

What one has here then, from Valdés, Padura, and

Gutiérrez is a depiction of Cuba as a special and magical place.158 It is an ajiaco in which the characters feel more

158 Amy Kaminsky in After Exile, establishes a difference between the identity of a nation and personal or “human” identity. She indicates that the nation, an abstract construct, has a doubly abstract identity.

Meanwhile, “human identity has to do with subjectivity, and only indirectly with an amorphous notion of a nation’s identity.” She further points out that the awareness of being a “national entity” only begins after a process in which the individual is forced to go through

“the moment of othering.” Nevertheless, in the case of the three writers here mentioned, personal identity and cultural/national identity are intimately tied. In fact, the characters, like the writers themselves, recognize themselves as being Cuban. Martínez 136

than comfortable and at home. In many ways, Cuba is

depicted as the only place where the characters can feel

themselves and feel completely connected to the world

outside of themselves. This vision of Cuba as idyll is

summed up in the following passage from La novela de mi

vida. It is taken from the play that Enrique had written

prior to his death. The passage sets the scene for the

play. It offers up an idealized view of Cuba that includes

a string of elements that are thought of as typically being

associated with Cuba. The passage mentions a guitar,

maracas, a bongó, a mulatta, rum, sun, mountains, and lush

tropical vegetation.159 He is describing Eden if Eden had

been created by a Cuban. He ends the passage with the

following:

Los mangos y los ciruelos están florecidos y

entre sus ramas vuelan sinsontes, tomeguines y

discretas bijiritas, todos despreocupados y al

parecer felices, tal como debió ocurrir en los

días anteriores a la definitiva expulsión. (319)

159 In the case of the play written by Enrique, the writer resorts to using common elements which are almost stereotypical. These are elements which are meant to define that which is Cuban, and would be seen by foreigners as typifying the “exotic” nature of Cuba. Martínez 137

The intensity of feeling expressed in the quote from

La novela de mi vida above, gives one some insight into how

leaving Cuba is treated in the novels. The view is that one

is not just being sent away from one’s home, which is bad

enough; one is being cast out of paradise.160 This is a

telling passage because it not only brings to mind the

character of the place from which one is being banished

from, but it also evokes the trials and tribulations which

lie in store.

The relationship with Cuba is intense and charged. It

is charged with memory and a deep seated sense of

belonging. Separating oneself from the space where this is

most intensely felt, then, is painful. So it is represented

in the novels. The departures from the island described in

each of the four novels is almost always forced and against

the will of the protagonist. Even in the cases where it is

not “forced” upon the character, he or she leaves out of an

urgent necessity. In any event, the departure is tinged

160 According to Edward Said in “Reflections on Exile”, “The pathos of exile is in the loss of contact with the solidity and the satisfaction of earth: homecoming is out of the question.” (179) Martínez 138 with an unpleasant and painful air. There is always a self consciousness about what is being left behind.161

It is this first realization, that is to say what is being left behind, that is the beginning of the preparation for departure. Just like in the Garden of Eden, exile does not begin just at the moment when one is expelled. One can still be physically at home and yet already be in the process of leaving or, in fact, gone. This process begins with the knowledge that one is no longer in the place where one thought that one was.162 After that first bite of the fruit, Adam and Eve were no longer in the Garden of Eden.

161 The experience of separation has a direct effect on the construction of self identity. As Amy Kaminsky points out in After Exile, for the

exile, “identity, then, has to do with memory and with control of

discourse. For postexiles, national identity is very much about

individual identity, forged in exile and in resistance to ‘othering.’

The reconciliation of self under these circumstances is a complex task;

the postexile who does not return is always something of an outsider.

As is the one who does return.” (29)

162 The experience of dislocation and displacement is felt on both an individual level as well as on the level of community/nation to which one belongs. The identity of the exile is constructed on the basis of these two levels. According to Kaminsky in After Exile, “Exile identity

–the sense that one is deeply marked, known to oneself and others, as

an exile- is a function of the self’s being tied to a particular place

where it belongs, however tenuously.” (22) Martínez 139

Their minds were now beyond the confines of the Garden

looking in. In the same way, being aware of one’s imminent

departure changes your relationship with one’s home. Things

take on a different characteristic. One is thrown out of

one’s everyday routine. No longer is each day infinitely

connected to one’s past, and to what one had assumed to be

one’s future. Suddenly, one’s days, in that space, are

finite and can be counted. This element of finiteness

colors one’s perceptions. For example, one walks along a

favorite street on one’s way home. Usually, one enjoys the

walk and thinks nothing more of the experience beyond the

comforting pleasure that one takes from it. Now, one takes

the same walk and wonders, “Is this the last time that I

will be making this trip?” From here on out one cannot

relate to one’s space in quite the same way.163 One has passed from a continuing relationship to begin a process of extended leave-taking. One’s surroundings are no longer pleasant and comforting but rather somber and at times strange. There is a passage from La novela de mi vida which

163 According to Edward Said in “Reflections on Exile”, a fundamental characteristic of the exile experience is discontinuity. The departure establishes a rupture in day to day life. That, in turn, imposes a distance with that which is familiar and with the sense of belonging to a place. Martínez 140 illustrates the point. It describes how Fernando felt just before he leaves the island in 1980 as part of the Mariel exodus. He comes out of a movie theater and describes the street scene.

Una oleada de nostalgia había revuelto las

entrañas de Fernando, que se sintió como un

exiliado en su propia tierra: aquel territorio

que había sido suyo ya no le pertenecía, apenas

sobreviví entre sus maltrechos recuerdos, y la

densa soledad que lo acompañara por la calle O

(262)

In this passage one gets the sense that things have already changed. The “exile” feels disconnected from his surroundings to the point that there is a longing for what has been “lost.” The feeling of isolation and distance are already being felt.

In the case of Animal Tropical, there is no comparable phenomenon to the one just described. First, as already indicated, Pedro Juan never intends to stay in Sweden. His trip is officially and personally temporary. Knowing, with near certainty, that he will return, there is no opportunity nor need for an extended goodbye. Second, also as previously indicated, this is not a romantic book. It is not a text that is given over to overt sentimentality. Martínez 141

What one does have, by way of goodbye, is a poem that closes the first part of the novel. It is a poem that he says he wrote to Gloria.164 This poem can be read, like

164 Yo soy el vampiro que siempre te sorprende y chupa tu sangre.

Me alimento con tu sudor, con tus lágrimas, con tu semen.

Te quito el aliento y te penetro besándote hasta que ya ni sabes que vivo dentro de ti.

Como un parásito.

Como una serpiente.

Como un virus.

Soy tu corazón y tu mierda.

Soy tu cerebro y tus manos.

Soy tus pies y tu lengua.

Y así te iré enloqueciendo como un demonio encerrado en tu pecho.

Serás mía sin remedio.

La mujer del diablo.

Y cuando yo duerma, porque entonces me quedaré dormido, clavarás tus colmillos en mi garganta y serás tú mi vampiresa Martínez 142

Valdés’s references to love, in two ways. On the surface, it is indeed about Gloria. However, it can also be read as an expression of love for Havana.165 There are many reasons why this poem can be read as a farewell to Havana. First, and most obviously, is its position within the book. This is the last passage one reads before the beginning of the second section which takes place in Sweden. Second, he mentions in two places that he lives in her. Viewed from a

y chuparás mi sangre.

Y te alimentarás con mi sudor, con mis lágrimas y mi semen.

Me quitarás el aliento y me penetrarás besándome hasta el alma.

Y yo viviré dentro de ti.

Y tú vivirás dentro de mí (111-12).

165 This double game of identifying the nation as a woman and as a mother is commented on by Amy Kaminsky in After Exile. She suggests that

elements of gender contribute to the experience of exile. She states

that “[Insofar] as patria figured as the maternal body… masculinity is

identified with the maturing process defined as separation from

mother/homeland. But it is equally marked by the infantile desire to

return. In the gendered dyads that structure the Western imaginary, the

exile occupies the masculine position –or at least one of them- of

child in the process of separation, while the feminine position is the

maternal place left behind.” (6) Martínez 143

romantic and metaphorical perspective this can mean the

heart of the beloved, but viewed from a spatial perspective

it can only mean Havana. Lastly, one must consider the last

two lines. When he says that “yo viviré dentro de ti”, it

can be read as a promise of return. It does not say that

“yo vivo dentro de ti”, which he certainly could have said

if he were just referring to Gloria. Presumably, if his

love for her were to remain alive as he is promising he

would continue to live in her. Rather, he uses the future

tense which leads one to the conclusion that the last line

is also a promise. It is a promise that he will not forget

Havana and will carry her spirit within him.166 It is also a promise to return. This is significant because it signals how he will approach the space outside of Cuba, as the

166 The process of an individual’s identification with a nation has a pedagogical aspect. It is a learning process in which a series of institutions (school, family, and the military, for example) have the function of teaching the individual and helping him internalize the national virtues and characteristics. This process reinforces the idea of the nation as a community. Elements such as national history, loyalty to the nation and compatriots, are transformed into elements of personal identity. What the character is doing here is declaring his future loyalty, which will be put to the test through his experiences during his voyage and stay in another country; as well as his experiences with another woman. Martínez 144

analysis will show in the next section. In any case, one

again has an expression of love for Havana and an implicit

expression of how important it is for the protagonist.

Instead of commenting on Te di la vida entera at this

point, the analysis will be made in the next chapter.

Because this analysis is more involved than the ones of the

other novels it will be elaborated in it’s own chapter.

In the case of Cristina García’s novel one sees no

comparable scene of leave taking. This is consistent,

however, with the rest of the novel. Since she treats

Havana tangentially, and the rest of Cuba as backdrop,

there is no need to say goodbye to the homespace. Ivancito

leaves for the Peruvian embassy without saying goodbye to

anyone. Lourdes jumps from Cuba to New York, seemingly

without anguish over having to leave. In fact, because of

her rape, it is almost a relief to leave. Lourdes’s father

similarly is anxious to leave Cuba and leave behind the

revolution.167

167 The novel shows how these experiences differ from those who have been forced into exile. In the case of Ivancito, Lourdes and her father, exile is desired for political and emotional reasons. For these characters, Cuba has stopped being the woman/mother protectoress with who they identify and belong. They, in fact, feel it has become a space Martínez 145

Even Celia’s suicide is not presented as if she were

leaving Cuba, so much as saying a final goodbye to Gustavo,

the unrequited love of her life. In the novel’s next to

last page we read that as Celia is floating in the ocean

about to drown, she “reaches up to her left ear lobe and

releases her drop pearl earring to the sea.” (244) These

are the special earrings that Gustavo gave to her during

their brief romance. It says in the book that she would

only take them off to clean them. By continually wearing

them she was, in a sense, continually connected to him. Her

taking them off at the end is symbolically important.

In the last page of the novel one finds the last

letter that she wrote to Gustavo in January of 1959. With

its inclusion, precisely at this point, after the reference

to the earrings, one understands that, unlike in Valdés’

novel, there is no dual level of signification. This is

just about Gustavo and never about Cuba.

What Garcia’s novel shows us is that before one can

feel an absence there has to be a presence.168 In Dreaming

where they feel rejected and in which they feel like the “other.” It is

for this reason that they wish to leave.

168 Presence is referred to in this case in a very broad way. It is not necessarily a physical presence. Given that Benedict Anderson proposes nations as “imagined communities” one can recognize that the connection Martínez 146 in Cuban, Cuba and Havana never really appear as separate entities. In contrast, in the other three novels Havana and

Cuba are always there. Not as scenery but almost as a protagonist. The stronger the presence, and the length of exile, the more acute the loss. It is not surprising then that when Leonardo Padura prefaces Heredia’s exile with a long passage, he ends it with a reference to just how painful the separation would be:

Al día siguiente comenzaría mi destierro y con

él, el aprendizaje verdadero de lo efímera que

suele ser la felicidad y lo inconmensurable que

puede resultar el dolor. (217)

This passage is reminiscent of the one from Enrique’s play which set the scene in paradise before the expulsion.

In this passage, Padura gives one a glimpse into the mind of the person about to be cast out with the full awareness of the characters to Cuba is not limited to living on the island nor remembering her geography. Anderson says that a nation is imagined on three levels, limited, sovereign, and community. His says of the last term that “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”

(7) Martínez 147 of the pain that will greet him on the other side of the wall.

The previous quote foreshadows the bitter experience of exile that to a greater or lesser degree is felt by exiles who long to return home.169 This yearning to return can make difficult a process of adaptation to new surroundings. According to Pérez-Firmat in Life on the

Hyphen,

the substitutive impulse of newly arrived exiles

makes them ignore the evidence of the senses,

including their taste buds. Because the reality

of exile may be too costly to accept, the exile

169 It is worth mentioning here that Edward Said establishes a difference between experiences of displacement which speaks to the pain of not being able to return. In “Reflections on Exile” he asserts that

“Although it is true that anyone prevented from returning home is an exile, some distinctions can be made among exiles, refugees, expatriates, and émigrés. Exile originated in the age-old practice of banishment. Once banished, the exile lives an anomalous and miserable life, with the stigma of being an outsider. Refugees, on the other hand, are a creation of the twentieth century state. The word “refugee” has become a political one, suggesting large herds of innocent and bewildered people requiring urgent international assistance, whereas

“exile” carries with it, I think, a touch of solitude and spirituality.” (181) Martínez 148

aspires to reproduce, rather than recast, native

traditions. (8)

This impulse to recreate the homespace in the new

space is a theme that recurs in all of the novels. While it

is a phenomenon that recurs it is done in different ways

and with different intent.170

When one moves to a new city or country one has three

options. One can assume and internalize the new space, one

can deny it utterly, or one can negotiate. According to

Pérez-Firmat, the exile’s first impulse is to go to one

extreme of the spectrum and deny that one has actually

moved. This attitude, like the other extreme is also a

total denial of the possibilities of the ajiaco. While this

may be a natural tendency on the part of exiles, it is

practically impossible to make a reality. The vast majority

of exiles choose to negotiate, or sooner or later have it

imposed on them. Consequently, one does not see examples of

this level of intransigence in the main characters in the

novels. Nevertheless, there is an example that comes close

to this extreme.

170 This refers to the notion of “transterritoialidad” proposed by Iván de la Nuez in his text La balsa perpetua: Soledad y conexiones de la

cultura cubana. (29) Martínez 149

In La novela de mi vida, Padura presents to the reader

Eugenio Florit.171 This poet was a real life person that chose exile in the United Stated before the Cuban revolution. He was recently honored in Cuba by the publication of his works; a rare honor for an exile. In any event what is of interest is the way that Padura depicts his exile. In the description, Fernando Terry pays Mr.

Florit a visit at his home in Miami shortly after Terry leaves the internment camp where he had been held after arriving in the United States.172 Florit spends the majority of his time in the garage, which he has converted into a sort of study, of the house that he shares with his

171 Although born in Spain, Eugenio Florit (1903-1999) was considered to be a Cuban poet. He arrived in the United States in 1940 and was a professor of Latin American and Spanish literature in North American universities. He was a professor at Barnard College in Columbia

University until his retirement.

172 When the first Cuban refugees arrived they were processed in Miami and quickly released into the community. As the flow of refugees increased, they were sent to camps in Florida, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Delays in the processing of refugees, especially for those who had no relatives in the United States, meant that some people spent an extended period of time living in these camps. While the U.S. government attempted to settle these refugees throughout the country, so as to avoid overburdening any one local government, most would eventually gravitate toward New Jersey, California, and Miami. Martínez 150 brother. Once inside the study, Terry is overcome with the sensation that Florit had never really left the island.

Entonces había descubierto que el recinto no

tenía ventanas, ni cristales ni claraboyas: sólo

la luz de dos lámparas gélidas iluminaban aquella

atmósfera irreal, obstinadamente aislada del

sofocante mundo exterior al cual renunciaba.

(278)

Obviously, Florit has not cut himself off completely from the outside world. It is mentioned for example that he does go out to attend the opera and to go to church. Still, the sense of denial of the outside world is palpable.

Although this passage comes toward the end of the novel, in terms of the story’s timeline, it is placed at the beginning of Fernando Terry’s own exile. It serves to foreshadow and forewarn Fernando what he is about to experience. Slowly he begins to become aware of this danger. Padura describes Terry’s growing anxiety and claustrafobia inside the study. Florit lived tied to his books, paintings, music, flag, and coffee from the country that he yearned for. Padura writes that “El exilio de

Florit era una cárcel, y su único consuelo había sido Martínez 151

reproducir a Cuba en otra isla de cuatro por seis metros.”

(280)173

This tendency toward the substitutive has not just

been noted by Pérez-Firmat. Joseph Brodsky in his essay

“The Condition We Call Exile” also comments on this

phenomenon. He points out that the past, irrespective of

whether it was good or bad, is “safe territory.” He notes

that our “capacity to revert, to run backward… is extremely

strong in all of us. (29)

Florit’s example is a warning to Fernando about the

dangers of not negotiating with one’s space. In this

passage Fernando passes judgment, on Florit’s choice and

what his life has become, and it is devastating. Life has

not continued, it has ended. Although never explicitly

stated, the passage communicates an air of death and decay.

Still, one can understand why the option to cut

oneself off might be taken. It is a seductive possibility.

173 In his essay “Reflections on Exile”, Edward Said observes that “Much of the exile’s life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule.” (181) While Said focuses on the motivating element of exile that pushes the exiled person to achieve success as a way of compensating for his loss of control; his proposal can also be read to suggest that the exile may restrict himself to a limited space in order to feel the same measure of control. Martínez 152

One has the very strong pull exerted by the nostalgia for

all things lost that is accentuated by the utter inability

of all that now surrounds one to measure up to what you

have lost. It is precisely because of this that this

section began by emphasizing the type of relationship that

Cubans have with their homespace. Some critics have

commented on Cubans’ overdeveloped pride of place and of

their vision of Cuba as unique in the world.174 Carlos

Alberto Montaner,175 for example, has commented that Cubans

suffer from “delirios de grandeza”176 and about “nuestra manía de vernos el ombligo a través de un microscopio.”

(79) In other words, if one begins one’s descent from a molehill, the trip is not so harrowing and the destination offers a view not too unlike the one offered by your point of departure. If, on the other hand, you believe that your

174 Some of these critics include Luis A. Pérez, and Jorge Duany.

175 Carlos Alberto Montaner, born in 1943, is a Cuban essayist whose column appears in papers in Spain and Latin America.

176 This attitude of national pride and a desire to achieve modernity, on the part of Cubans, contrasts with the critical view of Cuban society taken by Cuban authors. Examples of this can be seen in the writings of

Fernando Ortiz and Jorge Mañach. In his book Entre cubanos: Psicología

tropical, Fernando Ortiz includes a chapter titled “Iniciativa

intelectual de un cubano” while also including a chapter titled “La

irresponsabilidad del pueblo cubano.” Martínez 153

trip down begins on the summit of Olympus, even if your

destination is a green and fertile valley, it will pale in

comparison. And while you are in this valley, your gaze

cannot help but be constantly drawn to the height from

which you came, always there to remind one of just how far

one has dropped.177

It is no wonder then that many of the passages in the

novels that describe this first encounter with the new

“home” do so in a way that make out the new space not only

to be lacking, but positively uncivilized and strangely

lacking in life as compared to Cuba. In La novela de mi

vida, Padura describes all three of Heredia’s departures

from Cuba. The first time is for a brief period. The family

moves to Mexico in an attempt to improve Heredia’s father’s

health. The second time is when Heredia flees after being

involved in a conspiracy to foment revolution. The third,

177 This self image, on the part of Cuban culture, as a special and different place from the rest of Latin America is expressed in such appellations as “La perla del Caribe.” Manuel Moreno Fraginals has analyzed the values and attitudes of the Cuban Creole bourgeoisie in the colonial period in El ingenio: El complejo económico social Cubano

del azucar. In it, he demonstrates how Cubans already had this attitude

well developed during the early colonial period. Martínez 154

and final, time is when he leaves after his last visit to

the island with the permission of the government.

Heredia’s first departure from Cuba with the full

consciousness of being “Cuban” is not tinged with the

sadness that would be the hallmark of his later

separations. In this first occasion, he is obliged to leave

in order to help his father. Still, he knows in the back of

his mind that he will somehow make his way back to the

island. After all, he is not so much being exiled as only

leaving temporarily. It is because of this that the

attendant descriptions do not have an air of tragedy about

them. It is sad but not excessively so. The idea that the

separation is temporary comes through in the following

passage as does his calm acceptance of his circumstances.

He states that he views his stay in Mexico as a temporary

interruption of his permanent residence in Cuba. He feels

himself connected to Cuba through his identification with

the national character of the Cuban as opposed to the

Mexican which he finds too insular. (82)

It is interesting that in this passage Heredia

compares the Mexican character unfavorably with the Cuban

one.178 He specifically contrasts the open character of

178 In this passage the character defines his cultural identity and his

“ser cubano” in contrast with another nationality. In order to do this, Martínez 155

Cubans with the more closed, as he sees it, character of

Mexicans. One sees here an acknowledgement of one of the

main characteristics of the ajiaco; openness.179

Still, in spite of this, he acknowledges that his

Mexican stay influenced him to the point that it changed

his behavior. According to him he became more reflective.180

This calm attitude toward the acceptance of a foreign influence is important because it is the exception that proves the rule. Heredia, in this case, is willing to accept this influence precisely because he knows that he will one day return to Cuba. He doesn’t feel the need to hang onto every vestige of the island, like a drowning man

he identifies himself with a Cuban “national character” which is an

abstraction. It is a construction that supposes a pre-existing

homogeneity and unifying principal with which Cubans can identify.

179 This characteristic appears to be reiterated in Cuban national consciousness and is often described as friendliness, a lighthearted nature, and joviality.

180 The certainty of the return contributes to a lack of resistance on

Heredia’s part. This openness toward Mexican culture is what Edward

Said has described as the “scrupulous” characteristic of the exile. In

“Reflections on Exile” he states that “provided that the exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nursing a wound, there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous (not indulgent or sulky) subjectivity.” (184) Martínez 156

reaching out for any flotsam within reach, in order to

avoid being consumed by the ocean of influences around him.

His defenses are down because he will soon return.

The second time that he leaves he makes a brief voyage

to Haiti in order to take care of some legal formality

before returning to Cuba. It is included here because,

although it is temporary, its description is a

foreshadowing of the separations that are to come. He

describes San Fernando de Nuevitas,181 the port from which

he will travel to Haiti. He finds it to be very provincial

and lacking in the activity and dynamism that are present

in Havana. The streets are unpaved and all activity ceases

outside at 8 pm. Shortly after arriving he can’t wait to

return to Havana. (185)

The difference between Havana and the provincial town

he encounters is stark. This will be the first of such

encounters. These new places come to embody, not just

something less than Cuba, but rather the exact opposite of

the beloved fatherland. If Havana is life to Heredia, then

San Fernando de Nuevitas is death. There is none of the

dynamism that Heredia had associated with Havana to be

found in here. There is no lightness and light here, rather

181 San Fernando de Nuevitas is a port town in the eastern province of

Camagüey. Martínez 157

the streets are barely “alumbradas” and the atmosphere is

“sólido”. There is a sense that he has traveled not just

away from Havana but all the way to the other side of the

spectrum from where Havana is located. This sensation will

be reflected in the descriptions of his other places of

exile and makes Heredia feel that he is much further away

from Havana than the miles would indicate.

The third time that Heredia leaves Cuba, could be his

last, as far as he knows. It is the possible finality of

the farewell that colors his description of his

surroundings and experiences when he finally arrives in

Boston on December 4, 1823. He describes the harshness of

the winter that greets him and the desolation of the

landscape, completely bereft of vegetation. The streets are

deserted and the people few and far between and so bundled

up that it emphasizes his separation from them.182

Todo era blanco, o gris, o negro, sin matices ni

alteraciones y tal panorama me advirtió que no

182 Heredia’s experience in Boston reflects Amy Kaminsky’s observation in

After Exile that “Exile is a removal in space as well as in spirit. It

is a physical uprooting, an individual’s removal from a familiar place

to a new space that has, at least at the beginning, no recognizable

coordinates.” (10-11) Martínez 158

podría vivir allí mucho tiempo, pues antes me

mataría la angustia.(225)

Whereas during his first separation from Cuba he could

identify some positive aspects of his stay abroad, here,

all is negative. This is more significant when one

considers that this paragraph serves as a transition from

Cuba to his ultimate destination. Heredia is not being

eased into exile. The change is abrupt. One has moved from

a dynamic place where the ajiaco is possible, to a place

where the streets are nearly deserted. He is coming from a

place where the people are happy and the weather warm to a

place as cold as the people. He immediately associates this

panorama with death and “angustia”.183 His alienation is

confirmed on the following page where he describes feeling

like a puppet cast down into a bottomless pit “sin un lugar

preciso al cual dirigir mi vista, mis pasos, mis

expectativas.” (226) He feels completely alone and

dependant on others for his survival. He asks rhetorically

“¿Era esto mejor o peor que la cárcel? ¿Tenía el exilio ese

rostro tan poco amable?” (226)

Still, unlike Eugenio Florit, Heredia does not retreat

into a world of his own creation. Slowly but surely he

183 That first moment of exile, marked by an abrupt initial rupture, is what Kaminsky calls “life-or-death hypothesis.” (13) Martínez 159

begins to negotiate with his new space. The change is so

abrupt however, that in order to defend himself he only

cedes so much ground to his new environment. When he

receives the news that the Cuban ambassadors to the Spanish

court had arrived in New York he immediately follows. There

he meets Varela184 again and begins to surround himself with

fellow Cubans and the accoutrements of his “culture.” His

life begins to center around Varela’s home which he

describes as an “especie de embajada por donde pasaban

todos los emigrados y viajeros procedentes de la isla”

(228)

Despite this desire to somehow recapture the sense of

being in Cuba, and his sense that “me sentía perdido en una

tierra donde me sabía absolutamente extranjero.” (231)

Heredia goes out into the city and experiences what it has

to offer. What is more important however is that he does

not stop writing poetry. What is even more telling is that

it is during this period that he writes his ode

184 Father Felix Varela (1788-1853) was an educator and activist for

Cuban independence. He petitioned the Spanish crown for the abolition of slavery and Cuban political independence. Because of his political activities he was condemned to death in absentia and had to flee to the

United States where he lived for 32 years. He settled in New York where he ministered to the immigrants of the city especially the Irish. Martínez 160

“Niagara”.185 Unlike Florit, he is able to reach outside of

himself and connect with the outside world.

His willingness to accommodate the difference that

surrounds him has its limits however. He soon decides to

move to Mexico where he can at least communicate in his

native tongue.186 The role of language in the experience of

exile is not a trivial one. This is especially so for a

writer. In this case one has two, Padura and Heredia.

According to Dominica Radulescu,

The feel of one’s maternal language in one’s

mouth and on the tip of one’s tongue is unique

and irreplaceable. With it come the colors and

smells and tastes of one’s motherland that those

words may evoke (193)

185 The poem “Niagara” was written in 1824 is considered to be one of the finest poems ever written about the falls.

186 In After Exile, Amy Kaminsky describes how the experience of exile,

especially for writers, establishes a tight relationship between

language and space. She proposes that “Space acquires a discursive

quality insofar as language is taken to occupy it…” (58) In this essay

she also indicates that “…the trauma of displacement, followed by

learning new space, find their counterparts in the representation of

fictional or poetic space, wherein language provides the means to

establish as well as to recover a sense of place.” (58) Martínez 161

Although his situation improves somewhat in Mexico, he never ceases to endure hardships. And although he at first thought that he might live quietly as a Mexican, he eventually realizes that he is considered a foreigner even here where “con frecuencia era yo tildado de extranjero.”

(289)

Heredia attempts to integrate himself into Mexican political and social life but always ends up standing on the outside looking in.187 His stay in Mexico is marked by a long and painful deterioration.188 One of the few causes for joy is his family and, as the years pass, the possibility of one more trip back to Cuba.

187 This passage illustrates how the identity of the exile does not respond solely to his sensibilities or view of himself. It is also associated with how others perceive him. Despite Heredia’s desire to integrate himself into Mexican society, he is seen and treated as the other.

188 Part of this deterioration is his growing inability to write poetry.

By the end of the novel he is no longer capable of writing a poem on a par with “Niagara.” In Making Waves Mario Vargas Llosa suggests that if a writer “writes better in his country, he must stay there; if he writes better in exile, he must leave.” (77) While Vargas Llosa is clear in distinguishing between literary and political exile, in

Heredia’s case they are inextricably linked. Heredia did not have the luxury of choosing. This is a pattern that is repeated in the Cuban exile experience. Martínez 162

Permission for that trip finally arrives and Heredia seizes the opportunity. The analysis of the departure portion of this last homecoming will be left for the next section in order to comment on what would be his third and final farewell to Cuba. It would be best to treat this homecoming and departure as a unit because it is more of an interruption of his original exile than it is a new exile.

In any event, what is important to emphasize here is the way that Heredia experienced exile. Although he did try to make the best of his situation he always assumed his condition as an exile as a tragedy. He says that he does not know if in the future men will have to suffer through exile the same way that he has. He says that,

si así fuere, desde mi lecho de muerte los

compadezco, pues padecerán el más cruel de los

castigos que pueden prodigar quienes, desde el Martínez 163

poder, ejercen como dueños de la patria189 y el

destino de sus ciudadanos. (326)190

The flip side of Heredia’s story is that of Fernando

Terry. During the length of the novel their histories have

mirrored each other. It is only natural to consider now how

he managed his time during exile.

After his visit with Florit, he flees north to New

York where he works. This is a mere way station, however,

both in his life and in the novel. His true destination is

Madrid. Just like Heredia felt compelled to finally settle

in a Spanish speaking country so too does Fernando Terry

189 In “The Condition We Call Exile”, Joseph Brodsky asserts that “…talk we must; and not only because literature, like poverty, is known for taking care of its own kind, but mainly because of the ancient and perhaps as yet unfounded belief that, were the masters of this world better read, the mismanagement and grief that make millions hit the road could be somewhat reduced.” (23)

190 Here, Heredia makes reference to exile as not just a personal experience, but a national or perhaps universal experience. In

“Theorizing Exile”, Dominica Radulescu writes that “One has to be mindful of separating the exile writer from the other “common” exiles, for more often than not, while the exile writer does speak of his or her own personal experience of exile and creates a meta-language of exile, he or she does this also with a view to encompass the larger experience of exiles of his or her own ethnic group and even exiles at large.” (197) Martínez 164 seek the solace of his mother tongue.191 Like Heredia, he at

first attempts to integrate himself into his new

environment. He gets a job as a school teacher, makes

friends, and dates. He too, eventually begins to write

poetry again. There comes a time however when he begins to

cling to reminders of home. He begins by reading about Cuba

and her history and firmly decides to hold onto both his

Cuban vocabulary and his rhythm of speaking.192 He would think of the island every day and would live each day as if his present were but a continuation of his past. He went on

191 It is not surprising that an exile would seek the comfort of his native tongue. It is even less surprising that a writer would seek to do so. In “The Condition We Call Exile”, Joseph Brodsky writes that

“For one in our profession the condition we call exile is, first of all, a linguistic event: he is thrust from, he retreats into his mother tongue. From being his, so to speak, sword, it turns into his shield, into his capsule.” (32)

192 In his difficulty with English and in accepting the Spanish spoken in

Spain, Fernando Terry is mirroring the difficulties encountered by

Heredia. He feels alienated in the United States because of the culture and the language. And, just like Heredia, he also fails to feel completely at home in a Spanish speaking country. According to Dominica

Radulescu this difference generates a second exile. She states that

“Once one is relegated to the sphere of the ‘other,’ the ‘stranger,’ the ‘foreigner,’ the ‘one with a funny accent,’ one is again exiled from the very society inside which one has sought refuge.” (194) Martínez 165

this way until one day, while listening to a record of

Cuban music he suddenly realized that he needed to move on

if he were to preserve his mental health.193 He replaced his

obsession for Cuba with a determination to

matar su memoria, alejarse de la tentación de sus

indagadoras lecturas del siglo XIX cubano y

renunciar a una empecinada pertenencia que sólo

servía para abocarlo a la nostalgia y el rencor.

(275)

Contrary to his wish, Fernando Terry is never fully

able to forget. He is able to push Cuba to the back of his

mind but it is always there nevertheless. He admits as much

when Padura writes that “a pesar del olvido que intentó

imponerse como mejor alternativa, Fernando Terry sufrió

demasiadas veces aquellas imprevisibles rebeliones de su

conciencia” (11) Each time, he would attempt to fight back

the memory of his years on the island.194

193 Stuart Hall, in “The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual II” describes the parodoxical sense of the diasporic experience when he states that “…that’s exactly the diasporic experience, far away enough to experience the sense of exile and loss, close enough to understand the enigma of an always-postponed “arrival.” (86)

194 The experience of imagination and memory, taking the place of the lost homespace is discussed by Salman Rushdie in “Imaginary Homelands.”

He writes that “It may be that writers in my position, exiles or Martínez 166

In contrast to Heredia, Terry lives with the knowledge

that he can return to visit, even if it would take some

bureaucratic hassles. Because of his subversive activities,

Heredia must stay away because his return is forbidden by

the government. His exile does not continue because of his

own choice but because of the will of others. Terry, on the

other hand, chooses not to go back in order to avoid facing

the tragic circumstances that led to his exile. Up to a

certain point, his exile is self imposed.195 It is from this

fundamental difference that their different approaches to

exile flows. In every respect Terry’s exile is less harsh

than is Heredia’s. Terry is able to accomplish more during

emigrants or expatriates are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge

to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into

pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the

knowledge- …-that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably

means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing

that was lost; that will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities

or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the

mind.” (252)

195 One of the elements which distinguishes the exile experience is the forced expulsion along with the impossibility of return. A self imposed exile, associated with the possibility of return, would be less severe than a definitive exile. Martínez 167 his time away and is also able to integrate himself more into the world around him.196

If, as is stated, Fernando Terry’s exile is less severe than Heredia’s because of the possibility that he will return, then Pedro Juan’s “exile”, which is finite from the beginning, should be even more pleasant. And so it turns out to be. This difference with the other novels is made clear in the very first page of the second section of

Animal Tropical. When he arrives in Sweden, Pedro Juan will have to negotiate with his new space.197

196 Although Fernando Terry has an easier time integrating himself into his new society, he is never able to fully shed his identity as an outsider. The case is especially acute in the case of Heredia who attempts to play a role in the politics of his adopted country. The rejection that both men suffer, to varying degrees, is especially painful given that they are writers. According to Joseph Brodsky in

“The Condition We Call Exile”, the exile writer “finds himself totally unable to play a meaningful role in his new society. The democracy into which he has arrived provides him with physical safety but renders him socially insignificant. And the lack of significance is what no writer, exile or not, can take.” (24)

197 Pedro Juan’s situation in Animal Tropical can be summed up by Jan

Carew’s description of the Caribbean writer in “The Caribbean Writer and Exile.” She says that “The Caribbean writer today is a creature balanced between limbo and nothingness, exile abroad and homelessness Martínez 168

From the first lines of the second section of the

novel his choice is made clear.198 He relates how he would

sometimes go out at night to a bar in Stockholm called La

Habana. This bar is a slice of Havana in Sweden. Here he

finds Cubans who, for one reason or another, were living or

visiting. He talks about those Cubans who had seduced

Swedish women and had thus been able to escape the island.

He talks with a Cuban who has settled in Sweden but neither

adapts nor recreates his former life. He mentions a Cuban

who is there on a visit. Pedro Juan rejects all of this and

goes on to describe how he is enjoying being in Sweden in

his own way.199 He mentions food, books, music, writing and

sex with Agneta.

This passage serves much the same purpose in Animal

Tropical that Fernando Terry’s visit to Eugenio Florit

at home, between the people on the one hand, and the colonizer on the

other.” (283)

198 “A veces por las noches subo Sveavagen. Un poco más arriba de

Radmansgatan está el bar La Habana.” (115)

199 One of the attitudes assumed by exiles it that of separating themselves in a ghetto. That is to say that they tend to associate with compatriots which are likewise exiles. What Pedro Juan discovers is that it is an experience that quickly falls into nostalgia, commiseration and false or exaggerated nationalism. It is a closed, and not open, attitude that he rejects. Martínez 169

plays in La novela de mi vida. It is, at the same time, a

warning and a vision of the road not taken. The scene is

quite seductive. The bar is a recreation of Havana. Its

name leaves no doubt whatsoever about its substitutive

role. Not only is the atmosphere and music the same, but

the characters dedicate themselves to either recreating

their ways of behaving in Havana or to remembering them

through the prism of nostalgia.

In this paragraph Gutiérrez mentions three types of

characters. First, there is the group of men who romanced

their way to Sweden. Despite living there with Swedish

women they make no attempt to integrate themselves into

Swedish society. They do not speak the language, they do

not work, and so they attempt to recreate their Cuban lives

in Sweden. Their denial of their new space is active. They

engage in activities that will reinforce the fantasy that

they can continue to lead their lives pretty much the way

the always have.200 They drink, they seduce women, and they invent ways to get money. In other words “ellos resuelven” the same way they always have. It is the Cuban tradition of

200 In “Reflections on Exile” Edward Said describes this attitude when he says that “Exiles feel [therefore], an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology or a restored people.” (177) Martínez 170

getting by, managing to get enough each day to get them

successfully to the next. The second example is that of the

man who left Cuba permanently, and longs for her, but does

not actively try to recreate his Cuban life in Sweden. He

is passive and gives himself over to depression and

nostalgia. The third Cuban is in Sweden for a visit but

rails against his surroundings nevertheless. He cannot

enjoy his surroundings because he is constantly comparing

them to Cuba. Apparently, it does not matter to him that he

will soon be back on the island. For him, even a brief

separation is too much to endure.

In all three cases, the characters are as stuck as

Eugenio Florit was. They do not enter into a real

negotiation with the new space. As a result nothing new can

be created.201 What is more, each type represents a possible

future for Pedro Juan. He can, if he wants to, romance

Agneta and stay permanently in Sweden while trying to

201 This attitude is what Salman Rushdie has described in “Imaginary

Homelands” as a “ghetto mentality.” He considers it to be “the largest and most dangerous pitfall” that exiles have to deal with; especially exiled writers. Rushdie explains the danger of this by explaining that

“To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers, would be, I believe, to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the ‘homeland’.” (260) Martínez 171

maintain his lifestyle. One learns later on in the chapter

that he enjoys having her take care of him. He can also

give himself over to nostalgia and longing like the last

two men and spend his time pining for Havana.

Not Pedro Juan, however. Notice that Gutiérrez wastes

no time in making the comparison with the others. Even

before the end of the paragraph he has Pedro Juan take a

different road than the other men. He declares his refusal

to follow their example by saying that “Oh, no puedo con

ellos.” and he returns to Agneta’s apartment, which

significantly he calls “mi casita”. With these words he is

symbolically appropriating the space and trying to

internalize it.202 The significance of these words is not

unimportant given what follows them. When he returns, it is

what he does that is notable. He listens to music (rock),

eats (salmon), drinks (beer), reads (a Swedish writer), and

has sex (with Agneta). He does not listen to mambo, eat

fried pork, nor drink rum. In other words he does not

substitute, as Pérez-Firmat notes most exiles do, rather he

greedily accepts what the new space offers him. Pedro Juan

is stating unequivocally that he is, not only, going to

202 Pedro Juan is a type of nomadic exile. Even though he identifies culturally with Cuba, he can construct his “casita”, albeit provisionally, in a cultural space completely different from Cuba. Martínez 172

dive into this experience head first, but he is going to do

it at the deep end of the pool.

What makes it possible for Pedro Juan to enjoy that

which surrounds him is because of his openness. He, in

turn, is able to be open because he is not afraid. He is

not afraid of losing Cuba because he knows that in short

order he will return to her.203 What is more, this expected

return is not negatively charged the way it is for Fernando

Terry or Heredia. He doesn’t leave behind any unfinished

business or tragic event in his past. The thought of

returning is not alarming to him like it is to the Cuban he

met at the bar La Habana who refuses to return in spite of

his desires to do so. Pedro Juan assumes Havana on her own

terms and asks nothing more. Therefore, since he knows that

he will return and will do so without any problems he is

able to avoid the trap of nostalgia. That is why it is also

significant that he writes some poems to Gloria. It is

203 It can be stated that Pedro Juan’s attitude is another way of defining identity. In the case of Fernando Terry and José María

Heredia, there is no room for the consideration of a multiple or fragmentary identity. What these characters seek is wholeness. Exile has made them “lose” a part of themselves which they attempt to recover through memory, nostalgia, and writing. Pedro Juan, on the other hand, is and has been a fragmentary being with a dispersed identity. Martínez 173

clear that he is not writing them because he is homesick

but because he misses her in a way that is not excessively

nostalgic. To prove the point that he doesn’t miss her

excessively he goes on to recount his sexual encounters

with Agneta.204

There is no excess of longing like that expressed in

Padura’s or Valdés’s novels. What one has here is a smooth

transition between Havana and Stockholm. Pedro Juan has

been true to his promise to Havana. He is carrying Havana,

and her recombinatory game, inside of him and applying it

to the space around him. He is maintaining himself open and

trying to create an ajiaco around him. He describes his

philosophy in the following way:

Lo único que puedo hacer siempre, en Estocolmo,

en La Habana o donde sea, es construir mi propio

espacio. Nunca puedo esperar que alguien me de la

libertad. La libertad tiene que construirla uno

204 Although the narration of his sexual encounters with Agneta may be interpreted as a sign that he does not miss Gloria excessively, it can also be read as a part of his masculinity which is an important component of his self identity. In this view, sexuality becomes a component of cultural identity. This is consistent with his observations about the differences between making love to Agneta (a

Swede) and Gloria (a Cuban). Martínez 174

mismo… Hay que estar plenamente presente donde

uno se encuentra, y no escapar siempre. (18-9)

The formula that he will apply in his interactions

with his new space is therefore set. He will interact with

the space, and take from it what is available but he will

attempt to do so on his own terms. He has thus completely

entered into the negotiation.205 What he experiences the rest of his time in Sweden is a series of events and incidents where Pedro Juan tries to impose himself on the space and the space pushes back so to speak. Early on, as he is establishing a new routine with Agneta he is less flexible, than he will eventually turn out to be, in his acceptance of that which is around him. Take for example the scene in which he and Agneta arrive back at the apartment. It is 14 degrees outside and she prepares tea.

He, on the other hand fixes himself a rum and coke.206 He

chides her for drinking so much tea. She then puts on a CD

205 The philosophy described by Pedro Juan exemplifies his personal definition of cultural identity. Living in Cuba does not guarantee his cubanness just as living abroad does not endanger it.

206 The choice of a rum and coke is significant. This drink is traditionally called a Cuba Libre. It is considered to be a typical

Cuban drink. It serves as a strong contrast to the drink choice of

Agneta, tea. Martínez 175

of Madredeus in Oporto.207 It is, according to Pedro Juan,

melancholy.

Ah, carajo, esta mujer quiere deprimirme de todos

modos. Me abrigué y me senté afuera, en el

balconcillo, con mi cubalibre y un tabaco. A

echar humo. (124)

Obviously, there are limits to his willingness to accept

certain influences.208 She prepares tea, he drinks rum and

coke, she puts on melancholy music and he responds by

physically leaving the space.

This ability to reject influences goes both ways

however. He at times will try to bring some of himself to

the space and it will be rejected. One can take, for

example, the case of the Santeria necklaces that he brought

to Agneta from Cuba. He places them on her and dedicates

them. Agneta thinks that they are just souvenirs. He tries

to explain to her their significance within the context of

207 Madredeus is a Portuguese musical group that takes its inspiration from traditional music.

208 Those limits are determined by his sensibility. Pedro Juan does not accept elements which are foreign to his sensibility, even if they represent European culture. Martínez 176

Santería. She later put them away and never used them

again.209

This episode is filled with symbolism. First, what he

offers her is representative of Santeria. Santeria, for

Pedro Juan, is as close to an authentic expression of Cuban

culture that he could offer. It is a mélange of Catholic

and African religions. It includes both European and

African traditions in a uniquely Cuban combination. While

it is similar to Voodoo, in Haiti, or Candomblé, in Brazil,

it is not the same. This is Cuban ajiaco through and

through. This iconic gift is what he gives to her, and more

importantly, puts on her. Not only does he place the collar

around her neck but he dedicates it. What he is doing here,

in essence, is attempting to appropriate her in a very real

way. It is the arrival of Columbus in the New World in

reverse, right down to the ceremony in which the Europeans

take possession of the new lands.210

209 The necklaces were prepared specifically for her by a santera but she treats them as if he had purchased them at a souvenir store. “Entonces recordé los collares que la santera preparó para ella. Se los puse y los dediqué. Pensó que eran adornos típicos de Cuba.” (124)

210 When Columbus arrived at a new island he would perform a ceremony in which a document would be read out loud which would proclaim the

Spanish Crown’s claim of ownership of the land. Martínez 177

Agneta’s response is similar to that of the Indians’

reaction upon Colubus’s arrival and the taking of possesion

of the land; she does not grasp the importance of the

ceremony that is taking place in front of her. She has no

idea of the significance of the event for Pedro Juan. In

fact, she laughs and treats the necklaces as mere souvenirs

much as one might treat the gift of an “I ♥ NY”211 t-shirt.

She diminishes not only their significance but she reduces

their cultural ancestry to just the African side. The final

blow comes in the last line. “Nunca los usó.” The rejection

is unequivocal. Just as there are limits to what Pedro Juan

will accept, so to are there limits to what his new space

will accept from him.

Despite this give and take Pedro Juan does not give in

to nostalgia and close himself off. A perfect example of

this can be seen in his interaction with two Latin American

expatriates who are married to Swedish women and invite him

to accompany them to a local nightclub. The two men insist

on talking about Latin American politics to the exclusion

of all else. While they live in Sweden and have Swedish

211 This advertising slogan was created in the 1970’s as part of a campaign to increase tourism in New York city. The success of the slogan was such that it came to transcend the advertising campaign and to become a symbol of the city and its inhabitants pride in her. Martínez 178

wives they act as if what is really important to them is

the world that they left behind. Pedro Juan does not allow

himself to be drawn into their game. He tries to change the

subject and when that doesn’t work he dances with the

wives. One can feel his contempt for them when he

criticizes them for talking about death212 without a single drink on the table.

Y ellos insistiendo obsesivamente en sus traumas

de adolescencia política. Resistí una hora. Dije

que iba un momento al baño. Recogí mi chaqueta y

me fui. (133)

Once again one sees Pedro Juan being tempted with nostalgia and resisting. He attempts to negotiate with his space and when it becomes intolerable, he leaves.

There are many examples of this type of negotiation on his part. In fact, the whole episode in Sweden reads like a constant give and take between Pedro Juan and his

212 In his text La balsa perpetua, Iván de la Nuez, describes the classic

interpretation of cultures, which uses a linear and progressive

analysis. For Nuez, within that framework, falls the rigid positions

which have associated Cuban national culture with death. Phrases such

as “Independencia o muerte” (used by the mambises against the Spanish

during the wars of independence), “Patria o muerte” (used by the Cuban

defenders at the Bay of Pigs), and “Socialismo o muerte” (reiterated

after the fall of the Berlin Wall), have pervaded Cuban nationalism. Martínez 179

environment. Rather than go into each instance of

negotiation it would be better to comment on just one more

that is emblematic. It takes place outside of Stockholm in

a gallery that is exhibiting some of his artwork which he

hopes to sell. He dresses in white pants and a colorful

tropical shirt. This stands in contrast to the other

artists who are dressed in suits. He strolls around the

gallery smoking a cigar. He makes a scene and demands that

a cassette player be brought so that he can play Cuban

music. He pushes his luck and demands that the gallery buy

rum. This last gambit fails. He then begins dancing with

some of the ladies in attendance and tries to seduce one of

the more receptive ones.213 (219-20)

One could argue that he tries to appropriate the space

in the gallery in the same way that he attempted to

appropriate Agneta upon arriving. He exteriorized himself

into the space. What this suggests is that he takes that

which is normally considered personal and private and

projects it out into the public sphere around him. He

213 What takes place in this scene is a type of performance. It is a mise en scène of “lo cubano” for a Swedish public. Pedro Juan plays out the scene with stereotypical elements such as the cigar, the shirt, rum, music. He also plays the role of the latin lover which, along with the props, contributes to present those things Cuban as exotic. Martínez 180

projects the inner dynamism of the ajiaco onto what appears

to be a static environment.214 To that end he puts on a loud

Hawaiian shirt that evokes a Cuban carnival. He follows

through with the promise implied by his shirt and becomes

loud, plays Cuban music, dances, and drinks to excess. All

of these things are elements of his culture that would be

possible if the gallery were located in Cuba but seem out

of place in Sweden.

In Cuba, Pedro Juan routinely engaged in practices in

public or almost in public that most people would

traditionally consider to be private. This is especially so

for sex. All during his stay in Sweden he was given to

exhibiting himself in the nude. He would do so at beaches

and other public places but would do so with more frequency

on the balcony of Agneta’s apartment. The gallery is no

different of course. He projects outward his sexuality as

well when he tries to openly seduce the woman who is

214 In this situation, Pedro Juan is giving a “performance” for an

European audience. He dresses and behaves like the stereotypical

Caribbean “other”. He gives the other culture a theatrical display of exotism and Caribbean excess. This has a double effect; it satirizes the stereotype while reaffirming it. Martínez 181

interested in purchasing his paintings.215 This is a way for him to “mark” his territory as it were. It is a way to

“hacer para ser.” The question is if this actually carves out a space for him or not. In this episode it is easy to argue that he has not established a space for himself. The space tolerates his “show” but it has no transcendence. In the end, he sells only one painting.

The constant negotiation however begins to take its toll. He starts to feel anxiety. He describes an episode where his mind is assaulted by images and memories. It creates chaos and confusion. He is afraid of losing control.

Lo mejor es dejar la mente en blanco y no luchar.

La lejanía del lugar de origen genera a veces el

desorden. Mente en blanco. Cuando al fin logro la

serenidad, me acuesto. (135)

Slowly, but surely, Pedro Juan begins to become acutely aware of the limits of the negotiation. Like an

215 Sexuality appears in the novel as an element that defines Pedro

Juan’s personal identity. Nevertheless, there are moments in the narration in which his sexuality is presented as an element of cultural identity. Pedro Juan, a masculine heterosexual, becomes a sexual tropical animal. It is as if an exaggerated sexuality were a way to express tropical exuberance. Martínez 182

animal in a large cage he begins to discover, over time,

that he is indeed in a cage. Once he begins to realize that

his “campo de acción” is indeed restricted he begins to

feel the need to return to Cuba. There is an increasing

urgency to return to the place where he can fully enter

into the recombinatory game and feel himself again. Despite

the open way in which he faced his new space, certain of

his return to Cuba, he finally begins to feel it slipping

away. He has a nightmare in which he is standing in front

of a brothel. 216 Inside he finds Gloria. She has a blank and

diabolic expression on her face. She was prostituting

herself but only for money and with the intention of

getting back at him. He begins to cry because, “Yo sabía

que Gloria ya no era mía y que jamás podría tocarla. En

aquel momento estaba perdiendo a Gloria.” (200)

216 One of the social phenomena currently under study in Cuba is

“jineterismo.” This is prostitution marketed to tourists who visit the island. Gloria represents the “jinetera” in the novel. For an analysis of this phenomenon please see the following: Madeline Camara

Betancourt’s “Between Myth and Stereotype: The Image of the Mulatta in

Cuban Culture in the Nineteenth Century, a Truncated Symbol of

Nationality”, Emilio Bejel’s “Cuban CondemNation of Queer Bodies”,

Miguel González Abella’s “Sexo transnacional: la cubana como mercancía en la obra de Zoé Valdés”, and Lancelot Cowie’s “El jineterismo como fenómeno social en la narrativa cubana contemporánea.” Martínez 183

More than wanting to return to Cuba, Pedro Juan begins

to feel the need to return. Not only does he feel that he

is beginning to lose that which is dear to him.

Increasingly, he begins to feel that he is losing himself.

He goes three days without shaving or bathing in an attempt

to smell as he did in Havana. It is his attempt to feel

vital and connected to himself but it does not work in the

cold weather of the North. He feels himself becoming softer

and weaker.

Y eso es muy jodío. Me gusta ser el tronco del

roble, el látigo, la espalda del diablo,

¡cojones, pinga! Camino un poco por el bosque

mientras pienso en todo esto. ¿Cómo la gente

puede vivir tan aburrida? (201)

At the end, Pedro Juan knows that he must return. He

has been away too long.217 Like Valdés, Gutiérrez resorts to

217 Pedro Juan’s growing discomfort comes not only from his growing alienation from his surroundings but also from his sense of disconnection from Cuba. His nightmare suggests that he fears that his future, and that of Gloria’s are growing further apart. In his essay

“Exile, Self, and Society”, Robert Edwards writes that “Tabori and others, following Erik Erikson’s developmental psychology, argue that exile attacks identity by threatening continuity and one’s ability to project a self located in time and space confidently toward the future.” (20) Martínez 184 the use of a song to communicate his need and his longing.

He quotes from a bolero that he heard on a radio station in

Sweden.218

Nostalgia,219 which had been successfully held at bay by Pedro Juan, finally rears its head. Recall that it was nostalgia which he had effortlessly turned away when he first arrived in Sweden. It is also that which he had been

218 Dondequiera que yo esté mi anhelo sólo es volver.

Algún día volveré al lugar donde nací, donde me hicieron partir.

Y volveré al lugar de mis amores donde yo dejé las flores marchitas sin mi calor.

Oh, santo Dios,

¿por qué me haces padecer?

Mira que quiero volver, aquí no quiero morir. (229)

219 Nostalgia appears directly tied to the experience of loss. It is presented as a way of confronting the pain of this loss. It serves as a bridge that offers a way of returning through memories, sounds, smells, and colors associated with the homeland. Martínez 185

able to control by pouring himself into experiencing his

new surroundings. Now, after having experienced all that he

wanted to, and having seen the sure signs of the limits of

the negotiation and the effects that it was having on him,

he is less able to resist the call of home.

Both Zoé Valdés and Cristina García offer a contrast

to the way that Padura and Gutiérrez present their

characters’ negotiations with their space. While Valdés’s

approach will be dealt with in the next chapter, García’s

will be analyzed here.

When the novel begins, like in a play, García’s

characters are already in place on stage. Lourdes, Pilar,

and Lourdes’s husband are in New York. One should ignore

Lourdes’s husband and father, however, in this analysis

since they are both treated as secondary characters.220

220 This characteristic may be explained from a feminist perspective according to Maite Zubiarre in “Hacia una nueva geografía feminista;

Nación, identidad y construcción imaginaria en Dreaming in Cuban

(Cristina García) y en Memory Mambo (Achey Obejas).” In this article, the author asserts that these novels construct “una nación y una identidad ginocéntricas.” (14) What she asserts is that novels like

García’s and Obejas’s portray a Cuba that changes, hybrid, and is opposed to “el concepto ortodoxo y masculinista de nación.” (3) This would explain why the novel emphasizes the histories and memories of women and dedicates relatively little time the masculine perspective. Martínez 186

García doesn’t spend much time commenting on how the men

adapt to being in New York. Rufino, it is made clear, never

adapted to life outside of Cuba and her father was

restricted to the routine of his cancer treatments and

watching baseball on TV.221

Of the three characters, Lourdes is the one that most

fits the mold of the ones that have been previously

discussed in this section. Like Heredia, Fernando Terry,

and Pedro Juan, she started out in Cuba and then left as an

adult. When the family first arrives in the United States,

they stay in Miami but for a very short time. She couldn’t

stand Rufino’s, her husband’s, family and so decided to

leave. She told him that she wanted “to go where it’s

cold,” (69). As they drive through the American South and

later Washington D.C. she pushes them on by saying

221 By decentralizing the men in her novel, Cristina García’s text can be read, from a feminist perspective, as a form of resistance. In

“Theorizing Exile” Dominica Radulescu asserts that “…both the exile and the feminine body are to various degrees marginal and marginalized and attempt, by various links to language, via let’s say a resisisting discourse, to negotiate this position of marginality either by keeping to the periphery and making a virtue of it, or by attempting to bring the margins to the center and thus de-centralize the center.” (188) Martínez 187

“Colder.”222 They finally stop when they reach New York and

settle there.

Whether driven by her experiences in Miami, her rape,

or her disgust for the revolution, Lourdes chooses a place

that is very far away from Havana. The distance is a

physical manifestation of the rejection she feels toward

the events of her past and Cuba herself. One indication is

the type of life that she builds for herself once she

arrives in New York. Unlike Heredia, she doesn’t surround

herself with fellow Cubans. Unlike Fernando Terry she not

only doesn’t seek out a Spanish speaking community, she

goes out of her way to avoid it. Finally, unlike Pedro

Juan, she doesn’t seek to recreate a Cuban dynamic in the

222 It is through this word that Lourdes expresses her need to distance herself from the heat of the tropics. She chooses something opposite to that which is considered “Cuban.” Even though she chooses to distance herself geographically and emotionally from Cuba, it does not guarantee a cultural distance from the island. As Homi Bhaba states in “On

Cultural Choice”, “We may choose between cultural options, but we do not, strictly speaking, ‘choose’ our culture, because it is the representational medium through which we know, or make, our choices in the first place.” (181) Martínez 188

space around her. In fact, Cristina Garcia casts Lourdes in

the vein of a traditional immigrant to America.223

This is so because Lourdes never assumes herself as an

exile. She thinks of herself as an immigrant. This

deliberate choice is termed “a purposive directedness

toward the host culture,” (101) according to Abdul J.

Janmohamed in his essay “Toward a Definiton of the Specular

Border Intellectual.” According to him, “the immigrant is

often eager to discard with deliberate speed the formative

influences of his or her own culture and take on the values

of the new culture” (101)

Although she reads about political developments that

are related to Cuba, all of her activities are focused on

integrating herself into her community. She owns her

business; a pastry shop. She even volunteers as a police

woman. She goes on patrol in her neighborhood two nights a

223 Throughout the novel, Lourdes makes it clear that she doesn’t want to follow traditional models of ethnic identification and assume a position as a “Cuban” within North American culture. Although she takes the position of an immigrant in a city of immigrants, she doesn’t single herself out as a Cuban. This is similar to Cristina García’s experience growing up in New York. In various interviews, she has related how she grew up far from a Cuban cultural context. See, for example, the interview done by Iradia H. López in Bridges to Cuba

titled “…And There is Only My Imagination Where Our History Should Be.” Martínez 189

week. This last detail is extremely important when viewed

from a spatial perspective. She physically goes out and

appropriates her space and her city by going out into

her.224 She does so wearing the uniform of authority. There is no doubt that she is here to stay. She feels reborn in her new role as an American. She even revels in the tiny details that define the differences between Cuba and New

York. Whereas Heredia dreaded winter, “Lourdes relishes winter most of all-the cold scraping sounds on sidewalks and windshields, the ritual of scarves and gloves, hats and zip-in coat linings.” (73) García goes on to say that

Lourdes “wants no part of Cuba, no part of its wretched carnival floats creaking with lies, no part of Cuba at all, which Lourdes claims never possessed her.” (73)

224 This characteristic of Lourdes’s personality is representative of the ideas that Lawrence Grossberg elaborates in “The Space of Culture, The

Power of Space.” In this text, Grossberg suggests that in the new cultural global economy, one of the theoretical challenges is how one reconciles the old formula that equated culture with a place and an identity. Lourdes’s character raises the question of how identity is defined when the individual’s decision is separated from its cultural context. Martínez 190

Lourdes is intent on assimilating.225 However, she doesn’t want to assimilate just for its own sake. She wants to put as much distance between herself and Cuba as possible, be it physical or emotional.226

Pilar, Lourdes’s daughter, is another matter. She left

Cuba when she was just two years old. Having grown up in

the United States, and away from a Cuban enclave like

Miami, she is the most American of the characters. Still,

she can serve as a good contrast with the other characters,

especially in her relationship with New York.

Cristina Garcia has Pilar go through stages as she

adapts to her new world. When she first arrives she is

aware of differences between Cuba and the United States and

misses home. As a child she remembers feeling “sad looking

up at the bare branches and thinking about Abuela Celia.”

(32) She goes on to wonder how her life would have been

225 This attitude contrasts sharply with attributed to the exile by

Edward Said in “Reflections on Exile.” He states that “Clutching differences like a weapon to be used with stiffened will, the exile jealously insists on his or her right to refuse to belong.” (182)

226 When Lourdes recognizes that Cuba “never possessed her”, she is indicating that having been born and raised in Cuba is not a guarantee that she will feel at home there. In that sense she lived as an exile within Cuba. She now seeks to build a “home” where she can feel “at home.” Martínez 191

different if she had stayed in Cuba. Later, she goes from

longing for home to thinking about where she really

belongs. She says that even though she has lived in

Brooklyn it doesn’t quite feel like home, but she is unsure

if Cuba is. “If I could only see Abuela Celia again, I’d

know where I belonged.” (58) Her confusion about where she

really belongs springs from her dueling identities.227 She

feels vaguely Cuban but at the same time she is growing up

in the United States and that experience is beginning to

mark her as well. As the book progresses one sees Pilar

becoming a typical American teenager. She is rebellious,

questions authority, runs away from home, and listens to

rock music.

Where one can establish a strong comparison is in her

relationship to the city. New York, like Havana, is a big

city that is full of possibilities. Clearly, the creation

of a recombinatory dynamic is at play here as well. The

question is whether it is an ajiaco and how Pilar assumes

this space as a person and as an artist. We get one

indication when she speaks about the Statue of Liberty. The

227 Pilar’s experience is similar to the one described on page 219 of the novel where it states that “Cuba is a peculiar exile… We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.” Martínez 192

warehouse where the family lives is close enough to the

river so that they can make out the Statue of Liberty. She

tells the reader that her parents had taken her to visit it

once, “and we climbed up behind Liberty’s eyes and looked

out over the river, the city, the beginning of things.”

(140)

In this paragraph, Pilar is equating the American

skyline with a beginning. It is not a dead end. This can be

read as an indication that she views the city as full of

possibilities just waiting to be discovered. On the other

hand, it can also be read to mean that she treats the time

here not as an interlude on her way back to Cuba, but

rather a real beginning. This beginning, then, implicitly

signals an end as well. The end of a Cuban life and the

pull of Cuban space. This passage foreshadows the eventual

decision that Pilar will make with respect to her

attachment to Cuba.228 With this observation, Pilar is

beginning to appropriate the space for herself because the

beginning that she is referring to is her own.

228 Her ambivalence about her Cuban identity is made manifest when she says that she belongs in New York “not instead of here (Cuba), but more than here” (235-36) This is the same ambivalence to which Flavio Risech refers to in “Political and Cultural Cross-Dressing: Negotiating a

Second Generation Cuban-American Identity” in Bridges to Cuba. Martínez 193

Pilar’s appropriation of the space reaches its

symbolic height when she is asked to paint the Statue of

Liberty for a 4th of July celebration at her mother’s

bakery. She decides to paint Lady Liberty in an

expressionistic way. Her painting contains many punk

influences, which include scars and barbed wire. As she

nears the end of the painting she stands back to consider

her work and then in a flash of inspiration and youthful

resolve, “I put my favorite punk rallying cry: I’M A MESS.

And then carefully, very carefully, I paint a safety pin

through Liberty’s nose. (141)

Her mother had wanted her to paint a traditional

representation of the Statue of Liberty but Pilar just

could not bring herself to do it. Cristina Garcia makes it

clear that this is not just another case of Pilar

rebelling. Pilar is coming of age and she is asserting her

individuality.229 It is her life and her city and she will

represent it as an extension of herself.

What one sees here is the creation of an American stew

rather than an ajiaco. Pilar is negotiating with her space

229 For an analysis of how to interpret the attitudes of the young under the perspective of “new ethnicities” proposed by Stuart Hall, see

“Different, Youthful, Subjectivities” by Angela McRobie in The Post-

Colonial Question. Martínez 194

and creating something new.230 The difference with the other

characters that have been described so far is clear

however. By negotiating with her space, and appropriating

it, she is not trying to recreate a uniquely Cuban dynamic

like Pedro Juan, nor trying to hang onto part of her Cuban

past like Heredia, or Fernando Terry. She is trying to

create her own space in her own city. Further, while she

may be doing so within a certain American cultural context

she is not consciously trying to maintain herself within

the current of the culture as are the other characters.

Besides this, the Cuban cultural accoutrements are missing.

The music, the language, the sex, the food, the choteo; all

are missing.231

230 This process in Pilar has to do with an experience that is typically post-modern. This is because it destabilizes the notion of nation/state and the traditional definition of national and cultural identity. For an analysis of contemporary relationships between culture and power, see “The Space of Culture, The Power of Space” by Lawrence Grossberg in

The Post-Colonial Question.

231 Another way to read this experience is to view it from the perspective of the impossibility of the ajiaco in certain Cuban-

American contexts. Perhaps what Pilar is cooking is different. That different types of cooking, within the context of escaping, is analyzed by Iván de la Nuez in “Un fragmento en las orillas del mundo” in Cuba:

La isla posible. Martínez 195

In all of the novels there is invariably a moment in

which one of the characters, if not the main character,

begins to feel the impulse to return to Cuba. Usually, this

impulse creeps up on the character little by little. As it

does, it gains force until there comes a moment in which

the character is unable to resist any longer and must

return. There is usually some event that triggers the final

decision to return.232

In La novela de mi vida, Fernando Terry begins to feel

the pangs of desire to return imperceptibly at first but

with ever greater power. He struggled with them until,

en los últimos años, cuando creía estar en

proceso de definitiva curación, aquellos

flechazos del recuerdo volvieron a acecharlo, con

una insistencia desgarrante. (65)

Irrespective of whether the “exile” is permanent or

temporary, the exile invariably expresses a need to return

to Cuba. The “want” or lack has already been established by

232 In her essay “Theorizing Exile” Dominica Radulescu relates the story of Anna Brodsky and how she came to the decision to return to Russia

“precisely on the twenty-fifth winter of her exile in America.”

According to Radulescu, Brodsky told her that “It was the sound of snow thawing in March this year that made me want to go back so badly,”

(186) Martínez 196 the distance of exile. What is remarkable is that this wanting to go back is almost always portrayed as a need rather than as a desire.233 Such is the strength of the relationship with the space.234

While the characters, in all four novels, have many things in common the one that stands out is that they all return for a specific purpose. These aren’t people that just come back in order to be back. They come back, ostensibly, in order to take care of some unfinished business. The second thing that they have in common, which stands out is that they all have, to varying degrees, a

233 This need may be related to the need not to lose the little which often remains for an exile, his memories. According to Dominica

Radulescu in “Theorizing Exile”, “all one has in order to recall the past is a set of truncated memories that can no longer be reinforced by the physical world around.” (193-94) The need to be surrounded by that physical world may respond, not only to the need to experience it again, but also to reinforce the precious memories before exile, and thus save them.

234 This is perfectly understandable if one thinks of the characters as personifying what Iván de la Nuez identifies as “discurso nación.” In other words, the characters are a part of the traditional paradigm that defines culture under limited and auto reflexive criteria. That is why the characters continue to seek refuge in the nation and feel compelled to return to the maternal womb, so to speak. Martínez 197

difficult time readapting to life in Cuba.235 At the very

least, they view the homespace as not only changed but

somehow strange. This has to do with how long they have

been away, but still, it is remarkable how consistent the

theme is.

It is clear that of all the characters in the novels,

Pedro Juan is the one who had the easiest time of it during

his time away. It is also clear that beyond his anxiety

over possibly losing Gloria because of his absence, he is

not returning to face any major problems. Despite this, and

by his own admission, he finds the task of reinserting

himself into the homespace a bit difficult. He says that

“Cuando regresé a La Habana necesité unas cuantas semanas

para readaptarme a la cochambre.” (237)

Although he apparently returns to his normal routine,

his life never does appear to recapture the verve and tempo

235 This difficulty with readaptation is described by Flavio Risech in

“Political and Cultural Cross-Dressing.” The author cites the example of Olivia M. Espín who defines her first return to Cuba in the following way: “What I learned… from this trip is that who I am is inextricably intertwined with the experience of uprootedness… entailing an awareness that there is another place where I feel at home in profound ways. That place,however, is not fully home anymore.” (61) Martínez 198

that was evident in the first part of the novel.236 He seems

somehow less comfortable in the city than he did before

leaving. One can cite as an example the time that he goes

for a walk at night after having drunk for several hours in

a bar. He comes upon some young men who offer him drugs and

a girl for sex. He buys some marijuana from them but they

threaten him. More importantly he feels threatened and he

pulls a knife. After walking away he is propositioned by

some underage girls and he turns them down. As a result

they insult him. He loses his temper and insults them as

well. He then returns to his apartment building and pushes

his way into Gloria’s apartment despite the protests of her

mother. There he sees a man in his underwear and realizes

that he has interrupted Gloria turning a trick.237 The shock

236 What Pedro Juan experiences is the complexity of the exile experience and how that experience really constitutes a point of no return. Once the subject is outside, and in contact with another culture, he cannot go back to his old and supposedly integral identity. This is what

Dominica Radulescu describes when she writes in “Theorizing Exile” that

“once uprooted always uprooted” (189)

237 What this situation shows is the complexity of the process of defining an identity. In Pedro Juan’s case, his masculinity, as a part of his self identity, is tied to Gloria and his affection for her. At the same time, this is also tied to his relationship with Havana as a Martínez 199 makes him feel as if “todo el edificio se desplomara sobre mi cabeza.” (258) He goes up to his apartment and begins to cry like a baby. He says that he feels “el tipo más perro y más humillado del mundo.” (258)

This episode is significant because up to this point,

Pedro Juan has been represented as always being in control.

In the first part of the novel, he was shown to be in control and in his element. Violence was almost always directed at someone else. If it was ever directed at him he quickly turned the tables and became the aggressor. He never felt threatened nor emotionally vulnerable. When this is taken into account then we see that his reinsertion into the homespace is more problematic than it first appeared.

The climax of his readaptation happens when he comes across an old friend who lives out in the country and is looking to move to Havana, preferably near Pedro Juan’s neighborhood. Without any deliberation, Pedro Juan decides to swap his apartment for his friend’s house in the country. The house is isolated with no phone service. His closest neighbor lives 200 meters away. He says that

“Después de toda una vida en Centro Habana me siento un

site of belonging. What he is experiencing is a dislocation on many levels. Martínez 200

poco extraño aquí con tanto silencio y el viento que viene

del mar.” (292)

For a man who relished living in Havana and who had

internalized its rhythms, it is strange to have him exile

himself to the provinces. In a sense however, this result

is emblematic of the experience of return. The exile comes

back to what he expects to be a familiar space only to

suffer from the realization that not only has the space

changed but that he has as well. After the reencounter, the

exile typically leaves Cuba again. In this case Pedro Juan

leaves Havana which had been his homespace.238

One can see a similar dynamic at work in the case of

Heredia. His first return is after his relatively brief

stay in Mexico with his family. He comes back to Cuba after

the death of his father. He returns to the welcome of

Cuba’s mild winter and “el olor inconfundible de la ciudad.

(104)

This first return turns out to be just as he had hoped

it would be. The city that greets him is the city that he

had expected to see, and smell. He immediately runs to

238 In “Reflections on Exile”, Edward Said observes that, “The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also become prisons.” (185) Martínez 201

greet his friends and he seemingly takes up his life where

it left off.

Much less benign and comforting is his last

homecoming. Sensing that he is near the end of his life,

Heredia manages to get the permission of the government to

make one final visit to Cuba. Unlike his earlier return, he

knows that this time he will not be staying. Further, he

knows that he has no hope of taking up his old life as he

knew it. Too much time has passed both for him and for

Cuba. As a consequence, the entire episode, from beginning

to end has an air of finality. There is a sense that he has

arrived late to a party that ended years before.

It is important to consider his first observations

upon arriving in Havana. He arrives on the 4th of November

and the first thing that he sees are the fortifications

built by the Spanish.239 He is therefore denied his first

sight of Havana by the representation of the very power

that has prevented his return for so many years. When he is

finally able to view the city he recognizes some of the

239 In Heredia’s day, most of Havana’s buildings were located on a piece of land that juts into Havana Bay. When approaching the bay from the ocean what one would first see is Morro Castle which was built in 1589 and guarded the entrance to the bay. Martínez 202 places which he knew so well as a young man. However, he doesn’t feel as if he has arrived until he says that,

me llegó, como un dulce abrazo, para advertirme

que estaba en mi lugar, aquel olor mestizo y tan

propio de la ciudad que, sólo en ese momento,

pude reconocer en su inconfundible y dolorosa

singularidad. (346)

If one compares the passage from his first return to this one, one sees a difference in tone. In both passages he identifies the unmistakable smell of the city and in the second he identifies landmarks that have not changed. What has changed however is his perception of what he sees.

Whereas in the first case the adjective that is most representative of the passage is “benigno” in the second it is “lágrimas.” The landmarks he now sees are associated with his friends and the experiences of his youth that are not irretrievably beyond his reach. Even the familiar and unique smell of the city, which still connects him to her and his past, is now described as dolorous.

There is another difference. As soon as he arrived the first time, he ran to find his friends and renew the relationship that they had enjoyed. This time it is Domingo Martínez 203

Del Monte,240 his supposed friend, who is there to meet him

at the dock. It is later revealed that he is not really

there to welcome him home but rather to enjoy the spectacle

of the broken man who he has considered all along to be his

rival and enemy. It is a cruel and devastating inversion of

the earlier episode.

Later, after having unsuccessfully searched for Del

Monte, who left after having satisfied his curiosity, he

goes out for a walk in the city which he perceives as

having changed. The colonial authorities had undertaken a

building campaign that had beautified the city. Even the

brothel where he had known Betinha was no longer there.

La ciudad que tanto y tan bien conocía empezaba a

escaparse de mis viejas referencias, a hurtarme

las nostalgias y a advertirme de mi condición de

forastero, casi extranjero en tierra propia. Pero

su olor invencible vino en mi ayuda.241 (348-49)

240 Domingo del Monte (1804-1853) was a lawyer, literary critic, and writer who was active in the cultural and literary movements of his day.

241 The city’s smell works for Heredia much the same way that the madeleine works for Proust. According to Dominica Radulescu in

“Theorizing Exile”, “Proust’s notorious “madeleine” episode is being time and again reenacted within the experience of exile at both the sensorial and psychological levels.” (199) Martínez 204

The city that he finds is still Havana. It is still

beautiful and in the process of dynamic change that has

always been its hallmark. It is still an ajiaco. He again

makes reference to the particular smell of the city. All of

these things connect him to the city and make her

recognizable to him. Still, one’s sense of belonging to a

place is not only established in broad strokes or on the

grand scale of concepts. One’s attachment to a place takes

place on a small scale on a local and personal level as

well.242 It is in the details that one knits one’s life into

the larger fabric of the life of the city. It is not the

city’s geography but rather the personal geography that one

builds based on personal connections to certain places. In

Heredia’s case, not only is the city creating new spaces,

to which he has no personal connection, but the places to

which he does have a connection are razed. His reference to

the disappearance of Madame Anne-Marie’s brothel is

especially poignant. If there is one place in Havana that

is most closely associated with his personal experience

242 One should remember that the “imagined community” which represents the nation is also “imagined” in the geographic sense. The nation as a homeland is a symbol of home just like the city. That is why space plays an important role in the definition of cultural and personal identity. Martínez 205

with the city, it is that one. And yet, it is now gone and

with it his strongest connection to the city he so loves.

Having seen the change in the city and how out of

place he now feels, he begins the process of saying

goodbye. He spends his time tying up loose ends, all the

while growing more alienated from the space around him. In

one of the final scenes, he slowly walks back to his room

amid celebrations in the streets.

Era como si aquel muchacho que veinte años atrás

quiso tragarse la ciudad, respirar cada una de

sus exhalaciones, fuese alguien extraño para el

hombre que ahora seguía de largo ante la

felicidad vacía y condicionada de un pueblo que,

comido el pan, disfrutaba del circo. (375)

Heredia begins to feel not only an estrangement from the

city but from the people themselves. Not only has the

physical space changed, but the people in it have changed

as well, according to his view. His moorings have come

loose.243 Like Pedro Juan, he decides to leave; this time,

243 What this suggests is that Heredia’s pain comes not only from having been separated from Havana, but that his alienation is due in part to the city having continued to grow in his absence. The city that he loves, in his mind, is tied to the city that he first knew. In

“Reflections on Exile”, Edward Said posits that “Exile is predicated on Martínez 206 of his own volition. He declares to the authorities that he is willing to leave before his time is officially up.

“Entonces, como un peregrino que se despide de sus creencias y lugres sagrados, dediqué buena parte de mi tiempo a recorrer la ciudad.” (375) He avoids the new spaces which have sprung up during his absence, preferring to visit those places which could make him “sentir que estaba en la misma ciudad de la que yo había salido, millones de años atrás.” (375)

During his remaining time in Havana, Heredia makes an interesting choice. Instead of staying in his room and ignoring the city, or going out into her and trying to establish a new connection with her, he gives in to his nostalgia, much like Eugenio Florit, and sets about surrounding himself with things that will most closely recreate the world that he previously inhabited. This is a theme that will be more fully developed in the next chapter.

Finally the day of departure arrives and it turns out to be the emotional culmination of the experience. Just as the burial of a loved one after a long illness brings home the existence of, love for, and bond with, one’s native place; what is true of all exile is not that home and love of home are lost, but that loss is inherent in the very existence of both.” (185) Martínez 207

the irrevocable end of a relationship along with a certain

measure of relief, so too does Heredia experience the last

farewell. This last encounter has brought home to him just

how much he had lost in the intervening years. The

experience has been a painful one and despite the fact that

he is saying a final farewell, there is also relief that at

least one part of the ordeal is coming to an end. As he

leaves, he has little to look forward to. He no longer

writes poetry and the battle for Cuban independence is

something for which he no longer has the passion nor the

energy. As the ship leaves the port, he locks eyes with a

man of about his age on shore.

Por un largo momento nuestras miradas se

sostuvieron, y recibí el pesar recóndito que

cargaban aquellos ojos, una tristeza extrañamente

gemela a la mía, …que desde entonces me desvela,

pues sé que fuimos algo más que dos hombres

mirándose sobre las olas. (403)244

244 What this quote suggests is a pain that transcends the act of leaving itself. He writes that the man on shore made him feel “una tristeza extrañamente gemela a la mía, …que desde entonces me desvela”. In other words his sadness continued long after he had left Cuba. In “The

Condition We Call Exile”, Joseph Brodsky writes about the insufficiency of the word “exile” to encompass the extended nature of the grief of Martínez 208

Once again, one finds Heredia’s experiences reflected

in those of Fernando Terry’s. However, as has been shown,

they do not exactly mirror Heredia’s. They are at once

similar and somewhat different.245 Like Heredia, Terry is

shaken from his exile by an urgent need to return. He

receives a letter from his friend Álvaro in which he says

that there is at last a clue that might lead them to the

whereabouts of Heredia’s lost novel. With this, Fernando

Terry makes arrangements to return and take up the hunt and

face his personal demons. Like Pedro Juan and Heredia, he

finds a city that has changed in his near two decades

absence.

As the novel opens, we find Fernando Terry already

back in Havana and wrestling with the issues that Heredia

would face at the end of the novel. His first stop is the

bar Las Vegas. Like the house of Madame Anne-Marie for

exile for a writer. “’Exile’ covers, at best, the very moment of

departure, of expulsion; what follows is both too comfortable and too

autonomous to be called by this name, which so strongly suggests a

comprehensible grief.” (31)

245 Despite the connections and similarities between these two characters, it is important to keep in mind what Edward Said says in

“Reflection on Exile” about the nature of exile. He writes that “exile is irremediably secular and unbearably historical.” (174) Personal and historical differences mark the distance between these two experiences. Martínez 209

Heredia, this bar was the one place that Terry’s mind would escape to whenever he would think about his former life in

Havana. It represents much of what he held dear about his time in the city. And like Heredia’s brothel,

descubrió que ya sólo existía en su persistente

memoria y en alguna literatura de la noche

habanera: la cafetería de Las Vegas y su

invencible mostrador de caoba pulida se habían

esfumado, como tantas otras cosas de la vida.

(12)

His first experience then, upon returning then is one of loss. His experience is not vitiated by a reassuring element of constancy like Heredia’s is by the familiar smell of the city. He therefore goes in search of something that he can connect to and that he knows has not changed.

He went “hacia el Malecón antes de subir a la casa de

Álvaro, donde podían esperarlo ausencias y tristezas aún más desgarradoras.” (12) He retreats to the Malecón,

Havana’s seemingly eternal sea wall. He goes there to prepare himself for the events to come because he understands that the loss that he has just experienced is just one of many to come. He reaches it and feels a sense of relief at the familiar surroundings. Martínez 210

Like Heredia, Terry tries to hang onto something familiar in the midst of the change he sees and the sense of loss that he feels.246 That sense of loss is profoundly felt by Terry. Padura states that

Lo que más lo deprimía, sin embargo, era la

certeza de haber vuelto a un país que los demás

debían explicarle y donde sentía cómo sus viejas

referencias se vaciaban de sentido, hasta

resultar obsoletas. (206)247

The dynamism of Havana has not changed in his absence.

It is still an ajiaco. But he must force himself to learn its new mixture of elements. Now, whereas Heredia feels

246 According to Dominica Radulescu in “Theorizing Exile”, “For the exile who is a long, long way from “home,” the present moment is usually heavy with memories of a real or idealized plenitude of the past, mixed with the intensity of a present that is often either too painfully reminiscent of the past or too different and alienating from the past.”

(200)

247 In his essay “Reflection on Exile”, Edward Said asserts that “Exiles look at non-exiles with resentment. They belong in their surroundings, you feel, whereas an exile is always out of place.” (180) In Said’s formulation, non-exiles, refers to natives of the land where the exile lives. However, it is just as appropriate to apply this term to the exile’s compatriots who never left the fatherland. In this passage from

Padura’s novel, Fernando Terry clearly feels this resentment towards his fellow Cubans who never left. Martínez 211

that he has no way into the space that he finds, Terry does

struggle to reconnect and reinsert himself into the

space.248 He does not try to recreate his old life but

rather create something new. He describes all of the new

businesses that have sprung up and the new merchandise that

is now available. He pays special attention to the

remodeling of ancient buildings. He uses the term “nueva

vida” to describe the panorama before him. “Fernando pudo

observar, al borde de la perplejidad, cómo su propia ciudad

le parecía ser otra aunque la misma” (132)

The contrast with Heredia’s description is telling.

Both characters find a city that is much changed since they

last saw her. Heredia’s description focuses on what has

been lost. He does not focus on what is new. In contrast,

Padura spends a lot of time detailing what is new about the

new space. Obviously, the space that he had become

accustomed to is gone, but the gaze is firmly fixed forward

248 Like Heredia, Terry’s new interaction with Havana is mediated by his previous experience with the city. He tries to navigate the space based on old coordinates. The result is a kind of vertigo that leaves him momentarily off balance. According to Dominica Radulescu in “Theorizing

Exile”, “Whether consciously or not, the exile looks backward first, in terms of the most immediate reality of the physical environment he or she has left and of the imprints that this loss has left on his or her present interaction with the new world.” (199) Martínez 212

and not back.249 This is significant because as will be

demonstrated, although Terry has been traumatized by what

happened to him and his time away, this does not stop him

from trying to pick up the strings that connect him to that

past, and more importantly, try to tie them to a future

that he begins to imagine for himself in this new/old

space.

It is because of this attitude that Terry does not

reject out of hand the friendships that were damaged so

long ago. He begins to build bridges to his friends once

again. His outlook permits him to establish a relationship

with Delfina, the widow of his friend Victor, and the love

of his life. Slowly, he is forging something for himself

that Heredia was not able to do. He begins to reconnect

with Havana.

Al llegar a su barrio y ver su casa, luego de dos

días de ausencia, lo había asaltado la sensación

249 This is a big difference between Heredia and Terry. Heredia’s gaze is fixed on the past through the effects of nostalgia. Terry’s attitude, on the other hand, exemplifies what Dominica Radulescu states in

“Theorizing Exile” about the forward focus of exile discourse. She posits that “exile discourse… is equally a discourse of remembering, whose lessons are directed toward the future in the hope of preventing the mistakes and grieves of the past.” (188) This is what Terry comes to do in Havana; to try and fix a mistake of the past. Martínez 213

de que los regresos eran posibles. Para Heredia

no lo había sido. (252)250

He manages to reconnect so successfully that at the

end of the novel it is not at all clear if he will leave

Cuba. The question is left open. In any event, even if he

were to choose to leave again, it would be his choice to do

so and not because conditions forced him.

In Dreaming in Cuban, there is never any question that

both Lourdes and Pilar’s return to Cuba is temporary.

Lourdes is returning because the ghost of her father is

pushing her to do so. Pilar is returning, like so many

Cuban-Americans, to help her find herself and finally

decide on which side of the Straits of Florida her identity

really belongs. The trip back to the United States is never

in question.

250 In writing the novel of his life, Heredia is in a sense trying to recreate the life that he lost in words. Fernando Terry does not do this. He seems to go beyond the written page to try to recapture that which he lost in the physical world. Robert Edwards appears to allude to this phenomenon in his essay “Exile, Self, and Society.” He writes that “when writers create an imaginary home, the effect may be a further alienation.” (20) Arguably, Heredia is further alienated than

Terry. The latter engages with his former space and achieves at least the possibility of a return. Martínez 214

Consider the first description of Havana that Cristina

Garcia offers upon the return of Lourdes and Pilar. Pilar

describes the drive into the city from the airport. She

comments on the revolutionary billboards, the Plaza de la

Revolución, and about the trouble in the Peruvian

embassy.251 The taxi driver takes a scenic detour along the

sea wall while pointing out landmarks.

All Mom says is that the buildings in Havana are

completely decayed, held up by elaborate

configurations of wooden planks. What I notice

most are the balconies. (215-16)

Recall that in the cases of Pedro Juan, Heredia, and

Fernando Terry, they each focused on that which was known

and familiar to them. They commented on places to which

they had a personal connection. As such, their descriptions

conveyed a sense of their discomfort at finding certain

changes. This present description has none of that. Pilar’s

eye is drawn to those things that would attract the

attention of any first time tourist to Havana. She notices

the government propaganda, tourist attractions, and the

251 “the trouble at the Peruvian Embassy” refers to the event that triggered the Mariel Boatlift. For a discussion of the invasion of the embassy by refugees, the boatlift, and its aftermath, see Havana USA by

María Cristina García. Martínez 215

urban blight that predominates in some parts of the city.

She has been away for so long that she is really

discovering the city for the first time.

In a real sense, Lourdes has not returned to make a

connection with the city. She is unwilling to see the city

for what it is. She has come with a preconceived set of

ideas which she only wishes to verbalize and validate

during her visit. Her time, therefore is spent in railing

against the communist system and the visible signs of its

failings. She makes no connection with the space beyond

criticizing it. Her attitude is summed up in a passage

where her rage is clear.

Socialismo o muerte. The words pain her as if

they were knitted into her skin with thick

needles and yarn. She wants to change the “o” to

“e”’s on every billboard with a bucket of red

paint. Socialismo es muerte, she’d write over and

over again (222-23)252

252 Simone Weil has written on the human need for rootedness. According to Edward Said in “Reflections on Exile” one of the remedies to uprootedness “statism-is one of the most insidious” (183) It is dangerous, according to Said, because it displaces all things before it. As the propaganda billboards here suggest, the state provides an either or choice. One is either with the state or against it. According Martínez 216

What this passage points out is that Lourdes’s

presence in Cuba is purely incidental. She is physically

back and yet not there at all. Here attitude is so

intransigent as to make any real encounter between herself

and her space impossible.

Pilar on the other hand does approach the space with a

genuine openness. Her connection began back in New York

where a santero identified her as a daughter of Changó253 and she began to have visions that connected her to her family and the island. She is unafraid of what she will find or experience in Cuba because she is really searching for herself. What is clear is that in this search she is trying to define herself, not against the space but, against and through people. She visits a santera in Cuba that immediately identifies her and her spiritual connection to her aunt Felicia who was also a santera and a daughter of Changó. She reestablishes a relationship with her grandmother Celia. In fact, it is her grandmother that is the focus of the search for her identity. She asks

to Said, “worship of the state tends to supplant all other human

bonds.” (183)

253 In Santería, Changó is a warrior chief and is the god of lightning and storms. His is represented by Saint Barbara who is always depicted with sword in hand. Martínez 217 herself the following question: “I wonder how different my life would have been if I’d stayed with my grandmother.”

(235)254

It is important to notice that she doesn’t ask herself how her life would have been different if she had stayed in Cuba. She poses the question in terms of another person. She goes on to wonder how she could have existed without Lou Reed255 or the absolute freedom to paint whatever she wanted.

The only time that she does begin to refer to the space around her in terms of her own identity is in a passage in which she describes how she is establishing a

254 Implicit in this observation is the awareness and acknowledgement of another culture. In her struggle to define her identity, Pilar is caught between two cultures. By the end of the novel she will express a clear preference for one of the cultures but she never chooses one over the other. In this, she exemplifies what Edward Said has defined as the

“contrapuntal” nature of the exile in his essay “Reflections on Exile.”

He states that “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that-to borrow a phrase from music-is contrapuntal.” (186)

255 Lou Reed (1942) American musician of popular music. He played with the Velvet Underground during the 60’s. His album “Transformer” (1972) ushered in the glam rock movement. He was considered an icon by the youth of the 60’s and 70’s. Martínez 218

connection to Cuba. And she says that she loves “Havana,

its noise and decay and painted ladyness.” (235-36) She is

afraid of losing this newfound and exciting place,

But sooner or later I’d have to return to New

York. I know now it’s where I belong-not instead

of here, but more than here. How can I tell my

grandmother this? (235-36)256

As in her initial description of Havana, what she

focuses on does not have a personal connection to herself.

She is describing a backdrop against which she might lead

an interesting life. There is something that calls to her

about the landscape that she paints with her words but it

does not generate the overwhelming pull of a space that is,

and has been, an intrinsic part of her. This is clearly

brought home in the last line where she recognizes that the

gravitational pull of Cuba is no longer as strong a force

for her as her New York. Just like Pedro Juan, Heredia, and

256 By recognizing that she belongs “more” to the United States than to

Cuba, Pilar is acknowledging the pull of American culture on her. In his essay “Reflections on Exile” Edward Said comments on the association between nationalism and exile. He writes that “Nationalism is an assertion of belonging in and to a place, a people, a heritage.

It affirms the home created by a community of language, culture, and customs; and, by so doing, it fends off exile, fights to prevent its ravages.” (176) Martínez 219

perhaps Fernando Terry, Pilar will leave Cuba now that her

business there has been concluded.

The typical case is that the exile chooses to leave

Cuba again. In each case, the author is careful to point

out that despite the many changes that have taken place the

underlying dynamic is still the same. That is why, after a

period of adjustment. Both Heredia and Fernando Terry

recognize that Havana is still an exciting and dynamic

place. It is still an ajiaco of possibility. Elements are

still at play and readily combinable. What has changed are

some of the elements that are at play. That is why Heredia

finds a city of new construction and Terry finds new shops.

Sometimes it is the exile that has changed and sees the

same elements in a new light. That would be the case of

Pedro Juan and to a lesser extent Zoé Valdés, which will be

commented on in the next chapter.

Perhaps this is one of the limits of the ajiaco. Like

jazz, or choteo, the play of the ajiaco depends on

continuity.257 In order to be comfortable with what one

257 Continuity, as a problematic characteristic of the ajiaco, is also associated with the “happy” and “comfortable” characteristic implicit in the concept of the ajiaco. Despite it being a dynamic mixture, with an infinite range of possible combinations, the concept of the ajiaco does not include the tensions implicit in all power relationships. Martínez 220 sees, one must be aware of how it got there before it can be connected to something else. If one does not know which notes came before, one may not be able to play new ones.

Viewed in this way, returning is like being taken from the middle of an orchestra or an ongoing conversation and then being reinserted a year later and being asked to continue playing or conversing regardless of what song is playing or what the topic of the conversation is. One recognizes that what is being heard is music, or that people are speaking in English, but one lacks a context. One no longer has access to the new codes that have developed over time since the exile began. Ajiaco is still ajiaco. The dynamic that creates it is still the same; still typically Cuban. But enough of the elements have changed so that a person attempting to reinsert himself will have difficulty managing the process.

What this chapter has demonstrated is that one of the limits of the ajiaco metaphor is the frontier of the culture itself. In other words, by leaving Cuba, the exile necessarily encounters difficulties in maintaining his cultural dynamic. In order for the ajiaco to continue Martínez 221

cooking, it needs a context in which to do so. It is at

this liminal point that the ajiaco begins to break down.258

258 For a critical discussion of the reach and limitations of the concept of the ajiaco, see Iván de la Nuez’s “Un fragmento en las orillas del mundo (Identidad, diferencia y fuga en la cultura cubana)” in Cuba: la

isla posible. Martínez 222

Chapter 3

Nostalgia259 and the Limits of the Ajiaco

Beyond discussing the limits of the ajiaco metaphor, this chapter will seek to comment on when it ceases to be an ajiaco completely. This step is important if one is to gain a broader understanding of its dynamic.

First, this work has attempted to describe what the ajiaco is by identifying some of its ingredients. Its dynamic was then addressed, in other words its cooking. The only thing left to do is to further define it by discussing what it is not and when it ceases to be. In spatial terms

259 According to the most common definition of nostalgia, it is “a severe melancholia caused by protracted absence from home or native place… a wistful or excessively sentimental sometimes abnormal yearning for return to or return of some real or romanticized period or irrevocable condition or setting in the past” While this definition focuses on the condition itself, the present chapter will comment on the effects of this “abnormal yearning” as portrayed in the novels. In that sense, nostalgia is here considered in its most extreme manifestation. This occurs when nostalgia results in what Edward Said has called the

“fetish of exile” (183) in his work “Reflections on Exile.” He states that it is a “practice that distances him or her from all connections and commitments.” (183) This condition is what Joseph Brodsky, in “The

Condition We Call Exile” refers to as the “failure to deal with the realities of the present or the uncertainties of the future.” (30) Martínez 223 this work would be going from the center to the periphery to gain a new view of the problem. By doing so, the hope is to maintain the focus of the study on the center and the periphery so that it doesn’t fall into an either or binarism.260

One of the limits of the ajiaco can be reached by simply traveling abroad. As has been shown in the cases of

Pedro Juan, Heredia, and Fernando Terry, when one is forced to negotiate with a non-Cuban space the nature of the ajiaco begins to change. It begins to change on at least two levels. First the content of the ajiaco changes and then the cooking process itself changes.261

260 In his book Thirdspace, Edward Soja furthers the work of Henri

Lefevre on the updating of the Hegelian dialectic. He proposes a

spatial aesthetic that transcends an exclusively binary dynamic. He

attempts to avoid falling into essentialism by focusing on the center

and the periphery at the same time.

261 The process referred to here is the resistance to or negotiation with the other culture. Therefore, all that is typically Cuban, those elements that are included in the ajiaco metaphor, will be modified within the framework of the other culture. This new space, provided by dialogue, negotiation, and resistance, opens up a new definition of cultural identity in general and of Cuban identity in particular. As

Homi Bhabha states in The Location of Culture, “These ‘in-between’

spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood –

singular or communal- that initiate new signs of identity, and Martínez 224

The analysis will begin with the case of Pedro Juan.

As has been shown, he negotiated with his new space. He

brought to the negotiation both elements of his culture

(Santeria necklaces) as well as his style (performing).

Slowly, over time, he was forced to begin to accept

elements and ways of doing things that would not

traditionally be thought of as Cuban. This is a case of his

surrounding space imposing conditions on his behavior. The

space around him, in this case Sweden, is what Edward Said

defines as a “first conditions” in his book The World, the

Text, and the Critic. This “conditions”, he argues,

“provide limits and apply pressures to which each writer,

given his own gifts, predilections, and interests,

responds.” (237)

It is this resistance from the space, this new way of

doing things,262 which has the greatest impact on his

innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of

defining the idea of society itself.” (1)

262 This “new way” of appropriating space is one of the elements that will force Pedro Juan to negotiate. It is through those exchanges with the other culture that a redefinition takes place about belonging to a nation and its cultural values. Homi Bhabha, in The Location of

Culture, refers to this process when he says that “It is in the

emergence of the interstices –the overlap and displacement of domains Martínez 225

negotiation. The way Swedes approach a relationship with

their space, at least the way it is represented in Animal

Tropical, is very different from the Cuban way. The

pressure to conform is applied to Pedro Juan in two ways.

First, Swedish culture places its limitations on him in an

implicit and indirect way. This means that certain ways of

relating to the space are thus facilitated or made more

difficult. Second, there are times when the Swedes make

their objections felt directly and forcefully. Both of

these ways of imposing order on an individual are related

so each will be commented on at the same time.263

Pedro Juan attempts to appropriate the space around

him through performance and projecting it outward in a

of difference- that the intersubjective and collective experiences of

nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.” (2)

263 What is made evident by these incidents is the dynamic that exists between dominant and minority culture. According to Homi Bhabha’s perspective in The Location of Culture, these exchanges always have a complex performative aspect. They are not the reflection of traditionally fixed cultural or ethnic traits, but rather result from situational opportunities which present themselves to the “minority.”

He or she is able to insert himself or herself in the tradition within certain contingent and contradictory conditions. Martínez 226

performance.264 In the novel, this practice of his is

resisted and at times prohibited. There are numerous

examples of him projecting out his sexuality such as in the

following passage where he sunbathes naked on Agneta’s

small balcony.

Seguía excitado. Y me masturbé. Sólo un poco. Ah,

carajo, con cincuenta años y me comporto como un

adolescente. Me arrastré hasta la sala. Si un

vecino me ve puede llamar a la policía. Aunque no

sé dónde se mete la gente. Jamás se ve a nadie.

(128)

At this point in the novel, Pedro Juan has been in

Sweden for only a few days. He is still imbued with the

energy and dynamism of home. That is why he not only lays

out naked on the balcony, but engages in an overtly sexual

act in what is arguably a semi-public space. At least, it

is perceived as public by the Swedes. Although he has only

been in the country a few days, he has already begun to

internalize some of the prohibitions. At this point in the

novel no one has told him explicitly that this is not

264 This tendency toward the performative is an echo of the concept of creoleness by Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant. In their essay “In

Praise of Creoleness” they emphasize Créolité as “a question to be lived.” (255) Martínez 227

allowed and yet he somehow understands that it is. That is

why, after some thought, he decides to go in rather than

risk having a neighbor call the police.265

As he becomes more accustomed to the space he becomes more brazen in his actions and the space becomes more forceful in its resistance to him. On another occasion,

Pedro Juan and Agneta are on the balcony when he decides to disrobe completely. She acts surprised and concerned and

“Mira a los alrededores. Quizás algún vecino está mirando.”

(162) He assures her that they can’t see him because he has calculated the sight angles. He exhibits himself to her and she becomes excited. Despite her interest she calls him obscene. He accepts her judgment and seems proud of it.

After a brief conversation they decide to go to the country house and he stands up to dress himself. At this she becomes very worried and says, “Es serio. Aquí pueden llamar a la policía.” (163) What had once been implicit is now explicit. Agneta verbalizes the interdiction.

265 Marina de Chiara, in “A Tribe Called Europe” (in The Post-Colonial

Question), writes that “Westernisation, destined to extend over the

entire planet, is thus born from the fundamental imposition of images

incurred in the conquest of territory. Space and power are revealed as

the primary co-ordinates in the affirmation of a Eurocentric vision.”

(231) Martínez 228

The resistance to his behavior becomes even more

emphatic when it is accompanied with rebukes that are

emotionally charged. Such is the case when Agneta’s niece

comes for a visit to meet Pedro Juan. The niece arrives

with her infant daughter who at some point begins to cry

because she is hungry. The niece begins to breast feed her

daughter which immediately catches the attention of Pedro

Juan.266

Ah, yo me quedo embelesado mirando aquellas

bellísimas tetas. Quizás me brillan demasiado los

ojos y ven a las claras mis intenciones de

apartar a Erika y pegarme yo a chupar. Se

disgustan y se ponen serias, la sobrina guarda

rápidamente sus dos tentaciones. (154)

After a moment of tension he gets up and tells them

that he will wait for them outside.267 They keep him waiting

266 Cultural differences, and Pedro Juan’s condition as the “other”, are clearly manifested in the relationship between space and the body in this case. In Cuba the body is a more sexually charged symbol. While the body of the mother breastfeeding her child has been de-sexualized in Sweden, Pedro Juan does not view it that way. His gaze is sexually charged and he is rejected for it.

267 It is clear that in this incident there is no place for negotiation.

Gender issues, as well as the definition of the roles of males and Martínez 229

for thirty minutes. The message is clear. There are limits

to what kinds of behavior they will accept. For his part he

remains unrepentant.268

What these three episodes highlight is the difference

between the Cuban approach to space and the Swedish

approach to space.269 Cubans project themselves outward and

do so in a way that is not always tidy. They transgress

boundaries in their recombinatory games. The Swedes, on the

other hand, tend toward respecting those boundaries. Things

have their place and should stay in them. Therefore, sex is

an intensely private thing and should remain so. The body

is not to be exhibited in public except in prescribed

places, such as a nudist beach which Pedro Juan and Agneta

females in both cultures, polarize the three people involved. This

serves to maintain a tension between rejection and resistance.

268 According to Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.” (86) In the case of

Pedro Juan, he makes little if any attempt to mirror the behavior expected of a Swede. This reinforces the image of Pedro Juan as colonizer and not as the colonized, although Agneta never internalizes any aspect of Cuban culture.

269 Differing ways to appropriate space is not the only thing that is evident in these three examples. Along with this are contrasts in the definition of social class, gender roles, and ethnic background. Martínez 230

visit. It is this tendency to restrict things to certain

spaces that is repeated again and again. Several incidents

highlight the difference in the specific approaches to the

appropriation of space.

One night while walking through the woods, Pedro Juan

and Agneta come upon a man on a yacht that has run aground.

He sits on the deck of his boat drunk and sobbing. Pedro

Juan’s first reaction is to think of a way to help him. He

calls out “-Ey, man, it’s no problem.” (161) But Agneta

quickly grabs ahold of him and pulls him away. She is

afraid that they will get into trouble. He protests but to

no avail.

Pedro Juan’s reaction in this situation is typical of

his behavior in Havana.270 He is open to others and is

willing to engage with them. This openness is a hallmark of

the Cuban ajiaco and is fundamental to its cooking. On the

other hand, Agneta is much more reserved and doesn’t see

this willingness to engage as appropriate or legitimate.

What is proper, for her, in this case is for everyone to

270 This is another example of the difference in how each culture defines what is private and what is public. There is also an element of gender solidarity. Pedro Juan is able to sympathize with another male in a situation, which includes elements of drunkenness and anguish, that transcends cultural differences. Martínez 231

mind his or her business and not get into trouble. Again,

everything should be in its place. There is a marked

difference in how each plays with his space.

This tendency toward keeping things fenced in applies

not only to behaviors but also to things and people.

Consider the following quote:

¡Uf, este apartamento cerrado herméticamente! Me

ahogo. Me asalta la claustrafobia. Me levanto de

un salto, …Voy al balcón y abro la puerta. ¡Aire

fresco, cojones! ¡Aire fresco que me voy a

ahogar! …Absolutamente nadie a la vista. (170-71)

This is a striking contrast between Havana and

Stockholm.271 In Havana one would almost always find people

in the streets. What’s more, as was described in the first

part of Animal Tropical, a person can watch from his or her

apartment into other apartments and buildings and always

see people. There are many instances where Pedro Juan

describes the activities of the people in his neighborhood

that he sees from his balcony.

271 Pedro Juan’s observations can be read as Columbus’s discovery in reverse. The “tropical savage” discovers Europe as the “other.” He observes the natives like an anthropologist. The difference is that he does not discover something exotic, but rather something boring and distant. Martínez 232

Apartments in Havana are described as having an air of

openness, not only because they are physically open to the

city, but because of the movement of people in and out.

Recall the description of Gloria’s apartment in which the

comings and goings of her family are linked to the space

itself. The interior space is projected out to the city and

the city is brought into the home. There is an emphasis on

shared spaces and sociability. Spaces in Havana constantly

communicate. They communicate through sight, smells, and

sounds. There are many examples from Animal Tropical of

music and sounds being overheard in other apartments. There

is also an example of this communication in the same

Chapter, in the section on sex, from Te di la vida entera where the lovemaking of the neighbors is heard throughout the building.

In Sweden, on the other hand, everything feels tightly controlled.272 Not only can you not see many people on the

street from Agneta’s apartment, but you can’t even see

people looking out from their windows. Even sound remains a

prisoner to the spaces where they are generated. Pedro

272 In both Agneta’s and Pedro Juan’s case, the experience of difference affirms their self definitions. Their bodies may enter into a sexual dialogue, but they never achieve a negotiation where they fully internalize components of the other culture. Martínez 233

Juan, in one instance, is alone in Agneta’s apartment and

says that “Hay un silencio pasmoso. Increíble. ¿Cómo los

suecos logran esos silencios absolutos en un barrio donde

hay tantos edificios de apartamentos? Silencio prolongado y

perfecto. (157)

It is to this enforced closure that Pedro Juan reacts

when he rushes outside for fresh air. Being sealed off goes

against his nature.273 When he attempts to perform, he is

admonished and when he goes out seeking contact he is met

with the space’s tendency to keep things in their own box

and prevent, or at least make more difficult, the

recombinatory game the way it is played in Havana.

What is evident in the case of Animal Tropical is that the ajiaco is still possible.274 The difference is that it

273 This is an interesting situation if one takes into account that Pedro

Juan comes from an island. Various authors have written about Cuba’s condition as an island and the claustrafobia that is generated by being surrounded on all sides by an ocean. See Iván de la Nuez’s La balsa

perpetua, Yolanda Izquierdo’s Acoso y ocaso de una ciudad: La Habana de

Alejo Carpentier y Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Juan Pablo Ballester,

María Elena Escalona, and Iván de la Nuez in Cuba: la isla posible.

274 What Pedro Juan has demonstrated during all of these episodes is an ability to continuously engage, if not always consistently with that which surrounds him. This attitude exemplifies what Antonio Benítez-

Rojo describes in his essay “Three Words Toward Creolization.” He Martínez 234 is not possible in the same way and with the same characteristics as one would find in Cuba.

There is another example of this modified ajiaco in

Dreaming in Cuban. In the novel, Lourdes, like Pedro Juan, is an adult when she leaves Cuba.275 Apart from the fact that Lourdes views her departure as permanent, the major difference between them is that Lourdes is not interested in projecting out a Cuban dynamic onto her space. In fact, she wants to bring as little as possible of her culture into her new space.276 This is represented by what she does

writes that “From my perspective, our cultural manifestations are not creolized, but rather in a state of creolization. Creolization does not transform literature or music or language into a synthesis of anything that could be taken in essentialist terms, nor does it lead these expressions into a predictable state of creolization. Rather, creolization is a term with which we attempt to explain the unstable states that a Caribbean cultural object presents over time. In other words, creolization is… a discontinuous series of recurrences, of happenings, whose sole law is change. (162)

275 What is clear in this case is that the possibility of negotiating with Sweden is colored by the colonizer/colonized duality. Agneta maintains herself in the traditional position of the European who receives in her house the exotic subject/object. She never fully manages to understand or assimilate Pedro Juan.

276 Mary S. Vásquez in her article “Cuba as Text in Cristina García’s

Dreaming in Cuban” asserts that “For Lourdes, Cuba is present only as Martínez 235

and does not bring with her when she leaves the island.

Expecting to stay away only a short time, Lourdes “packed

riding crops and her wedding veil, a watercolor landscape,

and a paper sack of birdseed.” (69) What these items have

in common is that they have a personal connection to

Lourdes but are not representative of Cuba. And that is the

way that she approaches the space; on a personal level. She

brings to it her personal demons but not her culture as a

separate dynamic the way that Pedro Juan does. She seeks to

integrate herself into the space as much as possible as an

American. Her bakery is called the “Yankee Doodle Bakery.”

When she asks Pilar to paint a mural to celebrate the

Fourth of July she asks her to do it “like the Mexicans do,

but pro-American.”277 (138)

an absence, an absence chosen and, hence, quite satisfactory… of Cuba

she speaks with derision, when she will speak of it at all.” (23)

277 Lourdes intentionally tries to leave her Cuban past behind her. She attempts to forget those unpleasant aspects of her previous life.

According to Dominica Radulescu in “Theorizing Exile”, “…immersion within the physical reality of the host country may function as both a soothing boon and a catalyst of the memory of pain and privation and turn into a more or less constant state of anguish.” (200) While

Lourdes attempts to forget, it is clear from her conversations with her dead father, as well as her trip back to Cuba, that she cannot. Martínez 236

Here then is another limitation on the Cuban ajiaco.

Apart from the restrictions placed on it while abroad, it

can also be limited by the desire or willingness of the

Cuban to bring it to his or her negotiation with the new

space.

Apart from a character’s desire to remain Cuban,278 is the message that the author herself sends by the way in which she treats a certain subject. This is the case with

García’s approach to sex in her novel. Chapter 2 briefly discussed the connection between sex and Havana. The discussion will be extended here in order to analyze it within the context of the limitations of the ajiaco.

278 Since Lourdes does not want to remain “Cuban” and may even feel

American she does not experience exile in a real sense. Nevertheless, she may still experience a metaphorical exile in two ways. First, even though she may not consider herself to be an exile she cannot fully escape the label of immigrant. Second, as a woman, she cannot escape her role as a woman in a patriarchal society. According to Johannes F.

Evelein in “Teaching Narratives of Exile”, “The common denominator in the experience of metaphorical exile, then, is the existential sensation of difference, otherness, and our desire as human beings to retrace the path from the periphery back to our center.” (19) Martínez 237

The first mention of sex in the novel occurs early on.279 Lourdes, Celia’s eldest daughter who now lives in New

York,

remembers how after her father arrived in New

York her appetite for sex and baked goods

increases dramatically. The more she took her

father to the hospital for cobalt treatments, the

more she reached for the pecan sticky buns, and

for Rufino. (20)

What is striking about this passage, in contrast to the others already discussed, is that it treats sex as an everyday occurrence with no more transcendence than a sticky bun. This is not the sex of wild passion and fertility, but rather a tool to satisfy a physical need like eating. There is another difference that is obvious in this passage as well. While in the other three novels sex

279 Sexuality in Dreaming in Cuban is addressed from a feminine perspective. While men usually represent the nation through reference to historical events, women, as García does here do so through the personal. The novel’s treatment of sexuality includes Lourdes’s compulsions, Celia’s fantasy about Fidel, and Pilar’s coming of age.

For a discussion of this, see Maite Zubiaurre’s chapter “Hacia una nueva geografía feminista; nación, identidad y construcción imaginaria en Dreaming in Cuban (Cristina García) y en Memory Mambo (Achey

Obejas).” Martínez 238

is presented as an urgent need driven by passion, in this

case the need is fed by compulsion rather than passion. In

order to have passion one needs to feel love on some level.

There needs to be a desire to be with that one “other.” In

contrast, García gives one the impression that Lourdes

resorts to having sex with her husband merely out of

compulsion rather than as a result of a deep seated need to

be with him and only him. She reaches for him like she

would reach for the nearest sticky bun.280

The sex that García is alluding to in this passage is not a creative sex. This means that, unlike in the other cases, this series of sex acts will not lead to the birth of a child, or the flowering of love, nor the flow of ideas. This sex creates nothing new beyond the momentary pleasure and relief that it can impart.281 This impression is confirmed in the following passage:

280 In the article cited in the previous note, Maite Zubiaurre interprets

Lourdes’s compulsion as the tension between mocking and criticizing capitalism in the novel. She writes that “En el cuerpo obeso/anoréxico de Lourdes, en el ritmo delirante de los excesos gastronómicos y de las dietas de hambre se materializan los desmanes y los desequilibrios del capitalismo.” (9)

281 It is clear that the women (Celia, Lourdes, Felicia, and Pilar) in

García’s novel are “imperfect” beings. In Lourdes’s case, there is a complex sexuality that has been influenced by the trauma of rape, the Martínez 239

Rufino’s body ached from the exertions. His

joints swelled like an arthritic’s. He begged his

wife for a few nights’ peace but Lourdes’s peals

only became more urgent, her glossy black eyes

more importune. Lourdes was reaching through

Rufino for something he could not give her, she

wasn’t sure what. (21)

In this passage, Lourdes isn’t reaching for Rufino as much as she is reaching through him for something else. He is not the destination but the road to somewhere else, or better yet, nowhere, since by definition compulsion means never reaching the goal.

In the case of Pilar, sex is treated the same way. The description of the sex that she has with her Peruvian boyfriend Rubén takes up only a few lines.

I like it in the early evenings best, when I’m

just tired enough from the day to appreciate

Rubén’s slow mouth and hands. We speak in Spanish

when we make love. English seems an impossible

language for intimacy. (179-80)

oedipal relationship with her father, and her sexual relationship with her husband. This is why, in her sex life, she is prone to exhibiting behavior that is not “normal.” What her compulsion demonstrates is that there is a profound absence, an emptiness that cannot be filled. Martínez 240

Although it is evident in this passage that there is a

sensibility expressed about sex, it is also clear that sex

is not couched in passionate terms. In the case of Lourdes

it is not even treated as a natural part of a person’s

life. Even in the case of Pilar, as with Lourdes, she is

not entirely focused on her partner or the act itself. She

refers to sex as “it”. Neither is it associated with

fertility nor with inventiveness or the recombinatory game

so evident in the other novels.282

When sex is not treated in this way in García’s novel,

it is problematic, violent, leads to stagnation, and death.

One can cite as examples the rape of Lourdes and the loss

of her child, Hugo Villaverde’s sexual perversions,

Felicia’s murder of her lover in Cienfuegos during a sex

act, Pilar’s near rape in New York, or Celia’s fantasy

282 In her article “Cuba as Text and Context in Cristina García’s

Dreaming in Cuban”, Mary Vásquez identifies three elements which she feels are important in the novel. These elements are isolation, estrangement, and separation. These three elements can be identified in the mother-daughter relationships in the book. Vasquez says that “Celia is a failed and even lethal mother. The child of a cold mother herself, she has passed this legacy to Lourdes, who, not surprisingly, passes it in turn to her Pilar” (25) Martínez 241 about being seduced by Fidel.283 In no case does the sex act lead to something new or to a birth. They are all dead ends.284

If one compares these cases to the only act of sexual violence in Te di la vida entera. Before going to Havana,

Cuca Martínez lived in the countryside with her godmother and her brother. Her brother was a sickly boy but very religious. The godmother had a son who had once unsuccessfully attempted to rape Cuca, and who shared a room with Cuca’s brother. One morning, Cuca saw her godmother’s son raping her brother. Valdés describes the rape in detail. Cuca at first is horrified by what she

283 Fidel Castro is considered to be an icon of the revolution both inside and outside of Cuba. In his book Cuba: Island of Dreams, Antoni

Kapcia comments on the link between icon and gender. He writes that “it seems apparent that figures encapsulated and extolled in myth (and certainly in icon) tend mostly to be male. This is logical, firstly, since secular myths are usually a reflection of male-dominant cultures; but, secondly, because a myth in a dominated society is invariably about concepts such as struggle, conflict and power” (31) It is not surprising then to find Fidel critically depicted in this way in

García’s novel given her focus on the female perspective and her concern with relations of power.

284 For another analysis of the meaning of Lourdes’s sexual compulsion with Rufino, see page 23 of Mary Vasquez’s “Cuba As Text and Context in

Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban.” Martínez 242 sees. She “Quiso gritar, alertar que vinieran a socorrer a su hermano católico y asmático crónico.” (18) However, she soon realizes that her brother is enjoying what is going on. Because

Acto seguido, se daba él también una venida

supraterrenal, y los pulmones se abrieron y

respiró como un buzo, como el hombre anfibio. La

Niña Cuca comprendió con gran dolor, y terror,

todo aquello, el placer de su hermano (18)

It is important to notice the contrast with the way sex is portrayed by García. Despite the fact that there is violence involved, it is not a strictly negative event.

Cuca’s brother not only enjoys what happens but it leads him to discover and accept his true sexuality. This turns out to be a beginning and not an end. The rape scene described by García, on the other hand, includes the rapist being gratuitously cruel with Lourdes. It leads, not only to the loss of her unborn child, but to a lifetime of pain.

In Dreaming in Cuban, then, sex is not a recombinatory element of the ajiaco. The use of sex in this novel responds to another dynamic and aesthetic. It is not tied to the city and it is not tied specifically to fertility.

Sex is used to engage with the space but in a very different way. Sex here is not recombinatory, but the site Martínez 243 of a power struggle between individuals.285 People come together not to create but to satisfy a need for something else.286

Sex, by definition, requires a certain level of engagement. In order for the ajiaco dynamic to function, there is a minimum level of engagement that is necessary.

This engagement however is not always present.

285 As examples of this kind of power struggle, one can point to

Lourdes’s rape and Pilar’s near rape, or Celia’s experience of being left behind by Gustavo. In each of these cases, the woman’s body is objectified by a male. This is in line with feminist discourse which suggests that patriarchal society forces women to forget their own pleasure and self interest in the service of society and the pleasure of men. Dominica Radulescu describes a connection between feminist discourse and exile discourse. She sees in both an “inherent bipolarity” and a “veiled form of repeating ‘never again,’” (188) It is this message that García seems to reiterate through the three female characters cited above; never again.

286 The complexity of Lourdes’s sexual life is shared by other characters in the novel. All of the women, in one form or another, experience their sexuality as problematic. In Pilar one sees a certain level of detachment. In Felicia’s case, her sexual history parallels to a certain extent that of her mother’s. Mary Vásquez makes this comparison when she states that “both women are abandoned and wounded by their

Hotel Inglaterra lovers, the aggression born for Celia of absence, and for Felicia of an all-too-real and brutal, if occasional, presence.”

(25) Martínez 244

Pamela Smorkaloff writing about contemporary Cuban literature makes the observation that there are

two substantive strains in contemporary Cuban

literature: active engagement, movement, journey,

a universalist vocation, on the one hand, and

nostalgia, on the other. Consciousness moves in

two substantive directions, seeking either

engagement with or evasion from sociohistorical

reality. Both are evident in contemporary Cuban

literature. (5)

This assertion would be just as valid if one were to substitute the word space for the words sociohistorical reality. It is precisely this engagement, viewed through a spatial perspective, which has been addressed in the previous chapters. The next step in the analysis will be to comment on when the ajiaco ceases to be that and becomes something else.

One of the answers to this question may be found in an analysis of when the negotiation with the space stops and the character withdraws from the space. It is important to analyze what the characteristics of this evasion are and what it results in. This analysis will begin with Te di la vida entera.

Habanidad de habanidades, todo es Martínez 245

habanidad...

Dos desmadres tengo yo, la ciudad y la

noche. Recordar es abrir esa caja de Pan-

dora de la que salen todos los dolores, todos

los olores y esa música nocturna...

Guillermo Cabrera Infante (12)

Zoé Valdés opens her novel with this epigraph and that it has at least two meanings. First, that Cuba is Havana.

In other words that the city symbolically encompasses the island. On another level however, in this quote, Havana is being tied to memory, and one could argue, nostalgia.

According to Joseph Brodsky in “The Condition We Call

Exile”, nostalgia “is, to put it bluntly, simply a failure to deal with the realities of the present or the uncertainties of the future.” (30) It is this characteristic that is problematic for the cooking of the ajiaco. Being open to new possibilities, to the adding of new ingredients, is the condition sine qua non for the cooking of the ajiaco. Without it, the ajiaco loses its dynamism and the metaphor quickly falls into essentialism.

Limited to a static list of the same ingredients.

The best way to consider the importance of nostalgia in the novels under considerations is to comment on the role of nostalgia in Valdes’s novel in order to analyze the Martínez 246 forms in which nostalgia affects the ajiaco dynamic.287 It will also serve as a springboard to comment on the same dynamic at work in all of the other novels.

Te di la vida entera is divided into two parts. The first part takes place before the triumph of the revolution, the second takes place after. Dividing the book this way opens up the possibility of a spatial reading of the novel. The Havana of exuberance and fecundity, of the ajiaco in essence, that Zoé Valdés describes is the one that exists before the revolution. This Havana disappears suddenly on January 1, 1959.288 The author signals this

287 Nostalgia has two important components in Valdes’s work. First, it is a way to connect with Cuban literary tradition. As Argentina Rodríguez says in her article “Zoé Valdés y la nostalgia”, “la literatura de los disidentes, en el exilio, se nutre de un deseo: apropiarse de una tradición para legitimar su exilio, para establecer una memoria cultural.” (no pagination) The second component is tied to the need to maintain connected to the space that was left behind. Valdés defines it, in her novel Café Nostalgia, in the following way: “nosotros, típicos isleños que, una vez fuera, a lo único que podemos aspirar es al recuerdo. Aferrados al nombre de las calles apostamos a una geografía del sueño. Dormir es regresar un poco.” (126)

288 In her article “La narrativa de Zoé Valdés: hacia una reconfiguración de la na(rra)ción cubana” Cristina Ortiz Ceberio comments on the presence of social commentary tied to formal experimentation in

Valdés’s work. It is a social commentary that is made from a personal Martínez 247

change in an unambiguous manner. The title of the chapter

where the change takes place is “Se acabó la diversión.” In

other words, the recombinatory game has come to an end.

From this point on, Valdés presents us with the slow and

painful deterioration of Havana, Cuca, and María Regla.289

There are two reasons for why this happens. The first

is hinted at right at the beginning of the fourth chapter,

in the epigraph.

Se acabó la diversión,

llegó el Comandante,

y mandó a parar...

(De Valera-Miranda. Carlos Puebla sólo sustituyó

«Cabo Valera» por «Comandante».) (97)

It is suggested here, and confirmed through examples

later, that Valdés faults the binary thinking imposed by

the revolution as the root cause of the death of the ajiaco

dynamic.290 One cannot have a recombinatory dynamic when one

and not a collective point of view. It is for this reason that the

Cuban revolution, as a historical event, becomes a focus for Zoé

Valdés.

289 In chapter IX of Voces de mujeres en la literatura cubana, Raquel

Romeu discusses the descriptions of Havana in Cuban literature from her

“florecimiento colonial a la decrepitud actual.” (163)

290 Associated with the rupture imposed by the revolutionary process in the novel, is Valdés’s questioning of national, personal, and sexual Martínez 248 is only allowed an either/or choice. The ajiaco requires freedom to transcend categories and freely associate elements in order to create something new. The end of this dynamism is portrayed as coming to a crashing halt. “El país entero se detuvo, como es habitual en época de huracanes. (Pareciera que hace décadas que tenemos uno)”

(88) This lack of activity and creativity is aggressively enforced.

No nos dábamos cuenta de los cambios, los

aceptábamos sin chistar. Y cuando a alguien se le

ocurría chistar, protestar incluso de forma

constructiva, era un contrarrevolucionario, un

vendepatria, un traidor. (104)

Not only are Cubans being asked to forego their tendency to freely combine elements but they are not even allowed to use their ability to freely combine in order to assimilate this change. Therefore, one is not allowed to joke, as in the use of choteo. Nor is one even allowed to have input into the process. The impossibility to create an ajiaco in this new binary world is implicitly declared in the novel when the author refers to “Ese mundo que no

identity. For an analysis of this see “La narrativa de Zoé Valdés: hacia una reconfiguración de la na(rra)ción cubana.” by Cristina Ortiz. Martínez 249

fuimos capaces de construir porque nos amarraron las manos

y nos inmovilizaron las mentes” (112)

The consequences of the lack of options, of this

impossibility of an ajiaco result in death and decay.291

Whereas before the revolution everything was possible, now nothing is. It is an inversion of Fidel Castro’s famous line about everything being possible within the revolution and nothing outside of it.292 The fecundity that was the

hallmark of pre-revolutionary Havana disappears to such an

extent that even “La propia tierra se hace infertil...”

(105-6) Abundance gives way to unending need and want.

Valdés makes repeated references to this lack of basic

necessities and most times does so in a way that places

blame squarely at the feet of who she views as the

responsible party.

¿Qué haré de comer mañana? La pregunta de los

sesenta mil millones de pesos. El pan nuestro de

291 This same critical attitude, in the face of a reality that offers no options, is shared by the characters in four of Valdés’s novels. This forms a sort of intertextual game in La nada cotidiana (1998), La hija

del embajador (1997), Te di la vida entera (1996), and Café nostalgia

(1997).

292 During a speech in 1961 Fidel Castro declared “Dentro de la

Revolución, todo. Fuera de la Revolución, nada.” See Revolutionary

Struggle Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés, eds. Martínez 250

cada día: no tenerlo. A Talla Super Extra293 le

andan diciendo la cebolla: por su culpa las

mujeres cubanas lloran en las cocinas. (97)

It is as if the abundance that Valdés describes as existing before the triumph of the revolution was included in the novel just in order to highlight its absence afterwards.294

In this new world, where even the ground becomes infertile, the passionate and inventive sex of the past gives way to a sterile and joyless sex. The function of sex now is not as a well spring of something new. It takes on the characteristics of just one more element, one more boniato, to stave off hunger for a little while longer. In

293 This name refers to Fidel Castro.

294 The historical context of Valdés’s work must be kept in mind. She is criticizing what she sees going on in Cuba during the so-called special period in time of peace. This was the time just after the fall of the

Soviet block when Cuba stopped receiving economic subsidies from the

Soviet Union. Valdés compares Cuba during its worst period economically, with a stereotypical image of Cuba during the 50’s. In

“La narrativa de Zoé Valdés: hacia una reconfiguración de la na(rra)ción cubana”, Cristina Ortiz Ceberio suggests that “El movimiento de reconstrucción de un pasado idílico se hace en base a la oposición de un presente que se trata de exponer en el texto en su máxima crudeza. La evocación nostálgica se sustenta, no obstante, en el cliché.” (124) Martínez 251

one instance, Ivo, Cuca’s friend proposes marriage. She

rejects his proposal but makes clear that that did not

prevent her from sleeping with him. She says that “Lo hice

solamente como quien cumple una función fisiológica. (118)

She is willing to have sex with Ivo out of

necessity,295 but love is out of the question. Cuca Martínez

wants to save her love for the love of her life, Juan

Pérez. The flowering of new love, like the flowering of

crops, is now no longer a possibility. It has faded into

history with the passing of that Havana of yesteryear in

which she met the Uan.

The Havana that has replaced the old is described as a

stagnant and decaying space.296 Without the creative and

generative influence of the ajiaco, Havana slowly falls

into ruins. Valdés describes “La Habana Vieja de los

295 According to Fabiola Santiago in “The Sweet and Sexy Sadness of

Exile”, sex in the work of Valdés has another function. It “is a persistent metaphor for flight, for the human need to escape from the cage of oppression.” (26) By this definition, one may consider that it serves this function in the work of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez as well.

296 It is clear that the Havana of memory is already lost. Only the fiction of literary creation can recreate her. According to Cristina

Ortiz Ceberio, “El tropo Habana sirve para signar todo aquello que se ve eliminado del discurso nacional presente: deseo, placer, erotismo, abundancia, diversión, nocturnidad.” (124) Martínez 252

horrores, solares yermos, palacetas en ruinas,” (295) She

goes on to list what is no longer there. Whole buildings

have succumbed and disappeared; buildings that were once

full of apartments, offices, restaurants and cafes. She

goes on to relate how sad Cuca feels while seeing “su

ciudad convertida en polvo y piedra. La Habana deshabitada.

Deshabanada.” (295)

Valdés accentuates this feeling of devastation by not

only describing the physical ruin but by making it

personal.297 She has Cuca revisit places that she knew as a

young woman in Havana. Places with which she had a

connection and which are tied to her youth and her love. At

one point, overpowered by nostalgia, Cuca returns to the

place where she met Juan Pérez. The Montmatre is no longer

called that but rather the Moscú. She invites her friends

and her daughter there for dinner. When they arrive they

can hardly see, not because the lights are dimmed for

297 Critina Ortiz Ceberio asserts that as a way of transgressing Cuban national discourse, Valdés does not present the individual within the context of the collective. Instead, she focuses on Havana as a substitute for Cuba. In the article she states that “La Habana pasa a ser en el texto ese mundo de la inmediatez anterior a la escritura, recuperado y tergiversado por una escritura nostálgica que idealiza el pasado.” (124) Martínez 253

effect, but because the restaurant only has two light

bulbs. The waitress approaches the table in slow motion and

then recites what is, and mostly what is not, on the menu

with an air of boredom. Cuca notices a highly unpleasant

smell in the restaurant and the general lack of

cleanliness. Despite this they eat what they are served;

mainly because of their hunger. It is at this point that

Cuca does something “que hacía tantos años me moría por

hacer, me descalcé de los zapatos, y puse los pies en el

suelo.” (121) Expecting to find the plush carpeting that

the club had had, she instead finds “la aspereza del

cemento sin pulir, carrasposo como diente de perro de la

costa cojimera.” (121) Cuca is left disconcerted and asks

about the rug. The waitress tells her that it has been

taken away and then harangues her about Cuba’s socialist

revolution.

The contrast between the vibrant place that Valdés

described before is striking. The contrast is made even

stronger because it is not just some anonymous building in

the city, it is a place that is intimately tied to Cuca’s

personal history.298 By presenting it in this way, Valdés is

298 It should be remembered that the novel is structured like a melodrama with the rhythm of a bolero. Cuca’s nostalgia is continually tied to Martínez 254

bringing the decay right to the heart of Cuca’s nostalgia.

Decay now pervades the entire landscape, both inside and

out. The way the passage ends completes this picture of

devastation. The waitress emphasizes that it is a socialist

country which one has the option of taking or leaving. In

other words, there is only one option. There is no

possibility of an ajiaco here. Things are the way they are

and will remain so. Complete stagnation.

According to her view, Valdés feels that Havana is no

longer Havana. Compared to her pre-revolutionary

incarnation she has been “Deshabanada.” It is no longer

Havana both in the general and in the particular. Its

cityscape has changed along with its dynamic. Further,

through the destruction of spaces which have personal

meaning for the characters, or are tied to their past, the

individual’s relationship with the city changes as well.299

those two elements. At one point she asks the reporter/narrator to

“escriba su vida para una telenovela” (360)

299 By substituting Havana for Cuba, Valdés is presenting her deterioration as a commentary on the general deterioration of Cuba as a result of the failure of the revolutionary project. In her article “El discurso político de Zoé Valdés: La nada cotidiana y Te di la vida entera”, Carmen Faccini takes a critical approach to the use by Valdés of this narrative strategy. Martínez 255

This deterioration, this loss of self that Havana

undergoes is mirrored at the same time in the characters

themselves; most notably in Cuca Martínez. After Juan’s

departure and the triumph of the revolution, she begins to

physically deteriorate. The process begins in a fit of

rage. When she finally realizes that Juan will not return

quickly from his exile she has all of her teeth pulled out.

She says that in view of her inability to ensure that “el

amor de mi vida volviera a besarme, fui al dentista, y

ordené que me sacara los dientes. Todos, absolutamente

todos. (99)

Thereafter, Cuca Martínez ages rapidly; even more

rapidly than Havana herself. Her accelerated deterioration

reaches a point that Juan doesn’t recognize her when he

returns. The change is highlighted by the contrast that

Juan himself offers.300 Juan has had so much plastic surgery

that Cuca remarks that he looks younger than when he left.

300 In the novel Uan’s character continually problematizes the traditional role of the masculine in Cuban society. In her article,

Carmen Facini indicates that Valdés’s novel presents an inverted family pyramid in which the daughter sustains revolutionary ideology and not the father. The Uan is an opportunist who calls his daughter a

“bastarda roja” and a “comuñanga.” (143) For her part, Cuca tries to be a bridge between them and they eventually reconcile briefly before the father’s final expulsion. Martínez 256

Cuca’s physical deterioration, in the context of the novel, is a result of her disengagement from the world around her. Her nostalgia for Juan Pérez, and the Havana that she knew, has cut her off from the real Havana around her. While she never physically left Cuba, she has absented herself in a way that Bettina Knapp, in her introduction to

Exile and the Writer, has called “Esoteric or private exile.” (2) Knapp goes on to state that “To live inwardly, is to exile oneself from outside forces, events, or relationships that one might find repugnant” (2)

Cuca lives her exile as a painful process of continual loss. Her loss is continually affirmed precisely because she continues to live in the very place that should be the site of her “plenitude”, but is not. According to Dominica

Radulescu in “Theorizing Exile”, for the exile, the present is charged with the adverse effects of memory. The present is either too much like the past or too different. In either case, the comparison with home results painful.

(200)

This exile, according to Amy Kaminsky in After Exile:

Writing the Latin American Diaspora, “and all the processes related to it have a material component, and that component is felt, experienced, and known through the body.” (xi) It is no wonder, then, that Cuca deteriorates physically. Martínez 257

When Juan is eventually expelled from the country,

this time for good, Cuca’s slide continues its course at a

vertiginous rate. Her physical decline is then aggravated

by her deteriorating mental condition. She becomes

delirious and psychotic.301 At the end, she finds herself

back in her hometown of Santa Clara. She bids a mental

farewell to her friends Mechu and Puchu and then,

La razón no valía. La razón no valía. La razón no

valía. La razón no valía. La razón no valía. La

razón no valía. La razón no valía La razón no

valía. La razón no valía. La razón no valía. La

razón... ¡Crach!

Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

iiiiiiiii. Isquemia. Arteriosclerosis. Muerte

cerebral. Un vegetal. (338)

301 Commenting on Said’s concept of the “contrapuntal” nature of the exile, Dominica Radulescu writes in “Theorizing Exile” that “The contrapuntal “occurrence” of the memories of pain and suffering and of the present in the new environment creates a perpetual schism or schizoid relation to reality.” (201) As stated previously, the nature of Cuca’s exile accentuates this effect. Martínez 258

It is significant that her final death is prefaced by her

final exile from Havana. The separation, which had once

given her life meaning, is definitive.302

María Regla follows a similar, if abbreviated process,

to that of her mother. She begins to become disillusioned

with the revolution before the arrival of her father, but

her father’s visit accelerates the process.303 She takes a

tour of the city with him. They visit the places that were

important to him in his youth. It is through his eyes that

“María Regla se contagia con la nostalgia de sus

progenitores, descubre su ciudad.” (297)

As expressed in this passage, the key to María Regla’s

confirmation of her discontent is her realization of loss.

Before her father’s visit, she had begun to lose her

communist militancy because of the personal and

302 There is a double process at work here. Cuca’s mental illness does not allow her to participate in the recombinatory game. Beyond that however, she is banished from Havana, the space where she was first able to engage in that game and where she constructed her identity. She is cast out to the periphery, into silence and death.

303 The absence of the father figure, or its negative presence, is a recurring theme in Valdés’s work. It is a part of the structure of her work which is presented from a feminist perspective. Valdés identifies patriarchal discourse with macho, hegemonic, and ideological discourses. Martínez 259

professional stagnation that the binary system had imposed

on her. Now, having caught the nostalgia bug, seeing Havana

of yesteryear through the eyes of her parents, she has

something to compare her current circumstances to. It is

this comparison that generates in her a sense of loss.304 In the end, she too dies.

What connects all of the characters in Te di la vida entera, as well as the author herself, are the Havanas.

There is the Havana of the glorious pre-revolutionary past, the Havana of today, battered by time. But above all it is the Havana of nostalgia.

At the beginning of this section on Te di la vida

entera, reference was made to two reasons for the deterioration of Havana. One, as has been shown, is attributed by the author to the binary thinking of the revolution. The other however, which has been already

304 The distancing of María Regla from her parents is also reflected in this experience. She realizes that they belong to two different Cubas and two different historical realities. She goes through a process of disenchantment and can no longer identify in revolutionary reality a possibility of identification. The Havana that is left to her is a fictional one. That is why she says that “Esa era la Habana, colorida, iluminada, ¡qué bella ciudad, Dios santo! Y yo que me la perdí por culpa de nacer tarde.” (31) Martínez 260

alluded to, is implicit in the novel and represents one of

the currents identified by Smorkaloff. It is nostalgia.

Nostalgia is present throughout the novel. It is

evoked with the opening epigraph by Cabrera Infante. It can

be identified in the loving way in which Zoé Valdés has her

characters describe and long for the Havana of yesteryear.

One can see it in the level of detail with which the author

remembers food and recipes. It comes through in the

ubiquitous citing of boleros.305 These are quotes in which

Valdés not only details the lyric but also who sang them.

It is as if she doesn’t just want to evoke, but rather needs to freeze an exact moment in time with all the feeling and sense of the space that existed then.

It is this ability of nostalgia to freeze and preserve a moment in time, and the person along with it that, along with binary thinking, is the second element that has the ability to prevent the cooking of the ajiaco.

305 Authors such as Carmen Faccini and Luis de la Peña have assumed a critical attitude toward these narrative strategies. They consider them to be “permanentes digresiones” which “descentran al lector.” In addition, Faccini indicates in her article “El discurso político de Zoé

Valdés: La nada cotidiana y Te di la vida entera, that including song lyrics is a “fenómeno que proliferó en la novelística latinoamericana de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.” (4) Martínez 261

Cuca, for example, feels nostalgia not only for Havana

but for Juan as well. She says that “Yo no dejaba de pensar

en él.306 No lo olvidé ni un segundo de mi vida. (116) She

realizes that this longing is affecting her but she can’t

help herself. She recognizes that

la juventud es una sola, y que hay que

aprovecharla! A mí, ya se me estaba yendo,

rápido, rapidito, y continuaba enamorada como una

perra de lo imposible. Aferrada a mis falsas

ilusiones, desviviéndome de desesperanzas.... Los

fármacos y la bebida me relajaban, pero no

conseguía olvidar (127).

This nostalgia doesn’t allow her to create something

new in the here and now because she is focused on the past.

One cannot enter into a negotiation with the surrounding

space, and contribute to the cooking of the ajiaco, if one

continuously longs for another. As has been shown, she

doesn’t allow herself to fall in love again, nor have

children. She doesn’t even fully enter into the dynamic of

the revolution and only feigns interest in order to avoid

trouble. This stagnation, as has been shown, eventually

306 Along with the element of melodrama, already mentioned, in Cuca’s relationship with Juan Pérez, one can also add the element of kitsch as an important component in the narrative structure. Martínez 262

leads to her death. The same can be said of María Regla

once she catches the contagion of nostalgia.

Paradoxically, this nostalgia is so strong that it is

the only thing that can reconcile the Havana of before with

the Havana of after. In the novel, María Regla is the

character who most closely resembles Valdés herself.307 It is her alter ego. María Regla was born, like the author, at the dawn of the revolution. They came of age within the revolution. It is possible to assert that the nostalgia that María Regla expresses in the novel is that of Valdés herself. She spends nearly all of the novel demonstrating how the Havana of today does not compare to the one that existed in a glorious and mythic past. And yet, at the end of the book Valdés clearly expresses nostalgia for the

Havana that she left for her own exile in Europe. A clear example of this is when the author introduces her own voice into the novel. Not satisfied with speaking through María

307 The presence of autobiographic elements in exile literature has been written about by Miguel González-Abellas in his article “Introducción al universo narrative de Zoé Valdés.” One can also read “Ethnic selves/Ethnic signs: Invention of Self, Space and Genealogy in

Immigrant Writing” by Azade Seyhan. In the article, Seyhan identifies three characteristics in the work of immigrant and exile writers. These are collective authorship, the celebration of two languages, and the autobiographical. Martínez 263

Regla she comments on a photograph “de mi madre en mi

apartamento de mi Habana.” (319) (The emphasis is the

author’s)

There are two points to be made in reference to

Valdés’s intervention. First, after deliberately setting

out to show that Havana is no longer Havana, she

nevertheless indicates that for her at least, it is still a

place to which she has deep feelings of belonging. What she

is hinting at here is that Havana is still Havana, and that

the underlying dynamic may not have been destroyed after

all. Just as the communists make the mistake of saying that

the party is the fatherland, Valdés ascribes, on the

surface, to the binary thinking of the government the power

to extinguish the ajiaco dynamic in Cuban culture.308 While

binary thinking may make the formation of the ajiaco more

difficult it cannot stop it completely. As the saying goes

“Uno no puede tapar el sol con el pulgar.”

308 The presence of this binarism is a trap in which one might fall by insisting in maintaining an ideological position. Stuart Hall touches on this when he speaks of “politics of identity” in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In this case, Valdés is so adamant in her rejection of the rigidity of the system implanted by the revolution that she assumes an ideologically rigid position herself. It is this position that excludes the dynamic which is still possible in Cuba. Martínez 264

Second, what this quote suggests is that what is really responsible for the impossibility of the ajiaco does not lie out in the space but in us. The ajiaco dynamic relies, in large measure, on the willingness of the individual to engage with his space and negotiate. If, as

Smorkaloff puts it, there is evasion, then a negotiation is not possible. By this measure, this quote would indicate that Valdés herself, as the authorial voice in the novel, has caught the contagion as well.309

Valdes’s novel began with an invocation of nostalgia and ends the same way. The last chapter is titled

309 Another way to read this evasion is offered by Amy Kaminsky. In the last chapter of her book After Exile, she writes about language and exiled female writers. She indicates that some continue to write in their native tongue as a form of resistance and that others write in the new tongue in order to assume an ethnic identity and reject the identity of exile. She identifies the adoption of the new language as a sign of exile turning into Diaspora. Based on this interpretation,

Valdés is clearly resisting assimilation. She continues to write in

Spanish and that writing always takes her back to Cuba, in one way or another. One can also identify in her work a fixity on her identity as a political exile. Miguel González-Abellas also makes mention of the role of language in his article “Aquella isla: introducción al universo narrativo de Zoé Valdés.” (48) Martínez 265

“Nostalgia habanera” and begins with the following

epigraph:

Siento la nostalgia de volver a ti,

más el destino manda y no puede ser,

mi Habana, mi tierra querida,

cuándo te volveré a ver. (339)

(De B. Collazo. Interpretada por Celia Cruz.)

The chapter ends with a moving passage in which the

author describes her daughter and husband playing in a park

in Madrid.310 It should be a happy scene, filled with the

promise of a new life. What is significant is that it is

precisely at this moment, when she is away from the island,

when she has the opportunity to open herself up to the new

possibilities of the ajiaco that she takes refuge in

310 It is significant that Valdés puts herself directly in the pages of the novel. It is not merely enough to speak through her characters.

This illustrates Dominica Radulescu’s point in “Theorizing Exile” that before exile can be viewed on a metaphoric level it must be recognized as being registered on a physical level through the body. She states that “stories of exile tell of new beginnings that are based on old suffering and loss, they become myths and they achieve a metaphoric level only by first existing literally and by being enacted and reenacted in flesh and blood. And this, the exile must not and usually

“cannot” forget. (203) Martínez 266 nostalgia.311 Her thoughts return inexorably to the longed for space of Havana. She ends the novel with the following heart rending lines:

¿Tú Habana capitulada?,

¿tú en llanto?, ¿tú en exterminio?

¿Tú ya en extraño dominio?

¡Qué dolor! ¡Oh Patria amada! (362)

The irony of Te di la vida entera is that at the same time that Zoé Valdés condemns the binary thinking of the

Cuban revolution and its consequences,312 she ends up showing that nostalgia leads to the same binary space as well. Longing leaves her, and her characters, trapped

311 By inserting her voice into the novel, it can be argued that Valdés is using the novel as a way of recapturing her past. According to

Dominica Radulescu in “Theorizing Exile”, “For the exile, memory is constantly called upon to perform a daunting if not impossible task: that of replacing a certain lived experience with images, signs, and symbols.” (189)

312 In his essay “The Condition We Call Exile” Joseph Brodsky comments on the need of an exiled writer to play a “meaningful role in his new society.” (24) According to Brodsky this responds, in many cases, to the inability of the writer to exercise this right in his home society.

Brodsky writes that “the existence of this desire in a writer is a conditioned response on his part to the vertical structure of his original society.” (24) There is an element of this need to speak out on the part of Valdés. Martínez 267

between a world that has disappeared and the desire to

recapture it.313 Further, it is precisely in this nostalgia

and longing that one sees the great contradiction in the

novel. If Valdés is longing for Havana, it surely cannot be

the dead and decaying Havana that she has just presented to

us. It has to be a dynamic and vibrant Havana where despite

the binary thinking imposed by the revolution the ajiaco is

still possible. In other words, the ajiaco is still

cooking.

It is the nostalgia that one feels for this lost space

that ties one to the past and doesn’t permit a person to

create something new in the here and now.314 At the end of

the day, it condemns a person to a sort of temporal death

313 Like Heredia, Valdés writes in an attempt to recapture that lost past. This writing serves another purpose according to Judith Melton who observes in The Face of Exile: Autobiographical Journeys, that “an

overwhelming motivation for the autobiographical narrative is to heal

this psychic rift, to help the author reconnect to lost psychological

supports” (xix)

314 According to Argentina Rodríguez in “Zoé Valdés y la nostalgia”, the inability to negotiate can be identified as a characteristic of the literature of dissidence. This literature seeks to create a microcosm, in this case Havana, and capture it. In this sense, Valdés’s work remains trapped in its desire to capture the city with which the author identifies. Martínez 268 given that one can no longer establish contact with the multidimensionality of space or the ajiaco.315

It is exactly this death that Leonardo Padura describes as being the fate of Eugenio Florit. His stagnation is just as complete as that experienced by Cuca

Martínez and brought about by the same cause, nostalgia.

Dominica Radulescu alludes to this when she writes about

the perpetual failure of memory to re-create the

experience of the homeland, doubled by its

failure to forget those experiences and thus

liberate the psyche from that painful duality

(190)316

315 Cristina Ortiz Ceberio makes reference to the risk of nostalgia in her article “La narrativa de Zoé Valdés: hacia una reconfiguración de la na(rra)ción cubana.” She states that “Los discursos contados con nostalgia caen en la idealización de un pasado que para ser representado a veces recurre al cliché (como vimos que le sucede a veces a la propia escritora en sus descripciones del pasado habanero).

De esta manera, imbuirse en la nostalgia del pasado, sucumbir a su ficción, puede conllevar el peligro de limitar el potencial transgresor del discurso que se presenta como cuestionador de las narraciones totalizantes tanto del sujeto como de la nación.” (126)

316 This failure of memory is commented on by Joseph Brodsky in his book

Less Than One. He writes that “As failures go, attempting to recall the

past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one Martínez 269

The similarity is even more striking between Cuca

Martínez and Celia in Dreaming in Cuban. Like Cuca, Celia

met the love of her life before the revolution and lost

him. She then spends the rest of her life pining for him.

In her first letter to him, she writes that “In two weeks I

will marry Jorge del Pino.” (49) She writes that she has

confided in Jorge about her love for Gustavo. Jorge tells

her to forget her former love. She cannot forget. She signs

the letter “Yours forever.” (49)

This letter suggests that Celia has opted for the same

strategy that Cuca used.317 In the absence of her beloved

she will settle for someone else in order to resolve the

problem of an immediate need. However, she will not give

her love to him as is indicated by her closing. The pattern

for the rest of her life is now set. Celia is trapped by

her nostalgia and longing and cannot move forward or

construct something new. She is emotionally distant not

only from her husband, but also from her children.318

feel like a baby clutching at a baseball: one’s palms keep sliding

off.” (3)

317 Recall that Cuca takes Ivo as her lover but does not love him nor agrees to marry him.

318 It should be remembered that the novel describes how, to Lourdes,

Celia speaks in a foreign tongue. This emotional distance is part of a Martínez 270

Her last letter to Gustavo is written eleven days after the triumph of the revolution and it is one in which she bids him farewell. She will no longer write because she will now dedicate herself to the revolution.319 Her obsession with Gustavo will be subsumed in the revolution.320 Nevertheless, she signs off by promising her

“love always.” (245) Her condition of stagnation doesn’t improve however for two reasons. First, the revolution acts only as a bookmark that doesn’t fully displace the role of

Gustavo in her life. Second, this new fixation, as was

dynamic that is found throughout the book. There is an emotional distance between Lourdes and Pilar, Lourdes and her husband, and despite their spiritual connection even between Felicia and her son

Ivanito.

319 In her article “Cuba as Text and Context in Cristina García’s

Dreaming in Cuban” Mary Vasquez refers to this characteristic of

Celia’s by stating that “For Celia del Pino in Cuba, as for Lourdes outside it, time is arrested… Celia is caught in the folds of time. Her central memory is that of Gustavo Sierra de Armas… Since 1959, El Líder has partially taken Gustavo’s place.” (24)

320 Commenting on Simone Weil’s proposed “remedies for uprootedness”,

Edward Said, in “Reflections on Exile”, singles out statism for being

“the most insidious, since worship of the state tends to supplant all other human bonds.” (183) So it turns out to be for Celia. Whether keeping a watch on the coast for invaders or fantasizing about Fidel, her new obsession displaces her family. Martínez 271

previously explained, demands a binary form of thinking

that is antithetical to the ajiaco dynamic. As a result,

her stagnation doesn’t end but is prolonged.321 Like Cuca,

Celia eventually dies once it is clear that she has been finally abandoned by all she held dear.322

There is another similarity between Te di la vida

entera and Dreaming in Cuban as it relates to the ajiaco.

Earlier, it was shown how there was an inconsistency

between the ajiaco dynamic that Valdés was idealizing in

her novel and what she apparently held to be true as an

author. A similar observation can be made about Cristina

García’s approach to the ajiaco dynamic. Despite the

similarity in the cases of Celia and Cuca she sees the

recombinatory game in a different way as an author.323 This

321 Mary Vasquez in commenting on this states that “The matriarch of the novel’s dreamers, Celia seems engaged in an eternal wait that is never concluded, never satisfied.” (25)

322 Celia’s story mirrors Cuca’s in more than just the way they eventually finish their days. Both characters suffer from an esoteric exile. This exile is made worse by their being female in a male dominated society. According to Dominica Radulescu in “Theorizing

Exile”, “The marginalization inherent in the condition of being a woman.” (188)

323 In her interview with Iradia H. López, (“…And There is Only My

Imagination Where Our History Should Be…”) Cristina García relates how Martínez 272 can be seen in a passage where she talks about her first experiences in Havana. In the final line of this passage

García writes that while taking piano lessons from her aunt

Celia was taught to “make each note distinct from the others yet part of the whole.” (243) This description doesn’t sound so much like an ajiaco than it does a salad.324 If each element remains distinct within the mix it will still contribute to the whole. However, in this metaphor, the contribution of each individual element is to the whole while retaining its own unique characteristic.325

she views the revolution as important in the novel but not its center.

She says that “There is a context for these women. I wanted to examine very closely the personal cost of what happened in Cuba after 1959. And

I wanted to very specifically examine how women have responded and adapted to what happened to their families after 1959.” (106) Her focus then is on the perspective of her female characters. The options of the recombinatory game depend on the positions assumed by these characters, and are therefore necessarily complex given the complexity of the women themselves.

324 It is the salad that is the new metaphor for integration into

American society. It is the proposed replacement for the melting pot that will better serve the interests of diversity and multiculturalism.

This point serves to underscore the position from which García is writing.

325 Referring to this phenomenon in the interview with Iradia H. López,

García indicates that the literary production of latino writers is Martínez 273

Each element then remains sealed, or at least not as open, to the other elements at play. If one picks out a piece of carrot from a salad it will taste like a carrot and not like a piece of lettuce. This goes against the tenets of the cooking of the ajiaco that requires elements to be dynamically open to each other in a continuous game of give and take. For if one tastes a piece of meat from the ajiaco, that piece will be imbued with the flavors of all the other ingredients in the stew.

Unlike Cuca or Celia, who withdraw almost completely from a negotiation with their space because of their nostalgia, Heredia presents us with a case where he does negotiate up to a point. Chapter 3, he engages with his space first in the United States and later in Mexico. In that chapter, there was a discussion of how he adapted to leaving Cuba and living abroad before his eventual return.

What was not commented on, and what will now be addressed already a part of American literature. Her reflections on this issue illuminate her ideas about the relationship between the two cultures and the concept of an ajiaco versus a salad. She says that “What I mean is not that we’ll become part of the melting pot nor that our identity and culture will become diluted, but that the mainstream itself will be redefined to include us. We’ll be part of the mainstream not by becoming more like “them” and less like “us,” but by what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century.” (110) Martínez 274

in this chapter, is how his nostalgia related to the ajiaco

dynamic.

As has been demonstrated, the ajiaco is possible

outside of Cuba but its character changes. It ceases to be

a Cuban ajiaco. It becomes a clam chowder or some other

stew. This is the sense that one gets when Heredia goes to

Boston or Philadelphia.

In describing Boston, the first thing that draws

Heredia’s attention is the orderliness and cleanliness of

the streets. He compares these to the narrow and dirty

streets of Havana. The streets are paved with cobblestones

so that one does not run the risk of being splashed with

mud when carriages pass by. He also notices that although

the center of town is full of people, there is a distinct

lack of noise. He compares this to Havana where “mis

paisanos, más que hablar, gritan, se saludan de balcón a

balcón, de carruaje a carruaje y hacen por todo una

algarabía.” (227)326

326 In “Toward a Definition of the Specular Border Intellectual” Abdul

Janmohamed discusses “the incongruity experienced by the exile” (107)

He writes that “The subjectivity or interiority of the immigrant or exile is formed and informed by the ‘totality’ of her or his ‘home’ culture. When individuals go to a new society, they experience a major gap between the alien culture and the self (in)formed elsewhere: Martínez 275

This passage is referred to here in order to emphasize

the contrast between Havana and Boston. In Havana there is

a sort of controlled chaos that leads to creative

recombinations.327 In Boston, Heredia gets the sense that

the imposed order goes beyond mere organization to stifle

the kinds of spontaneous interchange that one would see in

Havana. Exchanges in Havana are not channeled the way they

appear to be in Boston where the citizens appear to be

framed, or fenced, by the streets and buildings. In Boston,

even sound seems to be channeled and controlled. Certainly,

as the following quote about New York suggests, even the

people themselves are separated by neighborhoods. Heredia

comments that he would sometimes walk the streets and

solía andar hasta cinco o seis legua,

descubriendo los nuevos barrios de italianos e

irlandeses, probando la excelente comida de los

collective and individual subjects no longer coincide.” (107) Clearly,

Heredia is experiencing this dissonance here.

327 For a further discussion of this controlled chaos see “Reconstructing

Cubanness: Changing Discourses of National Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora During the Twentieth Century” by Jorge Duany, and “Cuba and lo Cubano, or the Story of Desire and Disenchantment” by Damián

Fernández. Martínez 276

primeros y el magnífico whisky de los segundos.

(229-30)

It is this type of separation that one would not see

in Heredia’s Havana. These quotes serve to set up the

following passage where Heredia begins to succumb to the

siren song of nostalgia. He begins by saying that “algo

curioso estaba ocurriendo en mi y en mi percepción de los

Estado Unidos.” (242) He realizes that it is precisely the

uniformity and order of the American city that makes him

uncomfortable. He criticizes “la regularidad de sus calles

y la casi completa igualdad de sus edificios, encajonados

como nidos de palomas.” (242) These American

characteristics make him yearn for the shouts in the

streets of Havana, the color of the houses, chaotic and

odiferous markets, and the “common” people that inhabit

these common places. (242)

What is interesting about this paragraph is that

Heredia begins it by talking about differences that he does

not like and ends up by discussing an “absence”.328 It is

328 In “Reflections on Exile” Edward Said comments on this perception of difference by the exile. He states that “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of Martínez 277

that absence that triggers his nostalgia. Over time, he

will begin to feel its effects with ever growing intensity.

He comes to feel that his prison is not the United States

but rather any place that is not Cuba, in other words, the

world. He says that “La nostalgia del desterrado se fue

cebando en mí, marcando cada acto de mi vida y muchos de

mis pensamientos,” (252) He rails against those “dueños de

patrias y destinos, y se arrogan el derecho de decidir la

vida de quienes disienten de ellos.”329 (253)

What makes Heredia’s bout of nostalgia less serious

than Cuca’s or Celia’s, however, is that he never allows it

to completely take over his life. He continues to write, he

simultaneous dimensions… Exile is never the state of being satisfied,

placid, or secure.” (186)

329 Although Padura attributes these lines to Heredia, Padura himself is a man of the 20th century. In the mouth of Heredia these words presage a coming phenomenon. From the pen of Padura it is a confirmation of what has come to pass. According to Johannes F. Evelein in his essay

“Ethics, Consciousness, and the Potentialities of Literature: Teaching

Narratives of Exile”, there is a “universal character of exile”, which contributes to a “state of exile as a continuum of which we, entering the twenty-first century, very much are a part. After all, the twentieth century has certainly witnessed more suffering inflicted upon people through exile than any other period in human history, a fact that prompted Heinrich Böll to call it ‘the century of refugees.’” (15) Martínez 278

marries, apparently out of love, he has children, and he

pursues his career. Nevertheless, as this passage suggests,

his obsession with Cuba never really diminishes. In fact,

in the measure that he is not accepted in Mexico as a

Mexican, he falls back on this nostalgia even more as a way

of affirming his identity.330 He knows that

es una actitud malsana cultivar de ese modo la

nostalgia, pero únicamente aquellas referencias

me mantenían cerca de una pertenencia a la que no

quería renunciar. (324)

Although he goes on to question this attitude of his, he

eventually reconciles himself to it for as he says “me hizo

ser el hombre que soy, y no otro, definitivamente distinto.

(324)

Still, despite his attempts to engage with his space,

and his managing of his nostalgia, it eventually replaces

everything in his life and he is left with only his

330 In some cases, for example Heredia in later life, exiles emphasize their condition as an “other” in order to affirm an identity that is denied them by their host society. In “Reflections on Exile”, Edward

Said touches on this when he writes that “There is also a particular sense of achievement in acting as if one were at home wherever one happens to be.” (186) This is feeling of home is made easier for the exile who is contrapuntally aware of more than one culture. Martínez 279

memories. He had previously recognized that the poet in him

had died. Now, as he leaves Havana for the last time, he

contemplates his mortality and reflects on what his future

will hold in the little time left to him.331 He recognizes

that

ya ni poesía, ni amor, ni revolución existían en

la bolsa rota de mi futuro, sino apenas un poco

de tiempo para rumiar mis desengaños y preparar

mi salida del mundo, lejos del lugar donde nací y

debí vivir. (402-03)

As one moves further along the spectrum away from the

extreme represented by Eugenio Florit, Cuca, and Celia one

finds Fernando Terry. As has been shown in previous

chapters, although Terry does have his difficulties with

nostalgia, it plays an even lesser role in his life than it

331 In writing his “autobiography” Heredia (Padura) shares something in common with García and Valdés. He is trying to recapture the past, and share his experience of exile. As Dominica Radulescu says in

“Theorizing Exile”, “writers and philosophers have been telling us for centuries, language is often inadequate in expressing the most intense aspects of human experience, and yet one goes on trying to express beauty, suffering, joy, or horror by means of language or signs. For, to put it bluntly, it’s all we’ve got if we are to pass on our stories to the future generations and if we are to learn from the lessons of the past.” (199) Martínez 280

does in the life of Heredia. He never falls back on

nostalgia as a means of feeling connected to Cuba or his

past the way Heredia does. When he does refer to this

period in his life he uses the word “postpone” instead of

“end.” He says “Es que llevo más de veinte años

posponiéndolo todo”332 (249)

A reason for this may be that his past is not

irretrievably lost the way Heredia’s turns out to be. When

he returns to Havana he deliberately goes about trying to

address the issues that led to his exile. At the same time

he tries to pick up where he left off. He can, and he must,

try to take up his old life because, as Padura says, “no

tenía escapatoria posible: el pasado lo asaltaba en

cualquier rincón de la ciudad” (251) He could not forget.

But it is in facing his past that he could begin to

“recuperar la posibilidad de comenzar: no, definitivamente

no había espacio para el olvido.” (252)

332 In the case of Fernando Terry his experience of exile is complicated by unresolved personal issues that deal with his identity. When he leaves Cuba, he feels incomplete, on a personal level. During his exile he grapples with existential issues that to some degree displace the unpleasantness of exile. Martínez 281

This is possible for him precisely because he never fully gave in to his nostalgia.333 He is able to come back with a desire and, more importantly, the ability to reengage with the space. He is able to do so, not only because he is personally able to, but because the dynamic of the ajiaco has not changed in Havana.334 The dynamic of the space that he finds upon his return is no different than the space that is described in Chapter 2 of this dissertation. This is confirmed in a passage where Terry describes how he spent three days making love to Delfina.

The episode had caused him to fall into “…un limbo rosado…” that resulted in his urgent need to begin writing.335 (248)

333 In “Theorizing Exile”, Dominica Radulescu writes that certain exiles

“choose never to forget, no matter how painful those memories may be. memory is something of an enemy, for it continuously subverts the present moment and dampens the possibility of happiness or inner peace.” (200) In the context of this dissertation, it is argued that nostalgia plays the role that Radulescu ascribes to memory in this quote.

334 Unlike in Valdés’s novel, or the Cuba that Lourdes finds in García’s work, neither Fernando Terry’s nor Heredia’s Havana deteriorates. In fact, both men come back to Havanas that show signs of physical rehabilitation and greater activity out on the streets.

335 Unlike Heredia, Fernando Terry does not lose his ability to write.

Heredia’s inability to write is tied to his capitulation to the defeats in his life and his acceptance of exile as his permanent condition. Martínez 282

Here one can see the flowering of love that then acts as a salve which begins to heal some of his wounds. More importantly, this love leads him to write. The space again takes on the ability to bestow physical and artistic fecundity. The poem that he sits down to write, tellingly, is “sobre la resurrección del amor.” (249) The theme of resurrection is continued in the following passage where he states that the sex had taken him back to a time before his troubles had come to dominate his life. He goes on to say that

aquella tregua, había bloqueado las evocaciones

lacerantes para dejar todo el espacio a la

resurrección del amor y quizás -como le reclamara

Delfina- hasta de la alegría y la risa. (250)

He feels that he had never quite felt the same while he was away. His friends over “there” were never like the ones he had in Havana. What he loves “there” does not resemble what

This inability to write is also tied to his physical deterioration. In

Terry’s case it is tied to his rebirth. This ability to write is a point in common between Terry and Valdés. As Johannes Evelein states in

“Teaching Narratives of Exile” that “Writing… is the only way to counter, if only temporarily, the progressive memory loss and is as such an act of resistance.” (22) Martínez 283 he had loved in Cuba. Now, however, he is finding himself and his place again.

In contrast to the depiction of Havana by Valdés,

Padura presents us with a vision of the city where new things are not only possible but actually happen. A good example of this can be found in an exchange between Álvaro,

Conrado, and Fernando. Álvaro tells the other two about a friend of his who makes and bottles his own rum. He then exchanges these bottles with bottles of real rum sold in stores. His contacts who work in the stores are never caught because bottles are never missing, and Álvaro’s friend makes good money selling the authentic goods on the black market. Álvaro then tells them that his friend is about to begin producing Coca-Cola. Fernando and Conrado are incredulous but Álvaro insists that it is true and that he also produces vacuum packed coffee and Cuban cigars with all the authenticating labels. Of the authorities’ attempts to put a stop to these activities, Álvaro says that

Cuando tapan un hueco se abre otro y no alcanza

ni con un policía por persona... Venden cualquier

cosa: desde una licencia de construcción hasta la

martícula en una escuela o un certificado de

defunción falso. Cualquier cosa. (259-60) Martínez 284

This passage, perhaps more than any other, directly

contradicts the view put forward by Valdés that the ajiaco

is not possible under a totalitarian regime that has not

progressed beyond the dialectic. At the end of the day, the

ajiaco wins out.336

Fernando’s reinsertion proves to be so successful

that, unlike Heredia, he begins to view his impending

departure as a new exile. Padura writes that “Fernando

Terry comprendió que cada vez estaba menos preparado para

irse.” (360)337

Of all the characters that have been analyzed, Pedro

Juan is the one that is least affected by nostalgia. He is

also, not coincidentally, the one who is the most actively

336 For an elaboration of Padura’s views of exile see Stephen Clark’s interview in Ciberallyu www.andes.missouri.edu/andes/cronicas/scpadura/sc_padrua1.html, March

16, 2005.

337 In his article “Exile, Self, and Society” Robert Edwards proposes three modes of transformation for the exile. The first two, “memory and an alternate society- connect exile to the past and present, respectively.” (29) The third element involves what this quote alludes to. For the first time, Fernando Terry contemplates the possibility that his exile might come to an end. He uses the “experience of imagination” (29) in order to project “toward the future” (29) a vision of himself. Martínez 285

engaged in his surroundings and in appropriating his space.

He is fully and completely immersed in his environment.338

Take for example the following description:

Entré al hall de mi viejo edificio. Lo

construyeron en 1927, con escaleras de mármol

blanco, apartamentos amplios y confortables,

ascensor de bronce pulido, fachada como las de

Boston, puertas y ventanas de caoba. En fin,

impecable, lujoso y caro. Ahora está en ruinas.

(19)

Despite his being acutely aware of his surroundings he goes on to say that although he tries to escape the

“apocalipsis” mentally and spiritually, his raw material remains buried among the ruins.(20)

In this quote one can see the contrast between the vision offered by Valdés and the one proposed by Gutiérrez.

While both recognize the objective fact that much of Havana

338 The fact that he is so immersed in his surroundings is a reflection of the author’s life. In an interview with Stephen Clark titled “El Rey de Centro Habana: Conversación con Pedro Juan Gutiérrez”, Gutierrez states that the protagonist of this book “es el mismo Pedro Juan de la”

Trilogía sucia de La Habana. He says of the contents of this book that

“el 85% quizás 90%, de lo que está escrito en Trilogía es totalmente autobiográfico…” Martínez 286

lies in ruins and disrepair, the reaction to this panorama

of decay and despair is strikingly different. Valdés

chooses to dwell on the desolation and allows this to

negatively color her vision. She seeks refuge in nostalgia.

She mentally repairs the damage that she sees and

transports herself to a time where all around her, in her

view, was shiny and new.

Gutiérrez on the other hand does not focus excessively

on the state of his surroundings. Yes, he says, things are

ugly on the surface, but as he observes, the basic dynamic

of Cuban life and culture has not changed. No matter what I

see around me, he seems to be saying, I am still in Havana

and therefore in the game. As he says, “Hay que estar

plenamente presente donde uno se encuentra, y no escapar

siempre.” (19)339

Whereas Valdés rejects the decay around her as

unworthy of the glorious past that she yearns for,

Gutiérrez continues with the recombinatory game of the

339 There are limits however to this need to always be present. In his interview with Stephen Clark in Librusa www.librusa.com/entrevista7.html, March 16, 2005, he discusses how emotionally difficult it was to write Animal Tropical. He says that

after finishing the book “…quedé muy desequilibrado emocionalmente, muy

molesto, muy irritable.” Martínez 287 ajiaco. He is able to mentally escape the apocalypse while continuing to use its results to create because his

“materia sigue anclada entre los escombros.” The process hasn’t changed even if the sources of inspiration have. It is in this creation he seems to be saying, that he is fully

Cuban. He seems a bit more explicit when he states that,

“Quizás uno escribe y pinta no sólo para crear un espacio de libertad alrededor, sino también para sentirse acompañado.” (22)

There is another crucial difference between his approach and that of Zoé Valdés and that is in his view of memory. For Valdés, memory is a door through which one can access nostalgia and it can access you. It is also a form of escape where one can take refuge from the unpleasant realities of the present. Not so with Gutiérrez. For him, memory is not a weakness but a strength. He makes the following comment while watching the replay of a boxing match in Sweden that he first saw when he was a child in

Cuba.

Los jóvenes no tienen nada que recordar. Yo sí.

Tengo demasiada memoria. A veces creo que

excesiva memoria. Aunque prefiero ver la parte

positiva de eso: una gran memoria es como una Martínez 288

gran raíz. Le mete savia al cuerpo. Y ese jugo me

inunda y me sostiene. (174)

Memory, Gutiérrez implies, does not have to automatically lead to nostalgia. It can sustain an individual, and not in the same unhealthy way as nostalgia.

If it can help to keep one focused on the here and now then it is good.

Abdul J. Janmohamed in “Toward a Definition of the

Specular Border Intellectual” writes that

The nostalgia associated with exile (a nostalgia

that is structural rather than idiosyncratic)

often makes the individual indifferent to the

values and characteristics of the host culture;

…the exile chooses, …to live in a context that is

least inhospitable, most like “home.” (101)

While it is true that in these novels there is a nostalgia that is colored by Cuban culture and can be considered structural as Janmohamed suggests, there is also evident a variety of experiences represented in which idiosyncratic nostalgias can be identified. Still, nostalgia, in all its forms, has been shown to problematize the interaction with the world beyond the coast, or beyond the closed mind.

Martínez 289

Conclusion

In the introduction to this dissertation, reference was made to a framework for considering the gradations of representation in a given text. Gustavo Pérez Firmat asserts that a writer can either write “towards” Cuba or

“towards” the United States.340 The conclusion to this dissertation will take up this concept again and apply it to the evidence laid out in the preceding chapters.

Based on Pérez Firmat’s formulation and the observations made so far, a determination will be made as to the relative degree of representation of space in Zoé

Valdés’s, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s, Leonardo Padura’s, and

Cristina García’s novels. This conclusion will diverge from

Pérez Firmat’s formulation, however, in that it will not consider whether the representations of space were written towards Cuba or away from her. It will draw conclusions about the degree to which each representation was written toward or away from the ajiaco metaphor as explained in the previous chapters. In the measure that this conclusion is able to do that, it will necessarily establish whether the representation of space in these four novels tends to

340 Gustavo Perez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way.

(Austin: U of Texas P, 1994) 153. Martínez 290

function as an ajiaco, as set forth by Fernando Ortíz, or

not.

The connection between Pérez Firmat’s formulation and

the ajiaco metaphor can be here established if one takes

into consideration that the theoretical assumption

underlying this study is that Cuban culture, and by

extension, Cuban space function like an ajiaco.341

Therefore, if a given writer is writing towards the ajiaco,

then that person’s text should necessarily be closer to the

representation of the ajiaco metaphor. Alternatively, the

further a writer moves away from the ajiaco metaphor, the

further away he or she positions the text away from the

ajiaco and consequently Cuba itself.

From the beginning, this study asserted in an implicit

way that Havana itself functions as an ajiaco. It is this

341 The ajiaco can be thought of as an expression of a larger tendency in the Caribbean toward hybridity. According to Silvio Torres Saillant in

Caribbean Poetics, “A Caribbean culture does exist, and it is

autochthonous, vibrant, and original. But that originality comes

essentially from two forces: syncretism and creolization. Syncretism

describes the process whereby all incoming elements have experienced an

absolute fusion. Creolization, in its turn, speaks of the effective

nativization of all tributary traditions that have come into the

Antillean archipelago and have shaped the Caribbean experience since

1492.” (288) Martínez 291

assumption that offered a referent against which to compare

the representations in the novels. A second assumption,

which is fundamental to this dissertation, is that a piece

of the whole should mimic the whole. Therefore, if the

representation of Havana tends to function as an ajiaco,

then the component parts of its representation should tend

to do so as well. If, for example, music is closely tied to

Havana and is used to represent her, then the music itself

should approximate the functioning of the ajiaco dynamic.342

Most of the elements then should mirror the mixing of the ajiaco. In the words of Julio Ortega in his introduction to

Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s Caribeños, “Después de todo, ¿qué

es lo caribeño sino la crónica de una mezcla incesante?”

(xi)

In a general way, the ajiaco, as it refers to Havana,

was defined as being linked to dynamism. More specifically,

342 Music as a microcosm of the ajiaco metaphor is an idea that is implicit in Benítez Rojo concept of ployrhythm in La isla que se

repite. “En todo caso, volviendo al salami de sonido, la noción de

polirritmo (ritmos que cortan salami que son cortados por otros ritmos

que son cortados por otros ritmos), si se lleva a un punto en que el

ritmo inicial es desplazado por otros ritmos de modo que éste ya no

fije un ritmo dominante y trascienda a una forma de flujo, expresa

bastante bien el performance propio de ma máquina cultural caribeña.”

(xxiv) Martínez 292

it was tied to a creative chaos that is emblematic of the

city. The chapter identified several textual strategies for

communicating this. They were rhythm, length of

descriptions, juxtaposition of disparate elements, and the

listing of certain stereotypical elements (sex, food, the

sea, and music); which in the language of the ajiaco

metaphor can be thought of as ingredients.

What separates the successful depiction of the ajiaco

metaphor in the texts from the less successful343 is how

well the narrative strategies communicate a sense of the

ajiaco, how closely the elements are associated with

Havana, and lastly, how well the elements themselves are

represented as functioning as ajiaco. The tighter the

integration of these three techniques in the text, the

closer one can say that the text approximates that ajiaco.

Te di la vida entera, of the four novels, is arguably

the closest to the representation of the ajiaco metaphor,

based on this framework. Zoé Valdés is able to convey a

sense of dynamism through the use of Cuban vernacular and

textual rhythm that lends a sense of energy to her writing.

343 The use of the word successful is not meant to imply a value judgemente as to the quality of these novels or how Cuban they are. It is a relative term used to gage how far a given representation is from the ajiaco metaphor. Martínez 293

In addition, Valdés juxtaposes all of the stereotypical

ingredients with other ingredients in her depiction. 344

What is most remarkable about Valdés’s representation is not just that her’s is the most inclusive, but rather that each part does tend to function like the whole. When she makes references to music, those references enter into dialogue with other elements. One need only think of the examples of Puchunga’s ad-libs to “Prado y Neptuno”345, or

in how a certain neighborhood’s sounds during the day were

like different musical styles.346 In these two examples one

sees the mixing, obvious on a macro level, also taking

place on a micro level within each of the stereotypical

ingredients.

There are other examples however. The sex depicted in

pre-revolutionary Havana is inventive and leads to new

things. Food is mixed with sex as is the sea which is

always present. In other words, no element is left to stand

by itself but is mixed or associated with something else.

344 It is true that Zoé Valdés depicts only pre-revolutionary Havana in this way. However, her political views notwithstanding, her overall narrative does as well. This was fully discussed in chapter 3 of this dissertation.

345 See Te di la vida entera, (46).

346 See Te di la vida entera, (37). Martínez 294

This relational property, this propensity toward openness is indicative of the ajiaco. By having the components mirror the dynamic of the whole, Valdés gives her depiction of Havana a top to bottom coherence that contributes to the overall impression of an ajiaco. This view of the ajiaco as a sincretic process that is internally coherent is reflected in the following quote from Benítez Rojo in La isla que se repite where he states that:

El Caribe no sólo debe verse como un escenario

donde se llevan a cabo performances sincréticos

de orden musical o danzario, sino también como un

espacio investido por formas sincréticas de

conocimiento que se conectan al poder político,

económico y social. (167-68)

Animal Tropical is a little further away from the ajiaco than Te di la vida entera. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is able to communicate a sense of the ajiaco through his narrative strategies. Like Valdés, he uses Cuban vernacular and a certain rhythm to communicate the vibrancy of the city. While Valdés achieves this effect through music and choteo, Gutiérrez does it through his graphic descriptions of sex. The dialogues between Pedro Juan and Gloria, often related to sex, also contribute to this effect. They are Martínez 295

hard cadenced and aggressive, mirroring the same qualities

of the city.

Sex, like in Valdés’s novel, also functions as an

ajiaco. The sex that Pedro Juan engages in with Gloria is

creative and there is always the possibility that it could

lead to something new, childbirth or writing. It is this

creativity that is also at the root of Gutiérrez’s

depiction of chaos in the city that leads to something new.

Here one can refer to the descriptions of how people get by

in the city from day to day. One can also see this creative

chaos in the juxtaposition of elements that take place in

the city.

Gutiérrez does reflect directly, however, on the

dynamic character of Cuba and Havana. One can see this when

he reflects on the relative youth of Cuba347 and the energy

that flows from that youth. It is this phenomenon, of the

writer reflecting on the origins of his society that Silvio

Torres Saillant comments on when he states that:

347 En cambio, yo pertenezco a una sociedad efervescente, que convulsiona, con un futuro absolutamente incierto e impredecible. En un sitio donde hace sólo quinientos años vivían hombres en cuevas, desnudos, que cazaban y pescaban y apenas conocían el fuego. (18) Martínez 296

Caribbean culture is dratically new, which puts

the genesis too close in time to permit literary

artists to forget it. (288)

What makes this representation of Havana less of an

ajiaco, relative to Te di la vida entera, is the number of

elements in the mix. Sex takes a larger percentage of the

narrative space to the exclusion of other elements. While

the dynamic, the free mixing of elements, is the same, it

is not as extensive.

At the same relative distance from Te di la vida

entera, is La novela de mi vida. Leonardo Padura communicates to his reader that Havana functions as an ajiaco in two ways. First, he demonstrates that it does in a similar way to Valdés and Gutiérrez. He juxtaposes certain elements and shows how they combine. His central metaphor for this is the smell of the city. In this smell he brings together the disparate elements of the city into a unique blend that is like the ajiaco itself. Further, like in the other two novels he portrays sex as leading to new things like love or artistic creation.

Beyond showing the ajiaco at work, Padura is more direct than the others in stating directly that Havana is a place where influences mix in a constant way. One can see Martínez 297

this when he uses the word chaos or when he describes how

the citizens of Havana interact on the streets.348

While the elements that he cites are closely

associated with Havana, through the smell or the sex; like

Gutiérrez, however, his list of ingredients is not as long

as Valdés’s. Music does not play an important part of the

novel and the food gets only a passing mention. As in the

case of Animal Tropical, more elements are not featured as

prominently as in Te di la vida entera. A direct approach

replaces a more expansive list of elements.

Further away still from the ajiaco metaphor is

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García. First, the narrative

strategy of Dreaming in Cuban does not give one a sense of

the ajiaco. This is so for several reasons. The rhythm of

the prose is measured in a way that the other three texts

are not. One indication of this can be seen in the

dialogues between the characters. There is an absence of

Cuban vernacular language. One would expect Cuban

characters to use certain idiosyncratic idioms or at the

348 “La zona más céntrica de la ciudad estaba llena de gentes a esas horas de la mañana y me sorprendió comprobar que no por eso reinaba allí el bullicio de las plazas y paseos de La Habana, donde mis paisanos, más que hablar, gritan, se saludan de balcón a balcón, de carruaje a carruaje y hacen por todo una alagarabía.” (227) Martínez 298

very least a certain cadence. An example of this can be

seen when Felicia del Pino is trudging through the

mountains of the Sierra Maestra. The lieutenant leading the

group calls out “Vámonos, vámonos!” (105) Given that the

group is already marching, the word vámonos seems an odd

choice given that in Spanish it gives one the sense of

setting out, not of continuing. García could have chosen

dále, for example. This word better communicates the idea

of continued motion. The word vámonos is a better choice,

however, if one’s principal audience is North American.

That word would be more recognizable to an American reader

given that it is close to the word vamoos, used in

Hollywood westerns.349

349 In addition to asserting that a writer can write toward Cuba or away from her, Pérez Firmat also states in Life on the Hyphen that one can

write toward English. Writing “toward” English “is perhaps common among

American ‘ethnic’ writers (Richard Rodriguez and Sandra Cisneros come

to mind) but rather atypical of Cuban American writers. By and large,

Cuban Americans have so far written for other Cuban Americans. This is

the case even when they write in English. Only in the last couple of

years, with the appearance of novels by Hijuelos, Virgil Suárez, and

Cristina García, have Cuban-American authors sought to reach a broader

audience. The language of these recent novels is strikingly different

from that of earlier texts.” (143-44) What Pérez Firmat seems to be Martínez 299

The effect is to give the narrative a deliberate and

understated quality that is absent in the other three

works. In the other novels one can point to numerous

examples of a much more up tempo pace of narration and at

times an even frenetic, rapid fire text. In the novels by

Valdés, Padura, and Gutiérrez, one sees an example of what

Torres Saillant refers to in Caribbean Poetics as the

Caribbean writer’s “need to explore in their works the distinctive flavor of their local language varitety.” (79)

Beyond the mechanics of the representation, however, the elements themselves are never shown to be in dialogue with each other. The characters interact but elements do not. For example, sex is not creative. It is not shown as leading to a beginning but is rather problematic. The sea is represented as a barrier, as something apart. Music is mentioned tangentially. When it is mentioned, it occupies a discrete space where it is not in touch with other elements. In a textual sense, elements are not juxtaposed and they do not function as ajiacos.

With these considerations in mind, it is not unreasonable to assert that Dreaming in Cuban is further

away from the ajiaco than the other three novels. Still,

implying here is that Cristina García is writing “toward” English like

Hijuelos. Martínez 300

the representation of Havana, or Cuba in general, in

relation to certain elements is only one way of comparing

the novels’ representation of space as an ajiaco. Another

way that this study sought to test the validity of the

thesis was by exploring the way in which non-Cuban space

was represented and how the characters reacted to it.

Another conclusion one can draw from this study is

that it is not only the ajiaco that is important for its

cultural cooking but the pot itself.350 The pot’s

contribution is to provide a space, not only where

ingredients can be added, but also where they can be kept

cooking. It would therefore follow that the further one

gets away from the pot the harder it would be to keep the

dynamic going exactly the way it had in the pot itself. Put

another way, the further away one gets from Cuba, the

harder it becomes to maintain the ajiaco dynamic working.

350 When reference is made to the pot itself, it should not be taken as a closed system. One should not construe this as excluding the subject, for example. The subject, necessarily takes a position towards the ajiaco and its cooking. A person can choose the relationship to have with this this dynamic. A person can at a certain point and under certain circumstances be closer or further away from the ajiaco. Martínez 301

One of the limits of the ajiaco then, is the Cuban cultural

frontier itself.351

If this assumption is true, then one should be able to

point to representations in the novels where the

interactions of the characters with their environment

outside of Cuba reflect a modification of the ajiaco

dynamic. The strongest evidence for an ajiaco dynamic would

be found in texts where the characters had the greatest

difficulty in adapting to their new environments.

If difficulty in adapting to a foreign land is the

measure, then the closest to the ajiaco metaphor is La

novela de mi vida. In the novel, Leonardo Padura presents

the reader with two sides of the same coin. On the one

hand, José María Heredia is shown to slowly and

progressively deteriorate over the course of his exile.

While he at first adapts well to life in New York and later

351 This aspect of the ajiaco dynamic exerts a centripetal force that tends to draw the person toward home. This tendency creates a tension with the other force that is at play in the Caribbean and identified by

Antonio Benítez Rojo in La isla que se repite. He states that “Los

antillanos, por ejemplo, suelen deambular por todo el mundo en busca de

los centros de su ‘caribeñidad’, constituyendo uno de los flujos

migratorios más notables de nuestro siglo. La insularidad de los

antillanos no los impele al aislamiento, sino al contrario, al viaje, a

la exploración, a la búsqueda de rutas fluviales y marítimas.” (xxxii) Martínez 302 in Mexico, his deterioration progresses nevertheless. This process is exemplified through his failing health and declining poetic abilities. This culminates with his eventual inability to write and later death.

The other side of the coin belongs to Fernando Terry.

While Heredia’s exile from Havana leads to his eventual poetic and physical death, Terry’s homecoming proves to be his resurrection. Even though he had been away for two decades, he was still able to reinsert himself into the dynamic of the city and take up the recombinatory game.

This is symbolically exemplified by the flowering of his romance with Delfina and the concomitant reawakening of his ability to write poetry.

It is this contraposition of fates in the novel that confirms the presence of the ajiaco dynamic. The ajiaco’s essence is the continual creation of something new. The closer one gets, the more creative the results; the further away one gets the more stagnation one finds in Padura’s novel. Heredia, the perpetual exile, faces death, while

Terry, the exile no more, gets a new lease on life. It is for this reason that the depiction of exile in this novel places it closer to the ajiaco metaphor.

Second in line, but not much further away, is Animal

Tropical. It is placed second to La novela de mi vida only Martínez 303 because what it describes is not really an exile. Pedro

Juan knows from the beginning that he will return to

Havana. Still, the essential dynamic is the same as in La novela de mi vida. The longer that one stays away from

Havana, the harder it is to keep alive that ajiaco dynamic.

Pedro Juan is able to carry on much as he had in

Havana during the early part of his stay in Sweden. It is only during the latter part of his stay that he begins to experience dislocation as an acutely painful experience. He too begins to see the signs of deterioration. He has trouble sleeping, he begins to lose a sense of himself, and his homesickness begins to run the risk of turning into nostalgia. By the end of his trip he begins to close himself off to the experiences to which he had been so open to at the beginning of his trip. It is only with his return home that he begins to reestablish a sense of the ajiaco.

In both Padura’s and Gutiérrez’s novels the new environment eventually begins to impose itself on the exile. Try as the character might to impose an ajiaco dynamic on his or her new space, that space eventually begins to push back. This can be seen in Pedro Juan’s growing depression while in Stockholm as a result of the enclosed nature the Swedish city. It can also be seen in Martínez 304

Heredia’s unsuccessful attempts at involving himself in

Mexican politics.

In Zoé Valdés’s novel however, one does not see quite

the same mechanism of a character leaving Cuba, going

through tribulations and then returning. In Te di la vida

entera, the only character who leaves and comes back is

Juan Pérez. However, the author does not present the reader with Juan’s process of adaptation in the United States. It is as if he were a game piece that was taken from the board at one point and then reinserted later on. In that sense, one cannot use Te di la vida entera as a point of

comparison with the other two novels.

While Valdés’s novel does not offer a good comparison

for Padura and Gutiérrez, García’s does. If in the first

two novels non-Cuban space is presented as inhospitable, in

Dreaming in Cuban it is presented as being home. It is

presented as such for the two main characters who live

outside of Cuba, Lourdes and Pilar. For the former, it is

an adopted home, for the latter, it is home. Lourdes is

represented as a traditional immigrant to the United States

who goes through a process of assimilation. Her intention

is to achieve an absolute distancing from Cuba. Her’s is

not an “enabling distance” which “leads ultimately to a

more profound suture” (99) between her and the culture that Martínez 305

formed her, as Abdul J. Janmohamed asserts in “The Specular

Border Intellectual”.

Pilar, having been raised in the United States, does

not need to go through the process of assimilation.

Nevertheless, in the novel, she goes through a process of

coming to terms with her condition as an American. To

paraphrase García, America is where she belongs more than

Cuba.

In this view, the ajiaco is not an issue in the

process of adaptation outside of Cuba because it is not an

issue for these characters. In the case of Lourdes, this is

so by choice. In the case of Pilar it is because the ajiaco

never had a chance to be developed in her. It is because of

this absence of an ajiaco dynamic in the relationship of

either character that Dreaming in Cuban is placed further

away from the ajiaco metaphor than Te di la vida entera, even though the latter novel does not include a process of adaptation for one of its characters.

While this study posited that the shores of the island of Cuba act as a limit on the ajiaco, it also assumed that there is a way for the ajiaco dynamic to cease to exist altogether. This end to the ajiaco is implied in Lourdes’s decision to turn her back on all things Cuban. Martínez 306

In order for the ajiaco to function, on a social

level, there must be a willingness on the part of

individuals to engage in the recombinatory game that is the

ajiaco. An individual must hold him or herself open to new

influences if new combinations are to be made between old

and new elements. One can see this happen in the case of

Heredia where his growing nostalgia cuts him off from the

possibility to fully engage in his new life in Mexico. It

can also been seen, to a lesser extent, in Pedro Juan’s

growing inability to relate to his surroundings in Sweden.

Where the ajiaco ceases to function altogether is when

a character refuses to engage the environment. One of the

things that leads a character to refuse to engage with his

space is nostalgia.352 In fact, it is nostalgia that is

identified as what leads to the elimination of the ajiaco

or its possibility. This can be seen most extensively in Te

di la vida entera. In the novel, Cuca Martínez gives in to

her despair over having lost the love of her life. This

despair leads her to take refuge in nostalgia. Her

inability, or unwillingness, to connect with that which

352 Along with syncretism and creolization, Torres Saillant also identifies a “hypermnesic element of Caribbean poetics, that is, the uncommon compulsion to remember, to look for meaning in the exploration of past experience.” (288) Martínez 307

surrounds her eventually leads to her death. Her daughter

María Regla also catches the nostalgia bug and dies as

well.

It is not just for the ubiquitous presence of

nostalgia and its effects in countering the ajiaco that Te

di la vida entera is placed closer toward the ajiaco

metaphor in this respect. It is also for what is on the

other side of the coin. Like Padura does in La novela de mi

vida, Valdés offers a contrast, an exception that proves

the rule. The contrast that she offers is herself.

In the novel, Valdés puts forth her opinion that the

binary worldview of the Cuban revolution is antithetical to

the flourishing of the ajiaco dynamic. In a world limited

by an either/or choice, there is no room for both this and

that, she seems to say. That is why Cuca deteriorates.

Nostalgia and the lack of an alternative lock her, and

Havana, into a downward spiral of decay.353

353 According to Robert Edwards in “Exile, Self, and Society”, “Under

Roman law, exile allows individuals and the state flexibility in evading capital punishment after legal processes have established guilt. During the Republic, a citizen can escape the death penalty by flight. Thereafter an interdictio aqua et igni follows, and the guilty party remains liable to be put to death should he return.” (17) In the case of Cuca and Heredia, their death sentences are applied precisely because they cannot return to their beloved Havana. Martínez 308

Still, in spite of having been raised in revolutionary

Cuba, where the ajiaco is not supposed to function, Valdés

the writer seems to say that it does, even while her

narrative seems to say the opposite. This contradiction is

revealed when she inserts her authorial voice directly into

the pages of the novel. When she does, it is to long for

revolutionary Havana precisely the same way that Cuca longs

for pre-revolutionary Havana. What this seems to confirm is

twofold. First, in a general sense, nothing can stop the

ajiaco dynamic from functioning in Cuban society. No system

of government is powerful enough to permanently stamp out a

culture’s dynamic. It can be modified, yes, but it cannot

be eliminated. Second, nostalgia can cause it to stop

functioning for an individual if he or she so chooses. It

is this nostalgia that Valdés seems to be giving in to

herself in the last pages of her novel.354

354 Although Valdés, as an exiled writer in another country, is not able to take advantage of her new found freedom. Her nostalgia keeps her attached to her past experience. Joseph Brodsky in his essay “The

Condition We Call Exile, or Acorns Aweigh”, states about the exiled writer that “Of course, it has to do with the necessity of telling about oppression, and of course, our condition should serve as a warning to any thinking man toying with the idea of an ideal society.

That’s our value for the free world: that’s our function. But perhaps our greater value and greater function are to be unwitting embodiments Martínez 309

Next one can place La novela de mi vida. While this novel does not make as extensive a use of nostalgia as Te di la vida entera, it is strongly represented. José María

Heredia does eventually succumb to the effects of nostalgia, but his case is never quite as severe as Cuca’s.

While she never loves again for example, Heredia does.

While she can never fully establish a relationship with the new Havana, Heredia at least comes to terms with her during his last visit. Where one does see a clear parallel to Cuca

Martínez in La novela de mi vida is in Eugenio Florit. The poet closes himself off completely from the outside world and lives in a fantasy world of his past set in Cuba. It is for this reason that the novel is closer to the ajiaco metaphor than the remaining two.

The next in line is Animal Tropical. Despite nostalgia making only a brief and not very strong appearance in the text, it is still present. It is clearly in view at the bar

Havana in Stockholm. It is also evident in Pedro Juan the longer he stays away from Havana. Still, one could argue that Dreaming in Cuban should be closer to the ajiaco metaphor than Animal Tropical in terms of its of the disheartening idea that a freed man is not a free man, that liberation is just the means of attaining freedom and is not synonymous with it.” (34) Martínez 310

representation of nostalgia because it plays a more

prominent and clear role in García’s novel than it does in

Gutiérrez’s. This turns out not to be so clearly the case

however. It is true that Celia’s nostalgia cuts her off

from her family. She spends her life in love with her lost

Spanish lover at the expense of the life that she could

have built with her husband and children. Clearly,

nostalgia here is acting in the same way as it does in

Valdés’s novel. Nostalgia keeps new connections from being

established.

However, in the case of Dreaming in Cuban, Celia’s nostalgia is not reserved for Cuba but rather for a man. It is not the fatherland that she longs for but a person. That is the central difference between García’s book and the others. While in the other three novels nostalgia is principally associated with Havana and Cuba, in Dreaming in

Cuban it is tied principally to people. That is also why

Animal Tropical is placed closer to the ajiaco metaphor

than Dreaming in Cuban even though nostalgia plays a more

prominent role in the latter work.

When taken together, all of these considerations paint

a clear picture of the positionality of all four works in

relation to the ajiaco metaphor. If one were to put points

along the axis of a graph the following is what one would Martínez 311

see based on the results of this analysis. First, Te di la

vida entera would be relatively closer to the ajiaco

metaphor than the other three works. This does not mean

that this novel is here considered more Cuban than the

others. On the contrary. Such an observation cannot be

logically sustained. What can be stated however, is that

based on the assumptions of this dissertation, and the

theoretical framework employed, its depiction of Cuban

cultural space is closer to the model of the ajiaco than

the others.

Second and third along the axis, but still fairly

close to Te di la vida entera would be Animal Tropical and

La novela de mi vida. What separates the two latter works

from the former is not so much substance but degree. Based

on the particular set of criteria chosen, these two novels

are just not as representative of the ajiaco dynamic as

Valdés’s work.

Still, in all three cases the ajiaco dynamic can be

clearly identified. Its presence, as has been shown, is

strong in all three works. While this serves to clarify

their positionality it does not speak to their trajectory.

For this one has to turn again to Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s

formulation. In his view, one writes towards Cuba in the

measure in which one is able to express oneself in a Cuban Martínez 312

vernacular and rhythm. In this dissertation, the

representation of the ajiaco has replaced Pérez Firmat’s

emphasis on vernacular and rhythm as the point of

reference. One also writes towards the ajiaco metaphor in

the measure that one seeks to address a Cuban or Cuban-

American audience.

It is in this last consideration that one can clearly

see the trajectory of these three novels. Te di la vida

entera and La novela de mi vida were clearly written for a

Cuban audience. Valdés’s novel clearly engages in a political dialogue that is ongoing about the Cuban revolution. Padura’s book deals with one of the founding fathers of Cuban poetry and a person who helped shape a nascent Cuban cultural identity. Clearly these are two works that are principally of interest to Cubans. Animal

Tropical, on the other hand is clearly less directed toward

a domestic audience. It uses a certain amount of exoticism

that is meant to sell books outside of Cuba and caters to

the popular perception of Cuba as a sensually exotic place.

Still, it uses forms of expression that are most

intelligible to Cuban readers. In other words, it is

written in Cuban.

In contrast, it is for these reasons that one can

conclude that not only is Dreaming in Cuban further away Martínez 313 from the ajiaco metaphor than the others but one can also assert that its trajectory is directed in the opposite direction from the ajiaco metaphor. Dreaming in Cuban is not only written in English, and with an American sensibility, but it is also written for Americans.

According to Pérez Firmat in Life on the Hyphen, Cristina

García wrote her novel in order to “reach a broader audience.” (144) By this he means that the work was not written specifically for a Cuban-American audience which he places within the continuum of Cuban culture. He calls the language of this and similar books as “strikingly different” (144) from the texts of earlier books which were meant for a Cuban audience alone.

In all four novels discussed in this dissertation,

Cuba, and Havana in particular loom large. All of the novels place a major part of their action, if not the majority of the action in Cuba. In that sense, at least, they share something in common. They share a certain symbolic space that is called Cuba. This observation evokes a question posed by Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá in his book

Caribeños. In it he asks the following rhetorical question:

“Compartimos un espacio; pero ¿compartimos un proyecto histórico?” (12) Martínez 314

In the measure that a writer directs his or her text toward his or her people, and does so in a voice and with a shared language that is their own then the answer would have to be yes. This dissertation has sought to identify the ajiaco metaphor as just such a shared cultural expression and further sought to indicate its existence and functioning in the texts in question. In the measure that that metaphor appears in the texts then it would tend to affirm the idea of a shared vision as to a shared historical project. It is appropriate to recall the words of Frantz Fanon about the native writer. Fanon states that it is only from the moment that the writer begins to address his or her own people “that we can speak of a national literature.” (193) Martínez 315

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