Distances and Proximities: Havana and San Juan from the Point of View of Literature and Oral Histories APPROVED by SUPERVISING COMMITTEE
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Copyright by Mario Edgardo Mercado Diaz 2015 The Thesis Committee for Mario Edgardo Mercado Diaz Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Distances and Proximities: Havana and San Juan from the Point of View of Literature and Oral Histories APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: César A. Salgado Co-Supervisor: Sofian Merabet Distances and Proximities: Havana and San Juan from the Point of View of Literature and Oral Histories by Mario Edgardo Mercado Diaz, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2015 Allá quedan para siempre, enterradas en la ardida planicie del litoral, mis mejores horas de mozalbete; mis últimas, libres correrías por el vasto territorio de los arenales; los días claros, abiertos, anchurosos de holgazaneo al buen tuntún…Allá el viejo Tiburcio con su ruda franqueza de manotazo y su hospitalidad ancha y fresca de terreno húmedo sembrado de yautía, verdolaga y cojitre. Allá el mar: viento afilado y salino, chaparrón gordo y refrescante, calmazo que pega las naves al agua como sobre papel de moscas…Ahora es el pueblo otra vez, más feo, más sucio, más desolado. Litoral, Luis Pales Matos ¡No importa que sea una procesión, una conga, una comparsa, un desfile. La noche invade con su olor y todos quieren copular. El olor sabe arrancar las máscaras de la civilización, sabe que el hombre y la mujer se encontrarán sin falta en el platanal. ¡Musa paradisíaca, ampara a los amantes! “La isla en peso”, Virgílio Piñera Acknowledgements I want to express my deepest appreciation for each one of the participants, without them this thesis would not have been possible. I want to thank everyone at the Centro de Estudios Martianos, especially Vilma Mederos and Lidia Alonso, and at Casa del Niño y La Niña in Havana, Cuba, who helped me connect with communities and individuals. Likewise, I want to thank the many organizations such as CAUCE and HealthMedPro, community groups like Acción Comunitaria Santa Rita, Junta Comunitaria Río Piedras, Asociación de Residentes de Miramar, Casa de Cultura Ruth Hernández and LaCalleLoiza.com and people such as El Viejo, Julio Piedras, Inez García Rosado, José Luis Cortés, Fabianna Himmet and Eduardo Regis who helped me recruit participants for this research. I am in debt to everyone who opened his or her doors to me, shared a café with me and worked effortlessly to make this thesis possible. I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. César A. Salgado and Dr. Sofian Merabet, whose enthusiasm for this research and invaluable council steered me into deeper, richer waters. I appreciate those professors and academics who advised me: Dr. Jossianna Arroyo, Dr. Yolanda Izquierdo, Dr. Lorraine Leu, Dr. Maritza Stanchich, Dr. Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Professor Víctor Fowler and Professor Edwin Quiles Rodriguez. I am extremely appreciative of Adrianna Torres García’s feedback, help and support throughout this whole project. I am also appreciative of the feedback given by fellow students: Bridget K. Footit, Maya Berry, Anthony Dest and Ben Schell. Finally, I thank my parents and family, in Puerto Rico and Cuba, for their unconditional support and guidance. v Abstract Distances and Proximities: Havana and San Juan from the Point of View of Literature and Oral Histories Mario Edgardo Mercado Diaz, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: César A. Salgado Co-Supervisor: Sofian Merabet Cuba y Puerto Rico have for long been considered sister islands, fighting together against the influences of the Spanish Empire and the United States. The decade of the 1950s, however, proved to be the splitting point for both islands, sending them into very different trajectories of development. In their shared experience of Spanish colonization and USA interventions, how do San Juan and Havana residents perceive and use space today in their particular socio-political contexts and how does this affect the resident’s sense of citizenship? I closely engage with the different urban spaces using ethnographic data and photographs taken during my recent fieldwork, creative texts describing said spaces and case studies examining the formation of racial, gender and class identities. Focusing on a specific place on the Malecón, Havana’s iconic esplanade, I examine how practices of leisure, intimacy (e.g. erotic homosexual and heterosexual encounters), and self-expression challenge the revolutionary rhetoric of “sameness” (i.e. absence of race, class, crime or gender violence). As for San Juan, I dissect the layers of significance in public visual representation, as exemplified in the artwork painted over an abandoned house in Santurce, the site for queer, artistic and marginal expression. The vi scene, two black women drinking on the porch, rescues a sense of citizenship lost to the class and racial polarization, fragmentation, and the “ruination” of San Juan. Finally, I argue that an archipelagic city, composed of the descriptions of specific places in different cities, has been created in the sea, a space of crossing, endurance and death, within these inter-capillary exchanges of people, cultures and habits. This archipelagic city, not spoken about directly but referenced semantically, aids in the construction of trans-national identities and perspectives, specific perceptions on time and space, and the production of media and cultural forms of expression. My goal is to tie together these narrative strands linking trans-oceanic places into an urban map surpassing its own geographical context. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x List of Illustrations ................................................................................................. xi Introduction: Distances and Proximities ..................................................................1 Vigía ................................................................................................................1 San Juan and La Habana .................................................................................2 En la calle : Reading Space ............................................................................5 Bregando: Methodology .................................................................................9 Overview of Thesis .......................................................................................10 Chapter 1: Walking through the barrios: Río Piedras and Santurce, San Juan, and Centro Habana and El Vedado, Havana .................................................12 Havana: Paris del Caribe ..............................................................................12 Vedado .................................................................................................14 Centro Habana .....................................................................................22 San Juan: La Ciudad Amurallada .................................................................31 Río Piedras ...........................................................................................34 Santurce................................................................................................50 Chapter 2: De paseo: Discussing literature, cubanía, and La Rampa in Havana, Cuba ................................................................................................62 From Neptuno to G: Histories of La Rampa, Centro Habana and El Vedado ......................................................................................65 La Rampa and the Malecón ..........................................................................89 Chapter 3: Un café vespertino: sediment and privilege in the islands of San Juan, Puerto Rico .................................................................................104 “DO NOT ENTER” ....................................................................................108 El Barrio: Gandul y Miramar .....................................................................116 “Yo tengo ya la casita, que tanto te prometí…”..........................................121 Salgamos al balcón .....................................................................................127 “…y llena de margaritas para ti, para mí” .................................................133 viii Afternoon Tea .............................................................................................140 Islands of sediment .....................................................................................147 Conclusion: Las dos alas .....................................................................................155 The two wings .............................................................................................155 Las miradas y las murallas .........................................................................160 Bibliography ........................................................................................................166 ix List of Figures Figure 1: Municipalities of Havana .................................................................... xiii Figure 2: El Vedado, Havana ............................................................................... xiv Figure 3: Paseo and Malecón .................................................................................xv Figure 4: Avenida de