The Narrative of Censorship in Cuban Novels of the 1990s Britton W. Newman A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish). Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Prof. Rosa Perelmuter Prof. Alicia Rivero Prof. Juan Carlos González Espitia Prof. Emilio del Valle Escalante Prof. Oswaldo Estrada Abstract BRITTON W. NEWMAN: The Narrative of Censorship in Cuban Novels of the 1990s (Under the Direction of Rosa Perelmuter) While significant attention has been paid to the practices of censorship under the revolutionary Cuban government, little has been written about the way that such censorship has been portrayed by those writers directly affected. My dissertation fills that void by analyzing the thematization of censorship in Cuban novels of the 1990s. Drawing from the 1990s production of four of the most important contemporary Cuban novelists— Jesús Díaz, Leonardo Padura, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and José Manuel Prieto—I identify the “narrative of censorship” that undergirds each of their novels. This narrative line shows the process of internalization of the norms of censorship, the effects that such internal censorship has on an individual and the struggle through which the individual can eventually overcome it. Its remarkably similar portrayal by each author suggests that censorship, both in the form of external repression and of learned behaviors, continued to be an important factor in Cuban expression during the 1990s. In Chapter 1 I divide the phenomenon of censorship into the two levels of external—repression imposed by official or societal pressures—and internal—the masking impulse that aims to avoid the real or perceived punishment that would follow expression. After the definition of terms and the historical contextualization of that introduction, Chapter 2 illustrates the examples of both external and internal censorship in the novels. In Chapter 3, I show how the limitations surrounding the characters extend ii to their defective bodies, and how they defy authority by engaging in rebellious physical excess. The narrator-protagonists, generally frustrated artist figures, proceed from physical defiance to a recuperation of their artistic creativity, overcoming the habits of internal censorship, as we see in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 illustrates how the narrative of censorship can be transplanted to a diasporic setting in Cuban protagonists who are far removed from the island. The conclusion, Chapter 6, suggests possibilities for extending this line of research into the Cuban novels of the 21st century. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................1 2. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CENSORSHIP..............................................26 I. External Censorship: The Ever-Present Threat.……………………….26 II. Internal Censorship: From Disillusionment to Fear to Masking……...41 A. Disillusionment…………..…………………………………...42 B. Fear……………………………………………………………46 C. Masks………...……………………………………………….51 D. Secondary Masking Behaviors……………………………......57 i. Silence……………………………………………….....58 ii. Indecision……………………………………………...64 iii. Immobility……………………………………………69 III. Conclusion………..………………………………………………….71 3. DEFYING EXTERNAL LIMITATIONS THROUGH THE BODY…….….74 I. Defective Bodies……….……………………………………………...74 II. The Body in Excess…………………………………………………..85 III. Conclusion…..………………………………………………………98 4. OVERCOMING CENSORSHIP THROUGH WRITING..………………...101 I. A Room of Their Own……………………………………………….101 iv II. Rituals of Purification………..……………………………………...110 III. The Text as Refuge………………………………………………....121 A. Refuge for Other Times……………………..……………....121 B. Refuge for Other Texts……………………………………...127 IV. Conclusion…..……………………………………………………...137 5. RELOCATING THE NARRATIVE OF CENSORSHIP…………………...139 I. Russia and/as Cuba…………………………………………………..139 II. The Lingering Presence of Censorship……………………………...145 III. Protective Mask of Ambiguity………..……………………………150 IV. Overcoming Censoring Habits……………..……………………....157 V. Conclusion……..…………………………………………………....166 6. CONCLUSION……….……………………………………………………..170 Appendix One: Interview with Leonardo Padura............................................................176 Appendix Two: Interview with José Manuel Prieto........................................................220 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………255 I. Works Cited……………….…………………………………………………255 II. Other Sources Consulted……………………………………………………260 v Chapter 1: Introduction “[R]esulta provechoso que quien se ocupe de la censura historie también la autocensura, variante hipocondríaca de aquélla.” Antonio José Ponte, El libro perdido de los origenistas “Aunque no te censures, el miedo no te abandona.” Leonardo Padura, Appendix One This dissertation examines the literary representation of censorship in Cuban novels published during the 1990s. While critics have addressed the history of Cuban censorship in general and the censorship of Cuban literature in particular in the decades since the 1959 revolution, I will focus on the manner in which censorship in its various forms appears in Cuban novels during the last decade of the twentieth century. I will explore censorship‟s repercussions within the individual characters, the internalization of censorship or “variante hipocondríaca” to which Antonio José Ponte alludes in my epigraph. Ponte‟s comparison of self-censorship to hypochondria and Leonardo Padura‟s reference to a fear that never abandons the writer even if he overcomes the urge to keep silent, both suggest that censorship is not simply an external phenomenon, but one that penetrates the individual‟s core. In reading the body of Cuban novels written both on and off the island during the 1990s, one is struck by the frequency with which the theme of censorship appears. Nonetheless, no critic has devoted an in-depth analysis to the manipulation of this theme within the novels. The novels selected for my corpus are those which represent the theme most fully. For my corpus I have selected from among novels written by established authors—those who had two or more novels to their name by the end of the decade. The novels that I analyze happen to be written by four of the most important Cuban authors of the 1990s. The corpus of novels through which I address this theme includes the novels published in the 1990s by Jesús Díaz, Leonardo Padura, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and José Manuel Prieto. By Díaz, I include Las palabras perdidas (1992), La piel y la máscara (1996) and Dime algo sobre Cuba (1998). I study Padura‟s tetralogy Las cuatro estaciones, composed of the novels Pasado perfecto (1991), Vientos de Cuaresma (1994), Máscaras (1997) and Paisaje de otoño (1998). From Gutiérrez I take his inaugural Trilogía sucia de La Habana (1998) as well as El Rey de La Habana (1999), the first two installments of his Ciclo Centro Habana. Finally, Prieto‟s Enciclopedia de una vida en Rusia (1998) and Livadia (1999) round out my corpus. In choosing the novelists, I considered only those authors who began their publishing careers in Cuba and remained on the island until at least the late 1980s, as these experienced the range of censorship established by revolutionary Cuba since the early 1960s. I include authors who continue to reside on the island (Padura and Gutiérrez) as well as others belonging to what Rafael Rojas terms the “Diáspora de los 90,” (Díaz and Prieto). By residing on the island until late in the Soviet era, the authors were also exposed to the growing expectation of transition and openness that arose as the Socialist Bloc initiated Perestroika, as well as the regime‟s hardening that belied this expectation. Thus, though each author is idiosyncratic in his own way, they all began the 1990s with a common base of the Cuban experience up to the beginning of that decade. In a variety of 2 ways, their novels reflect that Cuban experience and the censorship of expression that was a part of it. The criteria of my corpus leave me with a group of authors made up entirely of men. While female novelists such as Ena Lucía Portela, Aida Bahr, Marilyn Bobes and Wendy Guerra have begun to address the theme of censorship since 2000, the publication dates of their novels preclude them from the current study. Other prominent female Cuban novelists of the 1990s, including Daína Chaviano and Zoé Valdés, are not included because their works of that decade are dedicated to other themes. I have chosen to focus my study on the 1990s because the decade represented a moment of flux in Cuban legal and social norms. With the removal of Soviet subsidies in 1990, the island entered what Fidel Castro dubbed the “Special Period in Times of Peace.” That euphemism, with its emphasis on “special” and “peace,” could not disguise what in reality was the most crushing economic crisis in Cuba‟s history. As the island entered chaotic years of extreme shortages, the boundaries of what was permissible in artistic production in Cuba became blurred. The decade of my study spans from the beginning of the government‟s careening path of adaptation to the return to an uneasy equilibrium at the end of 1999, the point at which the new rules of the literary game in Cuba, and the government‟s regulatory role, had become clear. Though government involvement was never to return to Soviet-era levels, “[b]y the end of the 1990s, the Cuban government had regained control of both