Abstract: I write this editorial note in gloomy times, under the shadow of almost one year of the presidency of Donald Trump. It has been quite the year, rich in daily insults; a Goebbelian disregard for the truth; crass nepotism; vicious xenophobia; and a vulgar, exhibitionist racism of the white-supremacist, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan kind. That is, of the worst possible kind. This is Trump's America, where some people feel entitled to publicly spew anti-Semitic diatribes and where black bodies are frequently on the receiving end of police bullets. Bigotry now lives in the White House, basking in arrogance and ineptitude. As I have written elsewhere, the White House is now the Whites' House. Make America great again.To the ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: "Inside the Revolution, all, outside of the Revolution, nothing."1 These famous nine words have guided and haunted Cuban cultural politics ever since they were first uttered in June 1961. The unpredictable, often-fickle strategies for their implementation are with Cubans still. Who determines just what is within the Revolution' Where exactly are the fault lines for what falls without' Is to be outside, or fuera del juego (to riff on Heberto Padilla), to necessarily be against'2 The very capaciousness of the formula, its ability to be easily manipulated and instrumentalized, arguably accounts for its longevity.The pronouncement of Fidel Castro's "Words to the Intellectuals" will forever be associated with ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the fall of 2012, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Cuba (National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, or OSN) traveled to the United States for the first time since its founding on October 7, 1959. The visit was a symbol, even a harbinger, of improving relations between Washington and Havana. Yet although the ensemble had never performed in the United States, their tour was just one of the more recent events in the OSN's long history of involvement in Cuban cultural politics and diplomacy. After 1959, the Cuban revolutionary government often deployed cultural ambassadors as foreign diplomats. It likewise counted on cultural institutions to foster local pride in national arts as well as solidarity toward Cuba in ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The award-winning documentary Historia de un ballet (1962) records for posterity the light but decisive footsteps of Nieves Fresneda. A woman of African descent in her early sixties at the time of filming, she dances to honor the Santería orisha (divinity) Yemayá, as she is accompanied by the accomplished musicians Carlos Aldama, Lázaro Ros, and Trinidad Torregrosa.1 Narrator Luis Carbonell introduces Fresneda to the viewer by saluting her expertise: "Nobody performs the dances of Yemayá better than santera Nieves Fresneda."2 Indeed, she delivers a powerful performance in the short, two-minute sequence. Her elbows and knees remain softly bent, and her gaze, down and inward, gives her a grounded delicacy. These ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: La Revolución cubana supuso desde su génesis una revisión del entramado de tradiciones, procesos, hechos y figuras anteriores a ese 1959 establecido como parteaguas. La dicotomía entre un nuevo tipo de identidad y su opuesto—los incompatibles con el diseño social en configuración y los que debían cumplir ciertas exigencias para integrarse—no sólo se aplicó al presente. Esa batalla simbólica se desplazaría a otras áreas y períodos históricos, siendo el siglo XIX uno de ellos. La reinterpretación también se extendería a casi cualquier tópico concerniente a los campos culturales. La Revolución cubana, a pesar de su propia indefinición y tanteos iniciales, se prefiguraba como un prisma particular con el que mirar hacia ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Pocas temáticas tan áridas como la política cultural cubana a partir de esa década del sesenta que comenzó en 1959. El extendido interés que genera hace suponer que su conocimiento pueda resarcir o ayudar a comprender algo. Si el dossier Cultural Politics and Political Cultures of the Cuban Revolution incluye estudios a partir de fuentes documentales, como tal deben figurar también variantes testimoniales, aun cuando la selección, la convicción, la percepción de quien narra, serían excusas suficientes para asumir cualquier primera persona del relato como ente ficcionalizado y ficcionalizador: personaje. En un país en el que se ha ejecutado un sucesivo control de la memoria por casi sesenta años, disimulándose ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: It was on the evening of December 21, 1956, that a group of Cuban visual artists gathered in Old Havana's Zulueta Street, next to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, to protest the cultural policies of Fulgencio Batista's government. The intention of these leading artists, such as Marcelo Pogolotti, Victor Manuel, and Hugo Consuegra, was to boycott the VIII Salón Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Cerámica, summoned by the Ministerio de Educación's Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC). They not only refused to participate but also organized their own "Contrasalón"—the Exposición de Pintura y Escultura Contemporánea—to encourage Cuban artists to "keep away" from the government-led Salones Nacionales. Included in their ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In November 2016, when the Cuban government opened the National Mausoleum honoring José Martí in the Plaza of the Revolution three days after the death of Fidel Castro, foreign journalists seemed flabbergasted: expecting to file past an urn containing Fidel's ashes, they found instead only a large box of medals surrounded by heavy, velvet purple curtains and an honor guard. "Where is Fidel'" they asked themselves. Out on the street, some Cubans speculated that perhaps the government had refused to put Fidel's remains on display to prevent (or impede) mourners from venting their frustrations by desecrating them in some way. Deftly aided by the alternative press known on the island as radio bemba (lip radio), other ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: El discurso oficial en Cuba tiende a amplificar el significado del concepto de Revolución (siempre con una R mayúscula), ensanchando sus contornos tanto verticalmente (es un proceso centenario y sin fin) como horizontalmente (revolución = líder = gobierno = nación). Esto es inusitado.1 Las definiciones de la revolución son muchas, pero generalmente designan un proceso (no un actor), a la vez rápido y violento, que moviliza nuevos actores políticos, y que conduce a un cambio de régimen político y a cambios profundos en la sociedad.2 En general se sabe cuando termina el ciclo revolucionario cuando se adopta una nueva constitución; pero en el caso cubano, ¿es la legalidad tan importante para un régimen que esperó ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Terry Eagleton characterized the last quarter of the nineteenth century as "an astonishing amalgam of spiritual and material ferment: the boisterous emergence of new political forces, to be sure, but also a veritable transformation of subjectivity, as the high-rationalist subject of Mill or Middlemarch gradually imploded into Madame Blavatsky and Dorian Gray."1 Following this characterization, I analyze how José Martí (1853–1895) navigated this ideological amalgamation, particularly in terms of his philosophical ideas. To do so, I will consider his writings exclusively in dialogue with the debates between materialists and spiritualists that took place during his lifetime.In making this decision I took into ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: En la madrugada del primero de enero de 1959, en cuanto supo de la huida del dictador Fulgencio Batista, el fotógrafo norteamericano Burt Glinn tomó un avión en el aeropuerto J. F. Kennedy rumbo a La Habana. En la isla, según narra en su libro de fotos Cuba 1959, observó que muchos opositores y críticos de la recién derrotada dictadura salían a las calles a celebrar el triunfo revolucionario vestidos de verde olivo, para confusión de quienes como él querían documentar la victoria de los rebeldes.1 "No estaba claro", dice, "quién era el rebelde legítimo y quién no hasta el día en que algunos de los fornidos y harapientos barbudos, los 'barbudos' de las montañas, llegaron vestidos con uniformes del ejército y ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: "¿Por qué tú eres así'" The question upsets; it is taken offensively, as a rejection of his lifestyle. It is his friend and guest that poses the question and later follows it with an accusation: "Tú no eres revolucionario." In this scene from Fresa y chocolate the disdain the militant student, David, expresses toward the effeminate mannerisms, or "monerías," of his friend Diego in part reflects a historical machismo inherited from the Spanish and cultivated in Cuban national identity formation since the late eighteenth century.1 However, for the interests of this article, I would like to point to another source of intolerance toward the feminine and accentuated gestures that Diego so emphatically exhibits from the ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The architects of Cuba's special relationship to the United States envisioned that, through trade preferences and foreign investment, Cuba might become the "garden spot" of its northern neighbor.1 For example, the special commissioner for the United States to Cuba and Puerto Rico, Robert P. Porter, considered the fruit industry in Cuba in 1899 to be in its infancy, and that its future development would "be of the vastest proportions." Somewhat optimistically, he predicted, "Cuba will control the future fruit supply of this country," and more accurately, that American capital would participate in this process.2 Shortly after he stepped down as military governor of Cuba in 1902, Leonard Wood and colleagues, in ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This article focuses on analyzing the leading macroeconomic trends and policies in Cuba from 1985 to 2013. In this period, the fall of the Soviet Union led to the biggest economic crisis of Cuba's entire revolutionary period. The government responded to the crisis by opening the economy to foreign investment, tourism, remittances, and self-employment. Toward the end of the 1990s, the impetus for structural change weakened. Then, between 2003 and 2004, when Cuba began to receive benefits from its alliance with Venezuela, the liberalization process halted and many reforms were even reversed. In the past ten years, President Raúl Castro returned and expanded the incomplete reforms of the 1990s.1In the early 1990s ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Eduardo Roca "Choco," Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2017, Te estoy mirando, 2010, collagraph, 25″ × 18″ (63.5cm × 47cm). Te estoy mirando is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Universidad del Franco-Condado, BesançonA la memoria de Manuel Gómez, esposo de Antonia EirizLos estudios de períodos particulares de la pintura cubana del siglo XX están emergiendo, pensemos en el volumen que Abigail McEwen publicó sobre la década de 1950.1 Si bien el criterio identitario, martiano, aplicado por Mc Ewen no me convence del todo, más allá de la clasificación por generaciones, comodín de muchas historias, de arte o de literatura, en todo el continente, Mc Ewen tiene el mérito de reconstruir el entramado de los años 50, de modo que por fin podemos pensar que nos vamos acercando a los actores de esta historia. Abrir los archivos personales permitirá dar un paso más en la captación de las estrategias ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: When I was growing up in Marianao near Havana in the 1940s and 1950s, Mazorra, the insane asylum, had become part of Cuban folklore as the place where Liborio, the cartoon character of the archetypal white Cuban, would have dispatched every oddball he'd run into during his meandering through the city. That, and the periodic exposés in the Cuban press of the poorly fed, emaciated inmates dressed in rags remained engraved in the memory of my generation.Jennifer Lambe, a young scholar at Brown University, has written a definitive story of the real Mazorra, from its foundation in the colonial Cuba of 1857 until the present, based on a thorough and magnificent job of mining the archives, periodicals, and documents ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In this fairly compact volume anthropologist Jason Yaremko examines the long and varied history of voluntary and involuntary migration of indigenous people from other parts of the Americas to Cuba. Given Cuba's proximity to Florida and Mexico, especially Yucatan, not surprisingly the largest documented movements to the island came from those places. Indeed, one of the important conclusions this book points to is the long-term strength and historical complexity of Cuba's ties to Florida and Mexico. The movements of people he discusses were in many respects the product of the nature of Spain's colonial empire in which administrative, financial, and ecclesiastical structures together with commercial and other economic ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Juan Carlos Flores: El mal vidriero. Como al personaje de Baudelaire, muchos lectores podrían reclamarle al poeta cubano no habernos entregados en su libro cristales bellos para ver la vida. Pero él no vendía sueños, de hecho, quizás si hubiera podido guardar alguno suyo intacto no hubiera tenido que escribir su obituario en el mes de septiembre del 2016. No le conocí. No pertenecemos a la misma generación; es en los años 90 que Flores acapara la atención de la crítica literaria ("Premio David de poesía," 1990; "Premio de la Crítica," 1994), para entonces, ya yo la ejercía fuera de la isla que abandonamos los artistas y escritores de los años 80 por esas terceras opciones que inauguraron el nomadismo que hoy domina ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In Cuban Underground Hip Hop, sociologist Tanya Saunders combines an abundance of information about the heyday of an Afro-descendant arts-based social movement in the Americas with a political urgency that centers on the decolonization of the hemisphere. She tells the story of the Cuban underground hip-hop movement (CUHHM) from 1998 to 2006, a group of DJs, MCs, and graffiti artists that leveled a "transnational Afro-diasporic challenge to the coloniality of American culture" (8). Through participant observation, interviews, and analysis of song lyrics and Cuban legal documents, Saunders gives an exhaustive and heterogeneous account of the movement, acknowledging its importance to Cuban cultural politics while also ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: El autor de El príncipe y la bella cubana (Verbum, 2014), Roberto G. Fernández, nació en Sagua La Grande, Cuba, en 1951. Su familia llegó a Estados Unidos en 1961, cuando él autor tenía diez años, asentándose en Miami. Se puede considerar, pues, a Fernández como un escritor de la generación 1.5, término popularizado por Gustavo Pérez Firmat en Life on the Hyphen (1994). Esta generación consiste en aquellos cubanos que tuvieron su niñez en Cuba y se hicieron adultos en Estados Unidos (como el mismo Firmat), y han sido estudiados bajo diferentes puntos de vista: desde el influyente estudio de Isabel Álvarez Borland, Cuban American Literature: From Person to Persona (1998) hasta el más reciente de Iraida H. López ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Pocas veces un libro puede llenar las expectativas de un grupo amplio de lectores. En el libro que recién se publica por el Fondo de Cultura Económica de México encontramos esa realidad. Un lenguaje ameno y científicamente profundo es lo que caracteriza esta edición que, sin duda, será un referente obligatorio para todos aquellos que se interesan por las cuestiones sociopolíticas de la Cuba actual. El lector que se adentra en él no sólo tendrá en sus manos una lectura amena sobre temas actuales del imaginario y el contexto cubano, sino también reflexiones diversas sobre la construcción de una nación, el análisis histórico preciso sobre la constitucionalidad cubana y el surgimiento de nuevas formas de entender a la ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In his most recent novel, Diary of Fire, Elías Miguel Muñoz tells the story of Camilo Macías, a graduate student and professor of Spanish who later decides to leave academia in order to focus on his creative writing. Beginning with a fire which the narrator is not yet prepared to discuss, the story recounts various memories of Camilo's life through letters, diary entries, descriptions of photographs, and excerpts of his novel, Cuba in Silence. By piecing together these stories, which are divided into five sections, Camilo seemingly seeks to discover himself. Through vignettes on love, loss, and survival, Diary of Fire chronicles Camilo's search for identity. Beginning during his days in graduate school and ending ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ernesto Che Guevara, a cincuenta años de su muerteA la ya voluminosa literatura sobre la vida y el pensamiento de Ernesto Che Guevara se une el reciente libro The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice, del reconocido intelectual y sociólogo Samuel Farber. Probablemente sea este uno de los análisis más equilibrados y objetivos que se hayan realizado sobre el mítico guerrillero argentino en los años más recientes. El texto recorre ágilmente desde la infancia y formación de Guevara hasta su muerte en Bolivia. En el volumen se nos ofrece un análisis de las principales ideas de izquierda de Guevara en permanente interacción con la época y el contexto sociopolítico. Guevara desde la formación como rebelde ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: El libro Voces del cambio en el emergente sector no estatal en Cuba, coordinado por el prestigioso profesor Carmelo Mesa-Lago en el que participó un colectivo integrado por Roberto Veiga, Lenier González, Sofía Vera y Aníbal Pérez, es una investigación seria, donde se utilizan instrumentos de medición para un tipo de resultados que es una práctica corriente en las ciencias sociales. Aunque hubiera sido interesante haber obtenido una mayor muestra, el haber realizado ochenta entrevistas para esta obra no lo demerita, los que hacen este tipo de trabajo saben los obstáculos que se atraviesan cuando se intenta hacer una encuesta en Cuba.La obra mencionada es de gran utilidad para los que se adentran en este importante ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: William Hernández (1971, Perico, Matanzas). A graduate from the Escuela Nacional de Arte (National Art School), William, as he is commonly known in the Cuban art world, began his artistic career in the difficult years of the so-called Special Period in the 1990s, when the Cuban economy and society experienced a deep crisis. In 1997 he obtained the Grand Prize of La Joven Estampa, a national competition of emerging artists working on engraving, sponsored by Casa de las Américas in Havana since 1987.Like many artists of his generation, William's work reflects on some of the changes that Cuban society experienced in the 1990s, when the island nation became increasingly inserted in global networks of trade and tourism. ... Read More Keywords: Cuba; Politics and culture; Music and state; Fresneda, Nieves,; Dance; Folk dancers; Cuban literature; Socialism and the arts; Castro, Fidel,; Education and state; Martí, José,; Race; Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás,; United States; Expor PubDate: 2019-03-16T00:00:00-05:00
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