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Envisioning Cuba
Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971
In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In "Visions of Power in Cuba," Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice. Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
488 pages, ebook
First published October 15, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 3, 2022
3.5 stars
Guerra writes about the radicalization of the Cuban revolution. She covers topics of religion, race, culture, and gender through a social and political look at Cuban history. She shows the revolution was made and spread mostly through talking/word of mouth. Guerra wants to refute the claim of Cuban exceptionality by comparative studies. Guerra takes a micro-historical look at this period in Cuba over a macro one.
Guerra writes about the radicalization of the Cuban revolution. She covers topics of religion, race, culture, and gender through a social and political look at Cuban history. She shows the revolution was made and spread mostly through talking/word of mouth. Guerra wants to refute the claim of Cuban exceptionality by comparative studies. Guerra takes a micro-historical look at this period in Cuba over a macro one.
March 13, 2025
i read select chapters for a class, but my professor wrote this so i'm counting it as having read the whole thing because i've listened to her lectures as well. she writes like she talks, in a very fragmented way that forces the reader to actively engage with the material and connect the dots for themself.
October 18, 2018
This took me 3000 years to read
June 23, 2018
Lillian Guerra has written a fresh and engaging account of Cuba’s “revolutionary transformation” in its founding decade of 1959-1971: “the real revolution” Fidel Castro promised on New Years’ Day of Year One. While it might seem by now a twice-told tale, Professor Guerra recites it with an insider’s cultural access and a mass of first-hand detail and documentation largely forgotten (some of it unknown) in most English-written tellings. Guerra takes a “gendered view” common to the new generation of women historians: focusing on horizontal relations of persons and society to the “patriarchal state,” as opposed to vertical recounting of high politics. While in practice, of course, the two are inseparable, her vision allows the distinct perspective she presents here; showing the “hidden transcripts” which in truth are always front and center.
Her main thesis is that of a revolution betrayed by its Lider Maximo’s quenchless quest for power at all social levels of faith: from middle-class democrats to religious and left intellectuals, organized labor, small mountain dirt farmers, and liberated urban blacks. As such it’s the standard one customary in describing the failures of “communist regimes,” morally and economically. The conclusion seems that the moral degeneration of power leads to economic prostration and personal alienation; that liberating Truth from its state prison will begin the regeneration of society at macro and micro levels, ushering the “real revolution” in fact not promise for the Cuban people.
All well and fine. But critical bells ring as this writer surveys the results of the same promises made in the 1980s. “We now know,” to quote cold war historian John Lewis Gaddis, how well they’ve worked and the track record of the last thirty years hasn’t fared better than Fidel’s. The Cuban revolutionary state, in its sui generis way, seems bent on closing its own revolutionary circle by instituting the failures of both Marxism-Leninism and post-Communism. Like the civil wars of Yugoslavia or the Russian Mafia, these too will be blamed on the past rather than current reality.
Ms. Guerra’s heroes in this narrative are those who tried rescuing freedom within the Revolution: from Commander Huber Matos to writer Heberto Padilla and countless ordinary Cubanos between. Why did they fail to do so? Guerra’s account here rather fails too, in assessing the root reason: they were also dependent on “the regime” for their careers and position. In bucking the will of its Comandante they found nothing at their back. She also buys into their version of 1959 politics: that the Communists were "infiltrating" the new regime. Nothing was further from the truth. The old PSP had only the power Fidel allowed it, as the backbone of his "revolutionary vanguard." Rather than criticize the true source of unwelcome change, liberals backlashed with sterile cold war Red-baiting which only opened the door to their own "gusano"-baiting. One suspects that if Fidel had turned the other way and jailed Che rather than Huber Matos, and purged the PSP, there'd be little outcry of "betrayal."
The Llano personalities at the center of her account were decent people who deserved better from history and their countrymen. But they suffered the same historic fate as many other liberals - crushed between the grindstones of a New Order and bitter reaction. Dependent on Fidel’s moral authority and armed power, they initially supported his bid to take over the Cuban Republic and transform it into a new state under a “vanguard new class.” They soon realized they were not of this vanguard, reserved for Fidel's companeros of the Sierra. The ensuing power struggles saw the Llano leaders purged and Fidel proceed (with Soviet subsidy) from political to social revolution, turning the Old Order upside down and inside out. These "betrayed" leaders “defected” (as did Fidel in the opposite direction) only to be betrayed yet again.
The “Llanistas” also stepped on their own feet by abdicating their responsibilities after New Year 1959: indulging in hero worship of a caudillo-warlord and his private army despite all the warnings of Latin American history; abrogating new elections rather than demanding them; cheering revolutionary tribunals instead of defending due process; most especially in failure to transcend the limitations of class and color at a revolutionary time. Here they might have gone far to counter not the Revolution, but its concentrations of power. Who needs individual rights and equity before the state more than the poor man? Or despised “marginals”? Ms. Guerra recounts how well-meaning Cubans helped dismantle the Old Republic and create the New; but shies from the necessary criticism of victims who helped shape their own oppression by identifying with power rather than criticize it at its most vulnerable period.
The US should take its share of blame. Just like the North’s failure to demand free elections before 1959 when they would have mattered, Washington refused to engage these Llano liberals in bridge-building to the New Cuba. Instead these people were stiffed, precisely because of their association with Fidel. Only when ejected and alienated were they courted by the CIA for various skullduggery, engineered by those basically unsympathetic to their own values, allowing Fidel to claim they had been traitors and secret agents all along. The US lost control of a satellite in '59 and was unable to accept a professedly neutralist regime in the Western Hemisphere, anymore than the USSR would have tolerated a Solidarity-led Poland on its doorstep. Such is the implacable logic of empire.
Perhaps the book’s most engaging chapter deals with the “Revolucion con Pachanga,” that lyrical year of 1960 and its revolutionary offensive when all seemed possible. The Llano was largely gone, yet the Revolution’s liberation was just being tasted by the “humble”: the poor and black and forgotten half of the nation. But as the second phase of the “revolutionary process” consolidated they learned the same lesson: pachanga is useful for turning an old world upside down, not running the business of a new one. Yet Guerra's detailing the embedded class, race, and gender prejudice still living in the Revolution becomes a bit of a yawn: after all, where was American society at the same time? For all the transcendent values claimed by both sides, old attitudes always die hard, and this gets to be a game of "look how hypocritical they were back then." Not like *us*, no! . . .
Guerra also indulges in some ideological polemics that don't hold up on closer analysis, especially in recounting Fidel's 1968 ultra-nationalization of small businesses. Guerra points to their success in meeting day-to-day consumer demand as proof of socialist failure, but overlooks that they were greatly dependent on state subsidy and contract: they did not "make it on their own" per se. Their success was largely determined by the cut-off of US imports, and the lack of modern retailing in Cuba. One modern capitalist big-box store dropped in Matanzas would massacre its barrio entrepreneurs as surely as Fidel's militia locking the doors. When she speaks of public recognition of "Communism's illegitimacy" (p. 316) following the failure of the 10-million ton zafra, she's indulging a personal cold war opinion condemning the Revolution itself that's rarely expressed in such sweeping terms on the island. The zafra's failure in 1970 was a domestic Vietnam for Cuba; the reaction was "zafra syndrom," as she writes, but as with the average American of the period, weariness did not lead to broad systemic repudiation.
There is also an ideological non-sequitur in her Epilogue, whereby she maintains that "in limiting citizens' economic independence from the state as much as possible, the government restricts their political autonomy" (p. 364); one's livelihood and career remains at risk through protest or dissent, necessitating removal to speak freely. True enough, as far as it goes in Cuba, but I see no indication in the US that public independence from a state employer has empowered the average citizen to elect truly representative government or stop its march to war. The right of economic dissent - like going on strike - is largely squelched in the private sector thanks to "capitalist reforms" where one is now totally dependent on private employment offered at-will, on take-it-or-leave-it terms. Video surveillance and audio recording are new norms. Background checks involving credit, legal, and even medical and genetic history are increasingly applied in "selective" manner. Yet this is the future political/economic freedom sought for Cubans by their "friends" in Washington. I suspect that the true result in Cuba will be an open floodgate flowing north, similar to Central America, long a beneficiary of limited state enterprise.
Fidel’s "grand narrative" survived despite its limping promises because - as Ms. Guerra concedes - it too was engaged in resistance, the ever-real struggle against dangerous, reactionary nitwits in Washington and Miami. These two narratives - Fidel's against counter-revolution and imperialism, the average citizen against a total state - complemented and in many ways neutralized each other. In this way the New Order could grow old yet still reinvent itself. Castro's shifting ideology was still part of his "war of movement" as a guerrilla. The era of Fidel lasted as long as Marti’s Republic. Doubtless new transformations are ahead; the "revolution that might have been" may yet be. May they indeed express the will of the humble - "to whom all make promises, and whom all deceive" - and not the powerful and well-connected.
Her main thesis is that of a revolution betrayed by its Lider Maximo’s quenchless quest for power at all social levels of faith: from middle-class democrats to religious and left intellectuals, organized labor, small mountain dirt farmers, and liberated urban blacks. As such it’s the standard one customary in describing the failures of “communist regimes,” morally and economically. The conclusion seems that the moral degeneration of power leads to economic prostration and personal alienation; that liberating Truth from its state prison will begin the regeneration of society at macro and micro levels, ushering the “real revolution” in fact not promise for the Cuban people.
All well and fine. But critical bells ring as this writer surveys the results of the same promises made in the 1980s. “We now know,” to quote cold war historian John Lewis Gaddis, how well they’ve worked and the track record of the last thirty years hasn’t fared better than Fidel’s. The Cuban revolutionary state, in its sui generis way, seems bent on closing its own revolutionary circle by instituting the failures of both Marxism-Leninism and post-Communism. Like the civil wars of Yugoslavia or the Russian Mafia, these too will be blamed on the past rather than current reality.
Ms. Guerra’s heroes in this narrative are those who tried rescuing freedom within the Revolution: from Commander Huber Matos to writer Heberto Padilla and countless ordinary Cubanos between. Why did they fail to do so? Guerra’s account here rather fails too, in assessing the root reason: they were also dependent on “the regime” for their careers and position. In bucking the will of its Comandante they found nothing at their back. She also buys into their version of 1959 politics: that the Communists were "infiltrating" the new regime. Nothing was further from the truth. The old PSP had only the power Fidel allowed it, as the backbone of his "revolutionary vanguard." Rather than criticize the true source of unwelcome change, liberals backlashed with sterile cold war Red-baiting which only opened the door to their own "gusano"-baiting. One suspects that if Fidel had turned the other way and jailed Che rather than Huber Matos, and purged the PSP, there'd be little outcry of "betrayal."
The Llano personalities at the center of her account were decent people who deserved better from history and their countrymen. But they suffered the same historic fate as many other liberals - crushed between the grindstones of a New Order and bitter reaction. Dependent on Fidel’s moral authority and armed power, they initially supported his bid to take over the Cuban Republic and transform it into a new state under a “vanguard new class.” They soon realized they were not of this vanguard, reserved for Fidel's companeros of the Sierra. The ensuing power struggles saw the Llano leaders purged and Fidel proceed (with Soviet subsidy) from political to social revolution, turning the Old Order upside down and inside out. These "betrayed" leaders “defected” (as did Fidel in the opposite direction) only to be betrayed yet again.
The “Llanistas” also stepped on their own feet by abdicating their responsibilities after New Year 1959: indulging in hero worship of a caudillo-warlord and his private army despite all the warnings of Latin American history; abrogating new elections rather than demanding them; cheering revolutionary tribunals instead of defending due process; most especially in failure to transcend the limitations of class and color at a revolutionary time. Here they might have gone far to counter not the Revolution, but its concentrations of power. Who needs individual rights and equity before the state more than the poor man? Or despised “marginals”? Ms. Guerra recounts how well-meaning Cubans helped dismantle the Old Republic and create the New; but shies from the necessary criticism of victims who helped shape their own oppression by identifying with power rather than criticize it at its most vulnerable period.
The US should take its share of blame. Just like the North’s failure to demand free elections before 1959 when they would have mattered, Washington refused to engage these Llano liberals in bridge-building to the New Cuba. Instead these people were stiffed, precisely because of their association with Fidel. Only when ejected and alienated were they courted by the CIA for various skullduggery, engineered by those basically unsympathetic to their own values, allowing Fidel to claim they had been traitors and secret agents all along. The US lost control of a satellite in '59 and was unable to accept a professedly neutralist regime in the Western Hemisphere, anymore than the USSR would have tolerated a Solidarity-led Poland on its doorstep. Such is the implacable logic of empire.
Perhaps the book’s most engaging chapter deals with the “Revolucion con Pachanga,” that lyrical year of 1960 and its revolutionary offensive when all seemed possible. The Llano was largely gone, yet the Revolution’s liberation was just being tasted by the “humble”: the poor and black and forgotten half of the nation. But as the second phase of the “revolutionary process” consolidated they learned the same lesson: pachanga is useful for turning an old world upside down, not running the business of a new one. Yet Guerra's detailing the embedded class, race, and gender prejudice still living in the Revolution becomes a bit of a yawn: after all, where was American society at the same time? For all the transcendent values claimed by both sides, old attitudes always die hard, and this gets to be a game of "look how hypocritical they were back then." Not like *us*, no! . . .
Guerra also indulges in some ideological polemics that don't hold up on closer analysis, especially in recounting Fidel's 1968 ultra-nationalization of small businesses. Guerra points to their success in meeting day-to-day consumer demand as proof of socialist failure, but overlooks that they were greatly dependent on state subsidy and contract: they did not "make it on their own" per se. Their success was largely determined by the cut-off of US imports, and the lack of modern retailing in Cuba. One modern capitalist big-box store dropped in Matanzas would massacre its barrio entrepreneurs as surely as Fidel's militia locking the doors. When she speaks of public recognition of "Communism's illegitimacy" (p. 316) following the failure of the 10-million ton zafra, she's indulging a personal cold war opinion condemning the Revolution itself that's rarely expressed in such sweeping terms on the island. The zafra's failure in 1970 was a domestic Vietnam for Cuba; the reaction was "zafra syndrom," as she writes, but as with the average American of the period, weariness did not lead to broad systemic repudiation.
There is also an ideological non-sequitur in her Epilogue, whereby she maintains that "in limiting citizens' economic independence from the state as much as possible, the government restricts their political autonomy" (p. 364); one's livelihood and career remains at risk through protest or dissent, necessitating removal to speak freely. True enough, as far as it goes in Cuba, but I see no indication in the US that public independence from a state employer has empowered the average citizen to elect truly representative government or stop its march to war. The right of economic dissent - like going on strike - is largely squelched in the private sector thanks to "capitalist reforms" where one is now totally dependent on private employment offered at-will, on take-it-or-leave-it terms. Video surveillance and audio recording are new norms. Background checks involving credit, legal, and even medical and genetic history are increasingly applied in "selective" manner. Yet this is the future political/economic freedom sought for Cubans by their "friends" in Washington. I suspect that the true result in Cuba will be an open floodgate flowing north, similar to Central America, long a beneficiary of limited state enterprise.
Fidel’s "grand narrative" survived despite its limping promises because - as Ms. Guerra concedes - it too was engaged in resistance, the ever-real struggle against dangerous, reactionary nitwits in Washington and Miami. These two narratives - Fidel's against counter-revolution and imperialism, the average citizen against a total state - complemented and in many ways neutralized each other. In this way the New Order could grow old yet still reinvent itself. Castro's shifting ideology was still part of his "war of movement" as a guerrilla. The era of Fidel lasted as long as Marti’s Republic. Doubtless new transformations are ahead; the "revolution that might have been" may yet be. May they indeed express the will of the humble - "to whom all make promises, and whom all deceive" - and not the powerful and well-connected.
March 3, 2014
Océanos de tinta han corrido y seguirán corriendo sobre la revolución cubana. Paradójicamente, esto no significa que sea tarea fácil acceder a una literatura realmente científica sobre el tema, controlada por la garantía que ofrece el rigor metodológico de la ciencia histórica. Es natural: todo historiador sabe que deben pasar décadas (cincuenta años suele ser el número mágico) para que las aguas turbulentas de los acontecimientos en desarrollo se decanten, los archivos se abran y la distancia cronológica “enfríe” las pasiones (y, en algunos casos, las responsabilidades penales) y sea posible adquirir la perspectiva y la objetividad que son propias de la necesaria distancia que exige el rigor del método que busca la verdad. Como el fenómeno que nos ocupa sigue en pleno desarrollo —y es por su propia naturaleza política, agriamente polémico—, es muy natural que la mayor parte del material que se encuentre esté marcado por ese mismo carácter partidista. Como se trata de un régimen dictatorial de izquierdas, mucho de lo que se conseguirá estará signado por la propaganda pura y dura orquestada por el régimen y cultivada refinadamente en algunas academias “primermundistas" que encuentran en la defensa de la leyenda aurea del castrismo una obligada forma de autojustificación moral. Si se quiere una versión más objetiva, desde la perspectiva de las víctimas, por decirlo así, hay muchas obras de carácter testimonial, que son de gran valor, pero su propio carácter personal implica que hay que considerarlas más bien fuentes para la investigación histórica posterior, que las someterá a la necesaria crítica y valoración en orden a la elaboración de una perspectiva más global.
Como quiera que el capítulo abierto por Castro en 1959 no se ha cerrado todavía, esta carencia de una historia rigurosa y académica del mismo es comprensible, si bien frustrante para el lector interesado. Es justamente por eso que la obra que estoy reseñando aquí destaca notablemente. La autora es Profesora de Historia Cubana y Caribeña en la University of Florida. Hija de padres cubanos exilados, nacida en Estados Unidos, posee simultáneamente la necesaria distancia que exige el rigor de la disciplina histórica y la cercanía —intimidad, incluso— con el país y el fenómeno estudiado que le permite comprenderlo con una profundidad que no sería posible en un investigador completamente ajeno a la realidad cubana. Ha podido así escribir la que a mi humilde juicio es la mejor historia de la revolución cubana que se haya publicado hasta el momento.
No se trata, sin embargo, de una mera narración cronológica de los “hechos” históricos, sino de un estudio mucho más estructural que lineal para sacar a la luz los movimientos profundos, tectónicos, que hicieron posible la consolidación de la que es, sin duda, la única dictadura totalitaria que se ha logrado instalar en nuestro continente. La obra cubre el período comprendido entre 1959 y 1971, es decir, entre el inicio de la revolución y el famoso “caso Padilla”, que marcó la ruptura del consenso a favor del castrismo reinante entre la intelectualidad mundial. En este sentido, no cubre toda la historia del proceso cubano hasta nuestros días, cosa que naturalmente nos hubiese gustado mucho, pero el rigor y la acuciosidad de la autora justifica plenamente la limitación. De hecho, ya en sus actuales dimensiones se trata de una obra monumental.
La investigación se centra en responder a la pregunta acerca de cómo fue posible para Fidel Castro alcanzar un consenso social tan abrumador y aplastante como para lograr permanecer en el poder hasta el día de hoy. De allí que sea completamente lógico que la autora se concentre en los años de consolidación del poder castrista y haga una suerte de disección del proceso que revele las estrategias utilizadas por los barbudos para lograrlo. Utiliza para ello la metáfora del palimpsesto, aquellos pergaminos escritos que eran raspados por los copistas de la Antigüedad y la Edad Media para borrar su contenido y poder así reutilizarlos, escribiendo un nuevo texto sobre ellos. La caída de Batista supuso un remesón de la sociedad cubana que despertó todo tipo de expectativas democratizadoras y modernizadoras en su seno. A diferencia de Venezuela, cuando, un año antes, la caída de Pérez Jiménez despertó expectativas similares, pero que se canalizaron hacia la difícil conformación de una democracia de partidos de carácter limitadamente liberal, el proceso cubano fue hábilmente secuestrado por Castro, quien lo condujo hacia el establecimiento del único Estado comunista de América, frustrando con ello la posibilidad del surgimiento de una sociedad democrática en la Isla. El entusiasmo inicial de la revolución originó una explosión de narrativas propias de cada sector social que expresaban no solo su apoyo, sino las esperanzas que querían ver realizadas en aquella nueva e inédita experiencia política. Como un siniestro copista, Castro reescribía sobre esas narrativas de la gente la suya propia, cuya vocación no era tanto la de ser dominante como la de ser la única. Todas las expectativas tenían que expresarse y acomodarse dentro de los términos de la narrativa hegemónica que el dictador deseaba. De lo contrario, eran consideradas expresiones de oposición al régimen y, como tal, execradas.
La gran narrativa fidelista, entonces, exigía la unanimidad forzada de toda la población en torno a la idea de que la represión del disenso era necesaria para poder garantizar la efectiva realización de las expectativas de progreso social que se despertaron a la caída de la dictadura batistiana. De allí que Castro viera en el comunismo el sistema perfecto para lograr sus fines de dominio total y, en consecuencia, procediera a desplazar de los cargos clave del Estado a las personas que provenían del llamado Directorio Revolucionario y del Movimiento 26 de Julio y que no se sumaban dócilmente al discurso hegemónico por individuos provenientes del PSP, es decir, por comunistas. A este proceso de totalización de la sociedad cubana y de cooptación del proceso político colaboró en no poca medida la torpeza de la actuación de los EE. UU., que proveyó a Castro de un elemento central de toda narrativa totalitaria, particularmente útil en un país con un acendrado nacionalismo como es Cuba: el enemigo externo, que permite unificar a todas las voluntades en torno a líder la nación que se opone gallardamente, cual David, al Goliat “imperialista”.
El libro nos va mostrando cómo este proceso de “ortopedia” del disenso se desplegó en diferentes sectores sociales, todos ellos plenos de justificadas expectativas de emancipación y progreso: las mujeres, los negros, los campesinos, los jóvenes, los intelectuales, entre otros. A medida que avanza la lectura, se hace evidente cómo se fue conformando una atmósfera densa, opresiva, que terminó ahogando incluso a la joven intelectualidad comprometida con lo que creían un proceso político justo y necesario. El detallado análisis del “caso Padilla” revela cómo la locura ideológica del régimen llegó al paroxismo. Un particular valor agregado del libro residen en el hecho de que la autora pudo acceder casi que por casualidad al legajo original del caso. Paradójicamente, fue tal el peso de la losa de silencio represivo que cayó sobre él, que los archiveros no tenían ni idea de la importancia política de aquellos papeles, que la autora pudo disimuladamente digitalizar y utilizar entre las fuentes de su trabajo.
Este libro me parece de lectura obligada para los venezolanos, quienes estamos padeciendo desde hace quince años el intento de establecer una dictadura comunista en nuestro país, precisamente bajo la asesoría —parece incluso que la dirección— de los hermanos Castro. Desde el libro de la Profesora Guerra, sin embargo, es posible atisbar algo de esperanza: aquí ha fracasado la condición sine qua non que sí se presentó en Cuba, a saber, la construcción de una unanimidad (aquí lo llaman, gramscianamente, hegemonía comunicacional) en torno al chavismo y su narrativa. En su peor momento, la disidencia venezolana no bajó nunca del 40 % de la población. Hoy en día, es muy probable incluso que sea mayoritaria. Nos sugiere, también, que la vía para la construcción de una sociedad plural y democrática pasa por permitir la expresión de las legítimas expectativas de todos los sectores sociales que están urgidos de mejores condiciones de vida, evitando muy cuidadosamente el secuestro y la “ortopedia” de esos anhelos en función de un proyecto político personalista.
No puedo sino recomendar este excelente libro. Hay que agregar que su alto nivel académico no implica que estemos frente a un pesado “ladrillo” escrito en la pedante lengua de algunos “especialistas”. Por el contrario, se trata de una obra muy ágil, que se deja leer con gusto, a pesar de sus 512 páginas. Sería muy importante que se editara pronto una traducción al castellano. Se trata de una obra que sin duda alguna será considerada pionera en el futuro de la investigación histórica sobre la revolución cubana.
Como quiera que el capítulo abierto por Castro en 1959 no se ha cerrado todavía, esta carencia de una historia rigurosa y académica del mismo es comprensible, si bien frustrante para el lector interesado. Es justamente por eso que la obra que estoy reseñando aquí destaca notablemente. La autora es Profesora de Historia Cubana y Caribeña en la University of Florida. Hija de padres cubanos exilados, nacida en Estados Unidos, posee simultáneamente la necesaria distancia que exige el rigor de la disciplina histórica y la cercanía —intimidad, incluso— con el país y el fenómeno estudiado que le permite comprenderlo con una profundidad que no sería posible en un investigador completamente ajeno a la realidad cubana. Ha podido así escribir la que a mi humilde juicio es la mejor historia de la revolución cubana que se haya publicado hasta el momento.
No se trata, sin embargo, de una mera narración cronológica de los “hechos” históricos, sino de un estudio mucho más estructural que lineal para sacar a la luz los movimientos profundos, tectónicos, que hicieron posible la consolidación de la que es, sin duda, la única dictadura totalitaria que se ha logrado instalar en nuestro continente. La obra cubre el período comprendido entre 1959 y 1971, es decir, entre el inicio de la revolución y el famoso “caso Padilla”, que marcó la ruptura del consenso a favor del castrismo reinante entre la intelectualidad mundial. En este sentido, no cubre toda la historia del proceso cubano hasta nuestros días, cosa que naturalmente nos hubiese gustado mucho, pero el rigor y la acuciosidad de la autora justifica plenamente la limitación. De hecho, ya en sus actuales dimensiones se trata de una obra monumental.
La investigación se centra en responder a la pregunta acerca de cómo fue posible para Fidel Castro alcanzar un consenso social tan abrumador y aplastante como para lograr permanecer en el poder hasta el día de hoy. De allí que sea completamente lógico que la autora se concentre en los años de consolidación del poder castrista y haga una suerte de disección del proceso que revele las estrategias utilizadas por los barbudos para lograrlo. Utiliza para ello la metáfora del palimpsesto, aquellos pergaminos escritos que eran raspados por los copistas de la Antigüedad y la Edad Media para borrar su contenido y poder así reutilizarlos, escribiendo un nuevo texto sobre ellos. La caída de Batista supuso un remesón de la sociedad cubana que despertó todo tipo de expectativas democratizadoras y modernizadoras en su seno. A diferencia de Venezuela, cuando, un año antes, la caída de Pérez Jiménez despertó expectativas similares, pero que se canalizaron hacia la difícil conformación de una democracia de partidos de carácter limitadamente liberal, el proceso cubano fue hábilmente secuestrado por Castro, quien lo condujo hacia el establecimiento del único Estado comunista de América, frustrando con ello la posibilidad del surgimiento de una sociedad democrática en la Isla. El entusiasmo inicial de la revolución originó una explosión de narrativas propias de cada sector social que expresaban no solo su apoyo, sino las esperanzas que querían ver realizadas en aquella nueva e inédita experiencia política. Como un siniestro copista, Castro reescribía sobre esas narrativas de la gente la suya propia, cuya vocación no era tanto la de ser dominante como la de ser la única. Todas las expectativas tenían que expresarse y acomodarse dentro de los términos de la narrativa hegemónica que el dictador deseaba. De lo contrario, eran consideradas expresiones de oposición al régimen y, como tal, execradas.
La gran narrativa fidelista, entonces, exigía la unanimidad forzada de toda la población en torno a la idea de que la represión del disenso era necesaria para poder garantizar la efectiva realización de las expectativas de progreso social que se despertaron a la caída de la dictadura batistiana. De allí que Castro viera en el comunismo el sistema perfecto para lograr sus fines de dominio total y, en consecuencia, procediera a desplazar de los cargos clave del Estado a las personas que provenían del llamado Directorio Revolucionario y del Movimiento 26 de Julio y que no se sumaban dócilmente al discurso hegemónico por individuos provenientes del PSP, es decir, por comunistas. A este proceso de totalización de la sociedad cubana y de cooptación del proceso político colaboró en no poca medida la torpeza de la actuación de los EE. UU., que proveyó a Castro de un elemento central de toda narrativa totalitaria, particularmente útil en un país con un acendrado nacionalismo como es Cuba: el enemigo externo, que permite unificar a todas las voluntades en torno a líder la nación que se opone gallardamente, cual David, al Goliat “imperialista”.
El libro nos va mostrando cómo este proceso de “ortopedia” del disenso se desplegó en diferentes sectores sociales, todos ellos plenos de justificadas expectativas de emancipación y progreso: las mujeres, los negros, los campesinos, los jóvenes, los intelectuales, entre otros. A medida que avanza la lectura, se hace evidente cómo se fue conformando una atmósfera densa, opresiva, que terminó ahogando incluso a la joven intelectualidad comprometida con lo que creían un proceso político justo y necesario. El detallado análisis del “caso Padilla” revela cómo la locura ideológica del régimen llegó al paroxismo. Un particular valor agregado del libro residen en el hecho de que la autora pudo acceder casi que por casualidad al legajo original del caso. Paradójicamente, fue tal el peso de la losa de silencio represivo que cayó sobre él, que los archiveros no tenían ni idea de la importancia política de aquellos papeles, que la autora pudo disimuladamente digitalizar y utilizar entre las fuentes de su trabajo.
Este libro me parece de lectura obligada para los venezolanos, quienes estamos padeciendo desde hace quince años el intento de establecer una dictadura comunista en nuestro país, precisamente bajo la asesoría —parece incluso que la dirección— de los hermanos Castro. Desde el libro de la Profesora Guerra, sin embargo, es posible atisbar algo de esperanza: aquí ha fracasado la condición sine qua non que sí se presentó en Cuba, a saber, la construcción de una unanimidad (aquí lo llaman, gramscianamente, hegemonía comunicacional) en torno al chavismo y su narrativa. En su peor momento, la disidencia venezolana no bajó nunca del 40 % de la población. Hoy en día, es muy probable incluso que sea mayoritaria. Nos sugiere, también, que la vía para la construcción de una sociedad plural y democrática pasa por permitir la expresión de las legítimas expectativas de todos los sectores sociales que están urgidos de mejores condiciones de vida, evitando muy cuidadosamente el secuestro y la “ortopedia” de esos anhelos en función de un proyecto político personalista.
No puedo sino recomendar este excelente libro. Hay que agregar que su alto nivel académico no implica que estemos frente a un pesado “ladrillo” escrito en la pedante lengua de algunos “especialistas”. Por el contrario, se trata de una obra muy ágil, que se deja leer con gusto, a pesar de sus 512 páginas. Sería muy importante que se editara pronto una traducción al castellano. Se trata de una obra que sin duda alguna será considerada pionera en el futuro de la investigación histórica sobre la revolución cubana.
September 27, 2021
I picked this title after I heard Joshua Jelly-Schapiro reference it. Guerra did an excellent job in her research accessing primary and secondary sources in the US and Havana; she also interviewed many surviving participants in the events presented in the book.
For me it was a learning experience finding out about all these "campaigns" and programs the Revolutionary government set up to improve the living conditions of the people of the island, but also to boost, justify, promote its own agenda, its dominance and survival.
Disappointing were the many grammatical errors in Spanish.
For me it was a learning experience finding out about all these "campaigns" and programs the Revolutionary government set up to improve the living conditions of the people of the island, but also to boost, justify, promote its own agenda, its dominance and survival.
Disappointing were the many grammatical errors in Spanish.
February 1, 2014
Great book- signed by the author here: http://www.amazon.com/Visions-Power-C...
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