Ideology and the war for Cuba's soul and markets
Campa, Roman de la
In the last year the American focus on Cuba has shifted from emigration to trade. The threat of unwanted landings of hundreds of thousands of boat people has abated. Nearly all the Guantinamo...
...Nearly all the Guantinamo refugees have been transferred to Florida without incident...
...At one point, Castro seemed to suggest that Cuba was willing to market the 20 ~ DISSENT Politics Abroad book in Spanish in a joint venture with Powell for sales strictly outside Cuba...
...But such selfcelebration loses its savor when Castro is found happily toasting an increasingly transnational moneyed class, while continuing to impose himself on the Cuban people...
...invasion of Cuba, Castro will call for unity against the colossus to the north, and Clinton will support a tightening of the embargo, at least until the fall elections...
...David—a young, male, mildly homophobic, militant but still impressionable student—turns to a marginalized gay tutor and a prostitute for lessons on great Cuban literature, true comradeship, and lasting love...
...While courting international investment, the regime remains determined in its efforts at internal control...
...Is Castro ready and willing to move toward economic change or is he just pretending...
...Coast Guard, which then provided immediate rescue...
...Cuba recently shot down two Miami-based Cessna planes, resulting in the death of four Cuban exiles...
...Alea and Tabio's film presents a nationalism capable of bridging the gap between Cuba and its exile community...
...Not all Americans have reconciled themselves to neoliberal capitalism as a new form of global manifest destiny...
...It is important to note, however, that the Cuban Council remains unsupported or under suspicion by the most powerful exile organization in the United States, the Cuban National Foundation, headed by Jorge Mas Canosa...
...But it should be noted that Strawberry and Chocolate ultimately calls for cultural conservatism as a barrier against national disintegration...
...One couldn't find a more biting and yet refreshing critique of the revolution as an ongoing cultural project...
...It is a significant internal threat to Castro's rule...
...For those who cling to Castro and Cuba as symbols of revolutionary defiance, such moments will require ever greater acts of faith and perhaps even nostalgia...
...It serves as an umbrella or network for more than ninety nongovernmental organizations...
...In one of its first official communiques, released in December 1995, the council called for a peaceful transition to a more democratic state of law, amnesty for political prisoners, universally recognized human rights, and economic liberalization for all Cubans...
...Disparities between those with access to dollars and those without it has reached intolerable proportions...
...The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an exile organization whose primary purpose has been to spot Cuban rafters in the Florida Straits and inform the U.S...
...The Cuban Council is outlawed in Cuba...
...When asked about Colin Powell's book My American Journey, Castro revealed that a team of forty translators had rendered the work into Spanish in four days...
...After various attempts to warn the pilots over the past few months, Castro took the most violent and dramatic course of action against them: he ordered MIG fighters to blow the exile planes out of the skies...
...The only problem is that neither side of the conflict can unambivalently shed its long-standing ideological objections to such a conclusion...
...At the root of their objections, it would appear, is an uneasiness with the political culture ofglobalization--an uncertain longing, perhaps, for a more principled world order where foreign policy could still speak (or at least pretend to speak) for American democratic values...
...Once the wealth of the exiles is felt in Cuba and the regime's control of the written word wanes, will anyone still care about the cultural program sketched in Strawberry and Chocolate...
...The film is a far cry from Socialist Realism...
...On the political front, a new organization, the Cuban Council, has come to life...
...After the agreement between the United States and Cuba declaring rafters illegal, Brothers to the Rescue began to undertake riskier missions, including flights directly over Havana to drop anti-Castro leaflets...
...Did that festive gathering constitute the dawn of a New World Order, where former guerrillas and investors can finally come together...
...In contrast to such yearnings for an Evil Empire to deplore, consider a striking event of last autumn--the love feast between an aging but bornagainneoliberal Fidel Castro and corporate America at the UN anniversary celebration in New York...
...In one respect, Castro's continued presence on the international scene ought to gratify the American right...
...Neither the English nor the Spanish version was for sale to ordinary Cubans...
...This, in itself, is indicative of a much greater level of pluralistic engagement by the Cuban people than most American commentators could have imagined even a year ago...
...Many believe that the outstanding issues between the two countries are now overwhelmingly economic...
...Strawberry and Chocolate received an Oscar nomination for the best foreign film of 1995...
...With the exception of China, the world community found such action wholly incommensurate with the threat posed by the planes...
...Ideological ambivalence in Cuba is also evident in the cultural sphere...
...the translation was done solely for use at the highest levels of government...
...And what of the situation within Cuba...
...William Satire and A.M Rosenthal, for example, have inveighed against lifting the embargo...
...David's new tutors emphasize better diction, proper grammar, canonical Cuban literature, the music of the fifties, religious observance, and the hidden beauty of old Havana...
...Foreign ownership of business is now allowed in Cuba, though the labor force must be contracted solely through the state...
...q SPRING • 1996 • 21...
...But agreements or any sign of stability between Cuba and the United States are always subject to the needs and concerns of the Cuban exile community, whose political influence in South Florida has grown considerably...
...The February attack on exile planes was likely intended to divert attention from this opposition force...
...It is clear that the thirty-year-old embargo of the Cuban economy is a relic of the cold SPRING • 1996 • 19 Politics Abroad war--and an obstacle to the triumphant march of global capitalism...
...In an apparent quid pro quo with Washington—much deplored in Miami— Castro and the United States made it illegal for Cubans to take to the seas toward American shores...
...In an hour-long CNN interview with Bemard Shaw, the Cuban leader broke new ideological ground as he spoke of the "morality" of capitalist investors--waxing philosophic about how impressed he was with their culture of competition and their lack of political prejudice in their choice of investment opportunities...
...For the first time since the revolution, taxes have been introduced to redistribute wealth from those who have access to dollars to their less fortunate fellow citizens...
...Indeed, the film's richest irony may well be that such an emphasis on literary values is most feasible in a socialist society that lacks creature comforts, idolizes books, reveres high culture, and covets censored works...
...He ought to constitute a living reminder of all that the Forces of Righteousness vanquished during the cold war...
...Unlike previous provocations and violent episodes involving Miami, Havana, and the United States, this one will only briefly follow the historical pattern set during the cold war...
...It is not clear, however, how such cultural conservatism will fare in the face of the material advantages that the exiles command...
...In time, however, globalization will reassume its commanding position in the current geopolitical spectrum and the politics of Cuba will return to trade...
...wages are charged in hard currency to employers and paid out in pesos...
...Perhaps the clearest glimpse comes from recent films such as Strawberry and Chocolate, directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio...
...Miami will once again rally in asking for a U.S...
Vol. 43 • April 1996 • No. 2
