Politics and Civil Society in Cuba

The Sparks of Civil Society in Cuba: Afro-Cuban Cultural Production, Art Collectives, and

The hip hop movement, which started to form during the 1980s in

Cuba with breakdancing, and emerged strongly with its own Cuban

rap production by the mid-1990s, was a vital part of the larger and

more recent movement among young mostly non-white Cubans to

claim a public space for expression of social concerns and criticisms,

and to lay claim to an Afro-Cuban and/or diasporic identity. Building

on the efforts of diverse musical and artistic predecessors, rap musi-

cians today are contributing strongly to an increasingly racially-con-

scious youth movement. Nonetheless, popular cultural manifestations,

whether in the form of Afro-Cuban religion or music, are rarely men-

tioned in the academic civil society debate inside or outside of Cuba.

The fact that a significant percentage of the producers, participants

and audiences are considered “marginal” may explain in part why

much of the associated contribution to civil society has been ignored

as such.

Art and the Public Sphere in the 1970s and 1980s

The moment that has been canonized as the harbinger of the New

Cuban Art was the 1981 group exhibition Volumen Uno (See Mos-

quera, 2002). The artists involved had begun working in various ways

during the latter part of the 1970s to break free of the dogmatic style

and pedagogy that had had been imported from the Soviet Union. As

the 1980s progressed, art schools began to implement curricular

reforms. At the same time, the Soviet Union was experiencing the

effects of policies of glasnost and perestroika, momentous changes

that had a profound effect in Cuba. The external political changes

prompted young artists to react to the new situation. Amidst the eco-

nomic, social and political tumult, artists took stronger and more pro-

vocative stances and engaged in ever more vigorous criticism of the

government.

The 1980s saw the formation of a significant number of art collec-

tives, springing mostly (though not exclusively) from Cuba’s art

schools. Breaking new ground by presenting their work outside of