70 Chapter 3
the average citizen, conditional on their loyalty to La Revolución.^4 Whatever
extra “space” they enjoy, the argument goes, it must have been laboriously
earned. From there it is tempting to speculate that in a transition to a more
open Cuba, intellectuals would find themselves in the forefront of the eman-
cipation movement.
The available evidence suggests that cultural agents in Cuba crave less for
autonomy than for recognition—by peers, cultural institutions and especially
by the state. They probably crave for a certain degree autonomy, for it is nec-
essary for artistic or intellectual development. Furthermore, it is probably
true that art, literature and at least some of the work done by social scientists
can be in and of themselves a repository of autonomy, resistance and even
opposition to dominant values and institutions (van Delden and Grenier,
2009).^5 Artists and writers (or shall we say, their work) can even be unwit-
tingly critical. This is why autocrats never completely trust them and rarely
give them any political power. Even official art, literature and scholarship
can be the depot of counter-narratives (Suleiman, 1983). Finally, ideological
cravings were a important variable for some years after the 1959 victory.
Artists and writers always seek recognition, at least by some peers. In Cuba
the battles within the intelligentsia during the sixties was clearly a battle for
recognition by the state fueled by an inflation of ideological cravings. The
typical “official intellectual” of the following decades is the writer-bureaucrat
who achieved recognition by the state at the price of his/her autonomy, with
or without ideological cravings. As Lisandro Otero once proclaimed, during
the fourth congress (1988) of the Union of Cuban writers and Artists, “el
intelectual en una sociedad auténticamente revolucionaria tiene ante sí el
deber de consentir” (UNEAC, 1988: 2).^6 Over the past twenty years cultural
agents present (or reinvent) themselves as craving for more autonomy, less
ideology but no less recognition, this time not only by the state, cultural
institutions and peers but also, significantly, by the global market, the access
to which being granted by the state.
- Cuban sociologist Haroldo Dilla talks about “las precariedades de la subordinación nego-
ciada” (Dilla, 2007). Similar observations have been made about the "velvet prison" of artists
under state socialism (Haraszti, 1987; Fernandes, 2006: 188). - Haroldo Dilla argues that in Cuba social scientists have less autonomy than artists,
"because the field is subject to harsh scrutiny by the ideological apparatus, which is inextrica-
bly linked to the fact that, unlike artists, social scientists have the professional obligation to
demonstrate, as well as the temptation to solve" (Dilla, 2005: 39). I would argue that in fact,
writers and sometimes artists often experience this same craving to demonstrate and solve,
and for the benefit of the public at large, not just students and colleagues.