Parameters, Uncertainty and Recognition: The Politics of Culture in Cuba 71
Post- Soviet DownsizingCuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes contends that the three major fea-
tures of the post-Soviet period for writers and artists has been “the winning
of space by the creators to express themselves,” the “crisis of cultural pro-
duction” (particularly in the first half of the 1990s) and “the massive (volun-
tary) exile of Cuban artists” (Padura Fuentes, 2007: 350). What Padura
Fuentes presents as a “winning of space,” presumably earned by, not merely
granted to, “creators,” Yoáni Sánchez sees as mutual accommodation with
the state. For her, “the advent of the nineties substituted the carrot for the
stick:”
Instead of repudiation rallies—screaming mobs surrounding their homes—public
scorn and threats of prison, intellectuals were offered small stipends. These were
no longer the times of the so-called Padilla Affair, in which a visibly frightened poet
was forced to read a public mea culpa for the verses that flowed from his pen, and
ultimately to pay for his “sins” with a decade in prison followed by exile. Now they
decided to capture the intellectuals with perks, such as permission to travel abroad
and the possibility of paying for the trips in national currency, instead of the high
cost convertible pesos required from other Cubans. Members of the Cuban Writers
and Artists Union (UNEAC) were allowed to have an email account, and some
even received a prized home internet connection (Sánchez, 2010; see also Geoffray,
2008: 112; Pérez & Sánchez Mejía, 1996).A similar policy of the “carrot” was successfully implemented for decades by
the PRI in Mexico.
The opening of the cultural sector to transnational market forces in the
1990s prompted cultural agents to modify their strategies for recognition.
The “commodification of [the Cuban] identity,” for instance, had an impact
on the art and literature of the “special period” (Whitfield, 2008: 2). The
time when everything was either mandatory or forbidden came to an end.
Before one concludes that these are evidence of liberalization, it is useful to
consider Javier Corrales’ interpretation of uneven economic reforms in- On the UNEAC website, Otero (2010) remembers that “En nuestra Unión de Escritores
y Artistas quedó nítidamente señalado que desde los intelectuales que fundaron nuestra nacio-
nalidad hasta quienes empuñaron las armas para defender nuestra revolución socialista existía
una continuidad. Un mismo latido, una misma razón, un mismo ímpetu es el que ha definido
a nuestros creadores en su búsqueda de una transformación de la vida. Hubo escritores y
artistas en Yara y en el Moncada, los hubo en Baire y en Girón, los hubo en la milicia y en la
zafra, los hubo en las líneas antifascistas de España, en el Escambray, en las brozas de África,
los hubo en todos los enfrentamientos, en todas las trincheras, en todas las lidias ideológicas.
Y con ese mismo espíritu combativo y resuelto la UNEAC continúa.”