72 Chapter 3
Cuba. For Corrales, these reforms “served to strengthen the power of the
state vis-à-vis society, and within the state, the power of hard-liners.” He
continues: “This new type of state, which I call ‘the gatekeeper state,’ domi-
nates society through a new mechanism-it fragments the economy into dif-
ferent sectors of varying degrees of profitability and then determines which
citizens have access to each respective sector” (Corrales, 2002). The “gate-
keeper” model applies to the cultural field as well. Not all writers and artists
benefit equally from the new environment. Furthermore, one author sug-
gested that the “exodus has become one of the most profitable industry for
the Cuban government: sale of exit visas, invitation cards and passports—‘all
in dollars, of course’”(García, 1998: 44).
The massive exodus of artists and (to a lesser extent) writers and academ-
ics during the 1990s reduced the competition for recognition in Cuba. The
lower level of competition coupled with the newly acquired perks made the
life of established intellectuals relatively comfortable, by Cuban standards
(Johnson, 2003: 152). Rather than a competition between various factions
within the island, the new significant alternative is between staying or leav-
ing.
The 1990s brought an ideological downsizing too. Wooden Marxism-
Leninism lost ground, Martí gained some. “National-Leninism” is probably
a good characterization of the renewed official ideology. As Tony Judt once
remarked, in a discussion on post-Soviet Eastern Europe, nationalism and
Marxism-Leninism share a similar “syntax” (collective identity, threatened by
an external agent). In Cuba the common syntax points to a common enemy:
the US. In the post-Soviet environment, writers and artists can choose not to
be “political” (i.e. choose “la cubanidad” over “la cubanía”).^7 More, depolit-
icization is used by the government to redeem pre-revolutionary or Cuban-
American writers (in fact, to absolve itself from the past ostracism of these
writers). Previously censored authors such as César López or Antón Arrufat
can now be celebrated and their works published. They typically respond
with more than forgiveness: they offer gratitude.
- See the distinction between cubanía (revolutionary), cubanidad (patriotic but not political)
and anti-cubanía (counter-revolutionary) proposed by the Minister of Culture Abel Prieto
(Prieto, 1994) and insightful comments on this matrix by Rafael Rojas (Rojas, 2009).