Parameters, Uncertainty and Recognition: The Politics of Culture in Cuba 69
ism” one typically finds in official rhetoric numerous calls for unwavering
obedience to the leader and the party, and simultaneously a celebration of
debates and criticism (especially by Raul Castro since 2006). A cursory
review of public declarations by cultural officials in Cuba shows that censors
routinely condemn self-censorship, challenging intellectuals and artists to be
more audacious and critical (Acosta, 2007).
Thus, cultural policy in Cuba seems to be an exercise in contradictions.
Consider the views, enunciated by Minister of Culture Armando Hart, that
“El materialismo dialéctico e histórico es la negación consecuente del dog-
matismo, de la escolástica y es el rechazo más profundo del librepensador”
(Hart Dávalos, 1987: 3). Or talking about cultural organizations, an official
document points out that “institutos y consejos no son parte del gobierno:
están subordinados al gobierno, que es algo distinto. Son instituciones cul-
turales, no gubernamentales, subordinadas al gobierno” (República de Cuba,
2002: 6). These are fundamental contradictions, not merely “gaps” between
the “State's rhetoric” and reality (Geoffray, 2008: 12).AmbivalenceThe literature on participation by artists and intellectuals in Cuba almost
always build on the premise that they are uniquely wired to strive for more
autonomy and “space” within the system, constantly pushing back the fron-
tiers of the permissible.^2 This is consistent with common definitions of the
intellectual (definitions of the intellectual are typically self-definitions) as
someone who is hard wired to question dominant values and institutions.^3
When coupled with their distinctive capacity to imagine a better world, no
wonder they have been feared (and co-opted) by the powerful since Antiq-
uity. While intellectuals find themselves in a fairly different situation in Cuba
than in the rest of Latin America, it has been noticed that in this country art-
ists and writers (and to a lesser extent academics) enjoy more freedom than- In this paper “intellectual” means someone who manages to leverage authority gained
from peers in one field of knowledge or culture to become a publicly-recognized authority on
fundamental (as opposed to merely practical) public issues (Grenier, 2005). Octavio Paz once
said that in Latin America almost all writers are intellectuals, though not all intellectuals are
writers. This is probably true for Cuba as well. In this paper I sometimes talk about writers,
artists and academics, but most of the time I concentrate on intellectuals. - In contrast with the typical portrait of the Latin American intellectual, however, Cubans
are not presented as the voice of the voiceless or the critical conscience of the people: the
government does that; they mostly look after themselves.