82 Chapter 3
Conclusion
Scholars in search of signs of autonomy and seeds for emancipation in
Cuba's cultural scene usually look in the direction of young musicians or art-
ists (hip-hops artists, punk rockers like Gorki Águila, collective muralists and
the like), not writers or academics. Talking about the first, the most percep-
tive analysts, like Sujatha Fernandes and Marie Laure Geoffray, cannot help
but realize that these unorthodox practitioners of “symbolic resistance” do
not represent a vital challenge to the regime. Their practices are often co-
opted by helpful cultural organizations, like the AHS. They hold close to the
regime's master narrative, asking the regime to live up to its own goals and
ideals. In a way, they function as a populist movement, channeling anti-estab-
lishment feelings. This leads either to a political dead-end or to a reconcilia-
tion with the system, not to fundamental change.
In the eventuality of a political transition toward a more open society, one
can speculate that as consummate insiders, public intellectuals (mostly writ-
ers and academics) could play a support role in a negotiated transition from
within. It is hard to imagine them playing a role in any other type of transi-
tion. Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were typically
more inclined to seek reforms than radical change. Once the transition
started, intellectuals/democratizers were quickly replaced by political entre-
preneurs. Tony Judt made a very interesting comment in this respect: “The
intellectuals who did make a successful leap into democratic public life were
usually ‘technocrats’-lawyers or economists-who had played no conspicuous
part in the dissenting community before 1989. Not having performed a hith-
erto heroic role they offered more reassuring models for their similarly un-
heroic fellow citizens” (Judt, 2007: 695). But in Cuba, with some exceptions
(the poet and independent journalist Raul Rivero or independent economist
Oscar Espinosa Chepe for instance), intellectuals could not possibly be seen
as “heroic” in that way. Their occasional expression of criticism stay well
within secondary parameters and never challenge the first. Even when they
seem to be testing the secondary parameters, it is typically in a very cryptic
fashion, away from Cuban mass media and always in the name of Fidel/La
Revolución. Of course, La Revolución “can” mean different things to different
people, but in Cuba (i.e. in public in Cuba), one does not find interpretations
that stray away from the parameters. Furthermore, after the massive exodus