present day havana

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The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology and Mnemonic Landscape in Present‐Day Havana Author(s): Maria Gropas Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 48, No. 4 (August 2007), pp. 531-549 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/518299 . Accessed: 24/01/2014 15:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 200.41.82.24 on Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:10:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideologyand Mnemonic Landscape in Present‐Day HavanaAuthor(s): Maria GropasSource: Current Anthropology, Vol. 48, No. 4 (August 2007), pp. 531-549Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation forAnthropological ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/518299 .

Accessed: 24/01/2014 15:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology.

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Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007 531

The Repatriotization of RevolutionaryIdeology and Mnemonic Landscape in

Present-Day Havana

by Maria Gropas

In post-Soviet Cuban state discourse, things are done for the Revolution and la patria rather thanfor the building of socialism. This repatriotization of revolutionary ideology does not imply a totalwiping of the state of socialist political ideology, but even when the message to be conveyed is basedon socialist ideology it is constructed around a patriotic dimension. Landscape serves as a mnemonicdevice for perpetuating a particular historical memory—a way of remembering the past and of usingthis remembrance to fuel the present and preserve the future of the Revolution.

Perhaps one of the most distinctive images of Cuba is thelarge steel sculpture of the face of Che Guevara on one of thewalls of the Ministry of the Interior in Havana’s RevolutionSquare (fig. 1). Shown around the globe in documentaries,films, and magazines and a popular attraction for foreignersvisiting Cuba, this portrait is seen by many as the epitomeof revolutionary idealism and commitment. For me, however,it came to represent everyday life in Havana, personifying acomplex web of revolutionary morality and practical im-morality in which Revolution and survival, whether eco-nomic, social, political, or national, struggled to coexist. Be-tween September 2001 and July 2002 I drove past RevolutionSquare daily on my way to and from the agricultural coop-eratives in which the development project I was working onwas being implemented. It became part of my daily ritual tocomment on what I called “Che Guevara’s changing face.”Depending on the day’s unfolding, depending on whom I hadspoken to, what I had experienced, and what I had been told,I would jokingly comment to my European boss on Che’sfacial expression. Some days, when we talked to people whoexpressed a deep commitment to the Revolution, I would say,“Today he is smiling” or “Today he has his eyes wide openand is contentedly contemplating the Revolution’s successes.”Other days, filled with endless bureaucracy or with numerousaccounts of the difficulties of getting by on minimal pesosalaries in a largely dollarized economy, I would say, “If he

Maria Gropas completed her Ph.D. in social anthropology at Cam-bridge University and wrote this article while a UNESCO postdoc-toral fellow at that university. She now works in the public sector(her mailing address: Eleftherias 52, Voula 166 73, Athens, Greece[[email protected]]). This paper was submitted 23 III 05 andaccepted 31 XII 06.

could, today he would have his eyes shut.” Soon enough, CheGuevara’s “changing face” came to symbolize for me the fluc-tuating emotions and expectations of Cuban colleagues andfriends describing their lives in the peso/dollar reality of post-Soviet Havana. I came to realize that in fact Che’s portraitrepresented a political memory and that much of the dis-course employed by the state and its institutions was aimedat constructing what Werbner (1998, 15) has called a memory“in which the political cannot be meaningfully studied apartfrom the moral.” The portrait reflected the tight interrelationbetween the moral and the political that continues to char-acterize state discourse.

The interweaving of landscape with the past and with mem-ory has been addressed by others (see Harwood 1976; Basso1988; Tilley 1994; Kuchler 1995; Aretxaga 1997). In the con-text of Northern Australia, for example, Morphy has arguedthat “place and place names are integrated within a processthat acts to freeze time; that makes the past a referent for thepresent. The present is not so much produced by the pastbut reproduces itself in the form of the past” (1995, 239).The Cuban material detailed in this article, however, takesthis point farther. Havana’s rural and urban landscapes reflecta revolutionary reading of historical events and historical per-sons. That the landscape can be perpetually read in terms ofhistorical narratives is a key feature of both the repatriotzationof revolutionary ideology and the production of patrioticduty. Havana’s landscape of billboards and graffiti acts as amnemonic device, reminding people of their past, and confersa morality on their past struggles, thus giving meaning totheir present-day struggles. The mnemonic landscape is a de-vice for reminding Cubans of a particular reading of theirhistory that can be used as a tool for creating dominant statenarratives. It is a technique for preserving knowledge (Miller

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532 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

Figure 1. Steel sculpture of Che Guevara on the Ministry of theInterior building in Havana’s Revolution Square.

1999), for remembering the historical struggle of the Cubanpeople. The existence of a memory of struggle is both present-oriented and future-oriented (Werbner 1998a). In this con-text, it can be argued that memory is a device for preservingthe Revolution’s future (see Moore 1998 on postcolonialAfrica).

Much of the debate about what landscape “means” hasbeen limited to the realm of the aesthetics, overlooking theeconomic, social, and political complexity within which land-scape exists and by which it is influenced (Gropas 2006).Indeed, “Landscape is a way of seeing that has its own history,but a history that can be understood only as part of a widerhistory of economy and society” (Cosgrove 1998, 1). In otherwords, landscape is also a “history made manifest.” It is “aliving process; it makes men; it is made by them” (Inglis 1977,489). It is my contention here that landscape in Havana is adevice through which a particular reading of history—a par-ticular Revolutionary historical discourse—is made manifest.It is a way of remembering the past and of using this re-membrance (characterized by notions of morality, justice, andnational dignity) to fuel the present of the Revolution andpreserve it for the future. I start from the foundation thatlandscape is both the world we see and a construction of that

world (Cosgrove 1998). In other words, I approach landscapenot as a static image but as a process which is historically,socially, culturally, and politically influenced and informed(Hirsch 1995; Gropas 2006).The vast psychological, sociolog-ical, historical, and anthropological literature on memory isbeyond the scope of this paper.1 My concern here is withlandscape as a canvas upon which a Revolutionary construc-tion of Cuba’s historical past is painted and through whicha particular cosmology is constructed and perpetuated. Thiscosmology is founded upon notions of morality, patrioticduty, and historical justice that are encompassed by the ideaof “the Revolution.” Landscape plays a part in the way inwhich people make sense of and engage with the materialworld that surrounds them (Bender 2001). It also contributesto “the way in which identities . . . whether . . . individual,group, or nation-state” (Bender 1995, 3) are formed.

I start by showing that in post-Soviet Cuban state discoursegreater emphasis is placed on doing things for the Revolutionand la patria than on the building of socialism. The Revo-lution was built around ideas of historical justice and mo-rality—an attack on vice, gambling, and disease, as Fidel Cas-tro declared in January 1959 (Thomas 2001 [1971]). Thechoice of the word “repatriotization ” is intended to indicatea return to those foundations. I go on to discuss the conceptof “the Revolution,” showing that it has myriad meanings forCubans and is often quite different from and unrelated to theconcepts of socialism and communism. I point to the im-portance of history and Cuba’s historical continuity of strug-gle in present-day state constructions of ideology and theideological colonization of the landscape in order to perpet-uate the status quo. Indeed, I suggest that, while “the Rev-olution” may be attributed a wide range of meanings, it hasbeen constructed as being about belonging to a sovereign“imagined community” (see Anderson 1991). Castro’s claimin 1965 that the “Revolution is as Cuban as its palm treesand rum” appears to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.Indeed, constructed through a sanctification, or eternaliza-tion, of previous social struggles, the historical patriotic di-mension out of which the Revolution grew and with whichit is perpetually associated has come to mean for many thatto be a Cuban patriot is to be a revolutionary. Finally, I showhow the landscape, urban and rural, reflects and reinforcesthis ideology.

“The Revolution Asks This of You!”

I arrived in Havana in autumn 2001 after a year of followingthe procedures necessary to obtain authorization to carry outmy research in the country. It was only after I unexpectedlysecured an affiliation with a European nongovernmental or-

1. For a comprehensive sociological overview of the topic, see Olickand Robbins (1998). See also Crane (1997) for a historical and Bloch(1992), Werbner (1998a), and Watson (1994) for an anthropologicalperspective.

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 533

ganization (NGO) to work on a development project in ag-ricultural cooperatives around Havana that I was granted legalstatus to remain in Cuba for the duration of my research.Cuba is not a place which favours anthropological research,especially when it is instigated from “the outside,” and ob-taining permission to carry out research in Cuba is compli-cated and time-consuming (see also Holbraad 2002). Rosen-dahl’s (1997) ethnography of Palmera (pseudonym) andHolgado’s (2000) ethnography of women under socialism areamong the few published ethnographies.

Each cooperative involved in this development project hada monthly ritual—the assembly (asamblea)—in which themanagerial body and the membership reported to one an-other. The assembly was also a forum in which the decisionsof the political organization to which “private” cooperativesthroughout Cuba belonged, the Asociacion Nacional de Agri-cultores Pequenos (ANAP), were communicated to the mem-bers.2 In December 2001 the main issue being addressed inthe assemblies was that of milk. The message was a requestthat milk-producing members sell more milk to the staterather than selling it privately or illegally through the blackmarket. Though the cooperatives were, at the time, contrac-tually bound to selling 34% of their milk production to thestate (at a lower price than that on the private market), milkremained scarce and was highly valued. Given the general lackof milk available through legal channels, selling milk and dairyproducts on the street could be lucrative. The high-rankingANAP official and Party member who was attending one ofthese assemblies to convey this message addressed the co-operative members as follows:

With the blockade and the mad cows, the price of clean

milk on the world market is high, and the state does not

have enough dollars to buy more powdered milk. For this

reason, I ask you to give more milk to the government and

the Revolution. Campesinos have a moral duty to sell more

milk to the Revolution! [This is] what the Revolution is

asking of us, so I ask you to think of our children! I want

to meet with each milk producer of this cooperative one by

one to talk about how much he can increase [the amount

of milk he will sell to the state]. I want to get an individual

commitment from you. The Revolution asks this of you!

This speech personifies the Revolution and constructs thecooperative members as morally responsible subjects. In thiscontext, “the Revolution” comes to mean the ongoing statepolitical project—event, structure, and process. Rather thanmerely representing an event in history and a radically dif-ferent structure from that which existed before, it is also anongoing process of which “moral” and “revolutionary” citi-zens are part and to which they contribute for the sake of

2. The ANAP was created in 1961 to unite the Cuban peasants andsmall farmers who belonged to non-state agrarian cooperatives. It has210,000 members and covers more that 1.6 million hectares of land(ANAP 1999).

Cuba. In a similar situation in 1975, Fidel Castro addressedsugar mill workers, encouraging them to increase their pro-duction, as follows: “There is no greater satisfaction than thefulfillment of duty, or more rewarding victories than thoseattained by the selfless and heroic workers who are buildingsocialism” (Havana Domestic Service 1975). In 1975 the goalwas the building of socialism, whereas in 2001 the messagewas constructed around la patria’s children and the Revo-lution. The state discourse of “the Revolution” is centredaround making Cubans think in terms of belonging to ageographically and historically vulnerable patria which isstruggling to remain free and “truly Cuban.” This discourseis in turn linked with state legitimacy. While this notion wasalso used in national struggles for independence dating backto the times of Jose Martı, it has reclaimed center stage inpost-Soviet discourse.3

Defining “the Revolution”

What does “the Revolution” mean? Is a “revolution” not amoment of change at a precise point in history? How can westill be talking about “the Revolution” over four decades later?One of the ethnographic puzzles4 I faced early in my fieldworkwas the frequency with which the words “Revolution” and“revolutionary” were used in Havana. Given that developmentwork in Cuba involved working alongside Party members,these words were commonplace on the project site. What isof particular interest is that they were also often heard ininformal conversations and everyday talk. This triggered myinterest in understanding the meaning attributed to this word.

The concept of “the Revolution” assumes different formsdepending on one’s perspective and on the context at hand.In official and public discourse, the most straightforward def-inition is that of Fidel Castro, displayed on a wall in the mostpopular ice-cream parlour in Havana: “Revolution is feelingthe historical moment, it is changing everything that needsto be changed, it is full equality and freedom, it is being treatedand treating others as human beings, it is emancipating our-selves for ourselves and by our own efforts.” What it meansto people who use it in their daily conversations is best ex-emplified by its use in the family I lived with, a predominantlyfemale household in a central neighbourhood of Havana. Mylandlady, whom I will call Angelica,5 was a retired school-teacher in her seventies. During most of my stay, her sisterCelia and Celia’s son Eduardo, a civil engineer in his mid-twenties, and his girlfriend, Paloma, who worked in a garmentfactory, lived with us. Angelica, Celia, Eduardo, and Palomacalled themselves revolutionaries, meaning that they fully sup-ported the Revolution and Fidel Castro. They were, none-theless, at times outspoken about what they considered the

3. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this point outmore clearly for me.

4. I owe this expression to Marilyn Strathern.5. All names are pseudonyms.

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534 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

Revolution’s shortcomings. They repeatedly stressed that cer-tain things had to change in Cuba but underlined that pro-cesses of change ought to come from within Cuba. For them,the worst thing that could happen would be for Cubans toespouse capitalism, especially in its U.S. form. (Many peopleperceived a distinction between U.S. capitalism and the cap-italism found in Europe, the latter being considered moresocially oriented.)

One evening over dinner at home, Paloma criticized thegovernment’s decision to prohibit Cubans from entering cer-tain tourist resort areas. She then said, “But I am not a gusana,6

I am a revolutionary. It’s just that I see both the good andthe bad.” I asked her to explain what she meant by sayingshe was a revolutionary. She answered, “I mean that I sym-pathize with the 1959 Revolution, its ideals, and I supportthe [present] government.” She went on to say that the Rev-olution represented a profound change in Cuban history, sig-nalling the beginning of something better and something“real.” She stressed that this change in regime was somethingthat had actually happened rather than the empty rhetoricthat had been so common in Cuba’s history. She said thatthis change was still under way today, in spite of the difficultiesit was faced with. From this perspective, the concept of “theRevolution” goes beyond the 1959 historical event to encom-pass an ongoing process and structure. Another interestingconceptualization of “the Revolution” came from Eduardo:“The Revolution is the good things that came out of thechange [in 1959]; it’s free health care for all, for example.Socialism, however, is . . . very good hospitals and doctorsfor all, but with no medicines.”

An event that illuminates the way people relate to “theRevolution” is Jimmy Carter’s visit to Cuba in May 2002.Carter’s visit was considered of the utmost importance, giventhat he was the first (former) U.S. president to visit the islandsince Fidel Castro came to power. On the last day of his visit,he spoke at the University of Havana, and Cuban universitystudents and others were invited to debate with him. FidelCastro was also present, along with the minister for foreignaffairs and other high-ranking officials. In his speech, Carterspoke of the need to put old quarrels between the two coun-tries aside and establish friendly relations. Though he madereference to the achievements of “the Revolution” in the do-mains of health care and education, he stated that Cubashould join the path of all the other Latin American democ-racies. He continued, “After 43 years of animosity, we hopethat, someday soon, you can reach across the great dividethat separates our two countries and say, ‘We are ready tojoin the community of democracies,’ and I hope that Amer-icans will soon open our arms to you and say, ‘We welcomeyou as our friends”’ (CNN 2002). When I asked Eduardo andPaloma what they thought of the commonly held U.S. and

6. Gusano (worm)—connoting the lowest form of life—is used locallyto refer to class enemies and more specifically to Cubans who are an-tirevolutionaries (Harnecker 1979).

European view that Cuba was not democratic and that humanrights were being violated, Eduardo responded:

These people know nothing about this place. Look, the Rev-

olution is mine—I live it. It is our reality—for them it is

just an outside opinion or a political ideology. For us, it’s

about us, it’s about our country. I can tell you things that

bother me about the Revolution, but I don’t want to hear

bad things about it. It’s like if you told me bad things about

your sister and then I told you bad things about her. You

would not permit that, would you? [No,] because she is

your sister—it is the same with the Revolution.

This protective approach toward the Revolution is similarto that espoused by many people I met during my fieldwork.There was a widespread tendency to defend the Revolutionagainst foreigners, who were seen as criticizing it withouthaving lived it or understood the changes it had brought about(see also Kapcia 2000). Indeed, one of the driving forces be-hind the Revolution’s endurance is the island’s proximity tothe United States and the fear of invasion. This is not simplya fear of a “cultural absorption by [a] polity of larger scale”(Appadurai 1990, 295) but also a sense that the country’ssovereignty may be at risk. All of my informants maintainedthat they lived their life in a state of siege, concerned that anattack by their northern neighbour could come at any time.7

Cuban citizens undergo military training in preparation foraggression against la patria. This mandatory military trainingcould be seen as reinforcing the sense of an imminent attack.This sense of being under siege is an ideological resourcewhich has been cultivated and nurtured by the state apparatusand used as a mechanism of unification for a struggle againstexternal aggression.

Indeed, over the years, state rhetoric has presented theRevolution as the epitome of the country’s historical struggleagainst colonialism (by both Spain and the United States)—safeguarding the island’s territorial integrity. Historically, theUnited States joined in the last stages of the War of Inde-pendence against the Spanish to help the mambises8 win theirindependence in 1898. After independence, the United Statestook over Cuba in what was initially to be a “temporary”measure. One of the highest-ranking officers in the U.S. Armyserved as governor of the island until May 1902 (Thomas2001 [1971]), and after the handing over of Cuba to “localrule” there continued to be heavy U.S. involvement in politicaland economic affairs. Until 1959 75% of the country’s arableland was owned by foreigners, most of them North Americans(Sheak 2002, 2). Moreover, the Platt Amendment, which wascontained in Cuba’s 1901 Constitution, gave the United States

7. This phenomenon dates back to the very beginning of the Revo-lution (see, for example, Thomas 2001 [1971]). I thank an anonymousreviewer for drawing my attention to this.

8. Mambı is thought to be of African origin, meaning the child of avulture or of an ape. It was first used by the Spanish colonizers to referto those who rebelled against them and then assumed by the rebelsthemselves (Thomas 2001 [1971], 1061).

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 535

carte blanche to intervene politically, economically, and mil-itarily in Cuba’s internal affairs whenever it saw fit (Miller2003). This involvement and intervention provided fertileground for widespread resistance. Though the Platt Amend-ment formally lasted until 1934, “the aura of the old daysstill hung about U.S. Cuban relations in the 1950s” (Horowitz2003, 5). Foreign intervention, corruption, gambling, policebrutality, and the low social status of black people contrastedwith the affluence of white Cuban landowners contributed tothe emergence of resistance movements. As Celia recalled, therich lived a life of luxury and “frequently went shopping inFlorida,” while the majority were largely illiterate and couldscarcely survive.

Constructed against the backdrop of this historical land-scape, the 1959 Revolution appropriated words such as “im-perialism,” “colonialism,” “tyranny,” and “pseudo-republic,”and they have since been repeatedly employed to portray thehistorical continuity throughout the centuries of struggle fora more socially just and truly “Cuban” Cuba (Miller 2003).With the revolutionary government in power, measures ofsymbolic importance were also adopted to indicate a con-scious break with and rejection of this past. Amongst these,the Havana Hilton Hotel, which towers over the centre of thecapital, was nationalized and symbolically renamed HabanaLibre (Free Havana). Casinos and brothels aimed primarilyat foreign tourists and local rich men were closed, and landand privately held beaches were returned to “the people” asa form of justice to Cuba’s history (Miller 2003). Thus theRevolution is associated with notions of “the Cuban nation”and carries with it feelings of patriotism, pride, dignity, re-sistance, social justice, and independence (Dilla Alfonso1994).

Indeed, national sovereignty and independence have, sincethe very beginning of the Revolution, taken the form of asacred symbol used by the Party to address the people, assertits right to rule, and maintain popular political allegiance.This is evident in a comparison of one of Fidel Castro’s earlyspeeches with a very recent one:

Now we are making history. But another type of history.

We have not learnt our lesson in vain. . . . We are not in

1901, nor in 1933, when they [the United States] put them-

selves here and imposed an Amendment [the Platt Amend-

ment] which was shameful and a humiliation to the country.

In [1933], they bought Batista and he miserably betrayed

the people. Now, there is no Platt Amendment, and they

can neither buy nor subordinate us. (Castro, January 1959,

quoted in Perez 1980, my translation)

Our heroic people has fought for 44 years from a small

Caribbean island only a few miles from the most powerful

imperial power that humanity has ever known. By doing

this, [Cuba] has written an unprecedented page in history.

Never has the world seen such an unequal struggle. . . . We

will face all threats, we will not give in to any pressure, and

we are ready to defend la patria and the Revolution with

ideas and with arms until the last drop of blood. . . . Never

has a people had more sacred things to defend or more

deeply held convictions for which to fight, [so much so]

that it prefers to disappear from the face of the Earth than

to renounce the noble and generous work for which many

generations of Cubans have paid with the high cost of the

many lives of their best sons. (Granma 2003, 1–9, my

translation)

Separated by 44 years, the speeches’ shared motifs are thehistorical continuity of struggle, the Revolution’s moral stand-ing, and the nation’s independence and sovereignty. Thesethemes provide a common thread linking “us” with thosewho have fought throughout history for “our” common prin-ciples and values. The defence of la patria from external ag-gression (in its multitude and varied forms) is thus translatedinto an almost sacred historical “obligation” to the Cubanswho, throughout the nation’s history, have died in defenceof la patria’s freedom.

This historical point is felt even by the Revolution’s fierc-est Cuban critics living on the island. For instance, in May2002, a nationwide mass mobilization was organized in re-sponse to George W. Bush’s placing Cuba on the U.S. listof terrorist countries. This placement produced angeramongst the general public, where it was widely felt thatCubans had been the victims of terrorist actions over theyears. For instance, the perceived terrorist threat of the Mi-ami-based Cuban-American community and the U.S. eco-nomic embargo were locally defined largely as acts of ter-rorism. The state’s objective was to send a clear message tothe U.S. government that the Cuban people were united indefending their patria and that they objected to being re-ferred to as terrorists, particularly by the U.S. government.Granma’s9 coverage of the mobilization described it as a“gigantic march for la patria,” and during the march peopleshouted revolutionary slogans such as “!Viva Cuba Libre!!Abajo las mentiras!” (Long live free Cuba! Down with thelies!) and waved Cuban flags so that the “imperialists” couldsee them. The turnout in Havana was massive, and thestreets were filled with people from as early as 5 a.m.10 I wasthere with 38-year-old Diego, one of the fiercest critics ofthe regime I encountered during my stay. After the marchI asked him why he had participated. He answered:

I came and I said what I said because even though I am

against Castro, I love my country. Castro is not my country,

and I am proud that we are the only ones who have stood

against the United States. I don’t want us to be like those

other countries that follow whatever the United States says.

9. The principal Cuban newspaper, which takes its name from theyacht on which, in 1956, the rebels crossed from Mexico to Cuba fol-lowing their exile, eventually to overthrow Batista in 1959.

10. Because of the heat and the humidity, mass mobilizations are heldat dawn.

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536 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

Figure 2. Billboard depicting Antonio Maceo and Che Guevara:“Present in the Battles of Today.”

We are independent, probably the only independent coun-

try. I want us to remain independent.

My purpose in relating these narratives is not to askwhether people were “coerced” into attending by their workcentres. Rather, it is to show that not only do official statenarratives construct mobilizations like this one as patrioticacts supporting a sovereign patria but also my informantsmaintained that they participated and perceived other peo-ple’s participation as an expression of national independence,integrity, and unity and a protest against the hegemony ofthe “northern neighbour” rather than a demonstration ofadherence to socialism or communism.

When I returned from the march at around 9 a.m., Angelicawas eating fruit in her rocking chair in the living room andwatching the news coverage of the march on television. Sheclaimed to be a revolutionary both in theory and in practice.Indeed, since the very beginning she had participated in mo-bilizations and worked hard for the Revolution. On this oc-casion, however, she had chosen not to attend the march,claiming that she was too old. She asked me to tell her howit was, so I sat down next to her and described my experienceof it. During my description the television set in front of uswas showing aerial pictures of Havana’s streets inundated withpeople. When I told her that I was amazed at the number ofpeople who had participated in the march, she said:

People went to this [mobilization] out of conviction. Look,

Maria, Cubans unite against the Yankee. Even though some

people can be against Fidel, these same people are against

the Yankee—not against the [U.S.] people but against the

[U.S.] government. It’s just that we have suffered a lot be-

cause of them, and I’m not only talking to you about after

[1959] but also about centuries before. They have exploited

the whole of Latin America to the very maximum. That’s

why we are so against the Yankees.

This image of uniting against the “Yankee” governmentwas apparent not only in organized events but also in theurban landscape. For instance, walking down a street in Ha-vana, I stumbled across an engraving on the pavement thatread “Cuba Yes! Yankee No!” The patriotism contained inrevolutionary ideology and visually expressed in the landscapehas been crucial in creating a morally laden political subjec-tivity. The landscape becomes a technique for evoking mem-ories of the patria’s struggle against domination and the sac-rifice of heroes for an independent, “Cuban” Cuba. This findsa moral platform in a particular mnemonic construction ofthe past and has “create[d] a master narrative around which. . . people could build a sense of shared community” (Cole1998, 105–6).

Landscape and Mnemonics

Historical events have an important spatial dimension. Theirimportance, however, lies not necessarily in what “really”

happened but, rather, in its “having become an integral partof the historical consciousness and the identity of the peo-ples that bear them” (Santos-Granero 1998, 144). This in-terweaving of landscape, memory, and historical conscious-ness is important because it both evokes and becomesmemory. It is by the evoking of memory thorough the ideo-logical colonization of the landscape that a particular ide-ology becomes part of a collective memory as a “concep-tualization that expresses a sense of the continual presenceof the past” (Crane 1997, 1373). The interesting twist in theCuban case, however, is that this ideological colonization ofthe landscape is presented as being part of la patria’s his-torical memory, the “preservation of lived experience, itsobjectification.” This intertwining of history and the Rev-olution has become so entrenched that their boundaries havebecome blurred and one is often unable to distinguish thetwo. Cuban history and the Revolution are, in the discourse,conceptualized in terms of one another. Historical symbolsof the 1898 War of Independence against Spanish coloni-alism and of the 1959 revolutionary struggle are intertwinedto maintain an imagination of a historical continuity ofstruggle throughout the nation’s history.

This mnemonic construction of the past is made manifestthrough billboards calling not only for unity in a struggle fornational dignity against external impositions but also for per-sonal sacrifice similar to that undertaken by the great his-torical martyrs in the name of la patria’s independence. Onalmost every street one can read a variant of “United withDignity and Sacrifice” or be confronted by the faces of his-torical heroes and martyrs appropriated in support of therevolutionary cause. The streets of Havana are full of bill-boards referring to Cuban triumphs such as the Bay of Pigsbattle. The idea is that, just as they were then, Cuba’s inde-pendence and revolutionary principles will be defended bythe victorious people. The faces of Antonio Maceo and CheGuevara, side by side next to the words “Present in the Battlesof Today (fig. 2), and the portrait of Che, the international

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 537

Figure 3. Mural in Havana’s central bus station depicting Cuba’s history,showing Jose Martı (center), Cubans marching with the banner “Downwith Tyranny!” (right), and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and CamiloCienfuegos.

revolutionary, looming over the hot and bustling Havanastreets imply that past struggles are relevant in present-dayCuba and are even projected into the future. In parallel, thestruggles of today are legitimated through the references tothe past and their continuity with the present (see also Perez1980).

A striking example of the common thread linking the dif-ferent struggles for independence is a full-length mural inHavana’s central bus station portraying the history of Cubaas depicted in official discourse (fig. 3). The mural’s narrativebegins at the left with slavery under Spanish colonial rule andthe liberation by Jose Martı. It continues with the times oftyranny under capitalism and Batista’s rule, with men in suitsplaying cards personifying an era of decadence and immor-ality. Directly below them are the Cuban people marchingtowards freedom, as it were, holding a banner which reads“Down with Tyranny.” This image is followed by the revo-lutionary armed struggle led by Fidel, Che, and Camilo Cien-fuegos bringing justice, morality, and pride to la patria. In-deed, as Perez maintains, “the national past has served as amajor source of moral subsidy, conferring on the process ofRevolution both continuity and, out of that continuity, le-gitimacy” (Perez 1980, 80).

Walking with Eduardo past the countless billboards thatadorn the city, I asked him if he paid any attention to them.He replied:

I don’t think that I look at them and start thinking of my

country’s history and all that . . . , probably some of the

time I don’t even notice them—though when they change

I do notice that they have changed. Maybe it’s something

like you have in your country with advertising of products.

. . . But, at the same time, I must say that I am very conscious

of my history, of my country’s history. It’s part of my ev-

eryday life, so, maybe, I don’t know . . . maybe at some

subconscious level it works.

While I cannot begin to address the notion of memory andthe way it works at the conscious or subconscious level, whatcan be inferred from this narrative is the presence of a mne-monic landscape. The myriad billboards depicting links be-tween la patria’s past with the Revolution and the present arestate techniques of rendering the status quo relevant to publicopinion. They are mnemonic techniques for preservingknowledge, techniques which focus on preserving a certainreading of history by devising ways of remembering it (Miller1999).

The Repatriotization of RevolutionaryIdeology

The historical narrative linking Cuba’s history with the Rev-olution is an important resource for the state in times suchas these, when external global conditions are unfavourableand the island has been forced to open up to foreigners. Thecollapse of the Soviet model may have trampled on the Cubaneconomy and jolted Cuba’s political status quo, but it provedan almost “cleansing” experience for some Cubans. Indeed,it provided space for them to openly voice their disenchant-ment and even lack of affiliation with the Soviet model. Whilebillboards and graffiti with revolutionary and socialist sloganshave been part of the Cuban landscape since the overthrowof Batista’s regime, since the early 1990s the slogans have beenmore about the Revolution and la patria than about socialismor communism. When I pointed out this shift to Eduardoone day, he said, “Well, I remember seeing portraits of Leninand of Marx—mostly of Lenin—throughout [the city]. Now,

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538 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

I only know of one portrait of Lenin inside the University[of Havana].”

Most of the people I spoke with considered socialism inits practical application (rather than its values) a failed Sovietexperiment. Socialism had a Soviet ring and therefore a “for-eign” connotation that contrasted with the Revolution’s Cu-banness. Indeed, this view has a historical basis. In the 1960sthere was widespread social and political euphoria, but it wassoon replaced by the “Soviet invasion.” This “invasion,” aCuban sociologist told me, consisted of “the Soviets [comingin with] manuals on how to do socialism” which did notalways correspond to the expectations of the Cuban popu-lation and the specificities of the Cuban economy. Moreover,the close political and economic links between Cuba and theSoviet Union translated into an “exchange of populations”whereby Soviets came to Cuba to teach the ways of socialismand Cubans were sent to universities in Moscow and Len-ingrad to be educated. Through this close contact, the generalimpression in Cuba—openly voiced since the collapse—is thatthe Soviet way was an extremely dry and rigid application ofsocialism. As a result, since the Soviet collapse, many Cubansopenly voice their association of Soviet socialism with a freez-ing-cold place where, “as you know, things were quite bad.”The Soviet period is often considered locally to have stifledthe innovative and more appropriate independent Cubanways of thinking about socialism that characterized the CubanRevolution at its birth (see also Katz 1983). Therefore, whilethe Revolution and la patria tend to be seen by many Cubansas mutually reinforcing, the same is not the case for socialism,which is considered the Soviet and, by extension, foreign el-ement of the equation. The interesting contradiction, how-ever, is that the Revolution’s socialist set of values, includingfree health care, education, and social equality, also still carriesa very positive value for many.

Communism, in contrast, is much more vaguely and am-biguously defined. Although the ruling party is called theCommunist Party of Cuba and has links with other so-calledcommunist states and although Fidel Castro declared himselfa Marxist-Leninist in the early days of the Revolution, officialdiscourse does not maintain that Cuban society is communist.The rare use of the term “communism,” however, is notmerely the result of ideological precision. There is also a lackof clarity about what communism is, given that it has neverbeen achieved. I was often told, “I’m a revolutionary, but I’mnot a communist, because I don’t know—and no one reallyknows—what real communism is because it has never ex-isted.” Celia had worked voluntarily in the small brigadesbuilding houses, spent half her adult life in Party meetings,and headed her neighbourhood’s CDR (Comite de Defensade la Revolucion), but when I asked her if she was a com-munist, she looked at me in surprise and said, “Me a com-munist? No! no! no! I have too many weaknesses to be acommunist. A communist really has [the feeling of] sacrifice,is a complete altruist. No, I have a thousand defects. Look,Che was a communist. I could never compare myself to him.”

She described herself instead as “a revolutionary, because Ireally think the principles of the Revolution are very beau-tiful.” The distinction between these two notions has beenlargely disregarded in popular and academic literature (see,e.g., Aguila 1994; Perez 1995; Horowitz 1994, 1995, 2003;Aguirre 2002). Cuba is often constructed as a generalized“object of knowledge” (Ferguson 1990, xiv), and Cuban “so-ciety” has been described as a communist enclave, a “dys-functional member of the post–cold war community of com-munist states, unable to develop in a normal and healthymanner as long as Castro is intent on retaining absolute po-litical control” (Bunck 2003, 163). Others have even describedit as a “hell” where “thousands of Cubans will die if he [FidelCastro] does not abandon socialism or the Cubans do notrid themselves of the dictator, [and where] the dream of theold is to die to be saved from further suffering or from havingto witness the likely bloody end of this tragedy. . . . Cuba hasbecome a hell” (Montaner 2003, 522).

Since 1961, constructions of Cuban society and historicalnarratives have been largely dichotomized in contemporarywritings according to their authors’ ideological affiliations:Cuba is referred to either as an island of communist austerity(Vuillamy 2002) or as the cradle of democracy (Harnecker1979). While there are, of course, notable exceptions (see,e.g., Dominguez 2004; Alonso 1994), much of popular andacademic discourse perceives a dichotomy between “pro” (thecommunists, the oppressors, the Castroites) and “anti” (thedissidents, the human rights activists, the anticommunists)revolutionary discourse. Indeed, it has been argued that suchconflicting discourse is due to Cubans’ having “strong visceralpassions on both sides of the ideological divide” (Kirk andMcKenna 1999, 214). This representation, however, overlooksthe existence of a middle ground that is particularly promi-nent in post-Soviet Havana. The following narrative by a 20-year-old woman echoes many others that I heard during myfieldwork:

This system did a lot for the people; educating the people,

making us more cultured, more human, giving us education.

But as far as the economy [is concerned], we are going

lower than the ground. I do not understand that . . . ev-

erything is in dollars. I do not like that there are hospitals

filled with dirt and cockroaches yet there is money to build

more hotels. I do not like that they give milk on the ration

card up to the age of seven because they say there is not

enough, yet you see in the dollar shops11 Cuban milk in

dollars or in the hotels—there is so much milk that they

throw it away. I do not like that he [Fidel Castro] did not

think about what would happen if the Soviet Union did not

11. These are supermarkets whose name—chopin—is derived from theEnglish word “shopping.” They were established in 1994 and trade indollars. The prices in dollars are approximately equivalent those in Eu-rope. Though there are a few shops that sell clothes and other householdequipment in Cuban pesos, this makes little or no difference to buyers,as the price in pesos is based on the official dollar–peso exchange rate.

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 539

Figure 4. Billboard depicting Fidel Castro in military gear. “Patriaor Death! We Shall Overcome!”

exist and that when it crumbled we had to face a very rapid

change with dollarization and tourism. Maybe if it had been

over a longer period people would have gotten used to it,

but everything was so sudden. . . . I know that before [1959]

it was very bad, because my grandmother, my mother, my

grandfather, my father, tell me, but I know that I see bad

things today as well. I’m in the middle: neither in favour

nor against.

Yurchak (2003) has noted that in the Soviet context people’sreality was also described in terms of binary oppositions suchas repression and freedom, truth and dissimulation. Similarly,Cuban society is represented from the “outside” in dichot-omous terms such as for/against, democratic/totalitarian, cap-italist/communist, free/not free. As the above narrative illus-trates, however, in post-Soviet Havana, as in late socialism inthe Soviet Union, local understandings and nuances are muchmore complex and intertwined.

The disparity between the popular perceptions of com-munism and socialism and the Revolution contrasts with thedominant state discourse, in which the Revolution, socialism,and la patria are virtually synonymous. These three words—Patria, Revolucion, Socialismo—are emphasized and tantricallyrepeated in state discourse, suggesting that one could notpossibly exist without the other. Indeed, in a speech in De-cember 1989, Castro maintained that “in Cuba, Revolution,socialism, and national independence are insolubly linked.. . . If capitalism returned some day to Cuba, our indepen-dence and sovereignty would disappear forever. We would bean extension of Miami” (quoted in Gunn 1990, 140). Thisemphasis remains crucial to state narratives. While the Rev-olution and la patria tend to be considered as mutually re-inforcing, socialism is often seen as the Soviet element of theequation. As previously mentioned, the interesting contra-diction is that the Revolution’s socialist aspects (free healthcare, education, and social equality) still have a positive valuefor many people, and this may well be the reason the lead-ership seeks to “patriotize” the socialist principles of revo-lutionary ideology. Billboards bearing Fidel’s picture and theslogans “Patria or Death” (fig. 4) and “Socialism or Death”connect socialism to la patria and echo the slogans of themambıses, “Independence or Death” and “Patria and Free-dom” (Thomas 2001 [1971]), drawing a subtle, historicallycontingent connection between Fidel, the (socialist) revolu-tionary project, and la patria.

The repatriotization of revolutionary ideology does not im-ply a total wiping of the state of socialist political ideology.The socialist element is still, in political and social terms, verymuch present in official discourse. For instance, the UnitedStates is still referred to as “the Empire” and its allies arereferred to as “the capitalist countries.” My point is that it isnot as common as it used to be. Participating in a landmarksocialist event such as May Day appears to be more about anindependent revolutionary patria than about Marxist-Len-inism. For instance, on May Day in 2002 the inhabitants of

blocks of flats around Havana displayed patriotic symbolssuch as the Cuban flag on their balconies. Moreover, the eventwas organized around a campaign to “Free Our Five Com-patriots, Prisoners of the Empire,” referring to the five Cubansincarcerated in U.S. prisons charged with espionage,12 and notaround the international workers’ movement. Indeed, MayDay was portrayed in official discourse as an act of patriotism,and posters throughout the city read that it was “a patrioticduty to be at the Plaza with Fidel on May 1.” On May Dayin 1964, the billboard in the Plaza read “Long Live Marxism-Leninism” and “Long Live the United Party of the SocialistRevolution.” In 2002, however, there were no billboards inRevolution Square that so much as alluded to Marxist-Len-inism. Instead, there were billboards reading “First with laPatria,” carrying the double meaning of “May 1” and “first(and foremost).”

A Landscape of Heroes and of“Exemplary” Cooperatives

The ideological colonization of the rural landscape aroundHavana is another example of the mnemonic techniques em-ployed by the state in order to perpetuate the status quo. Theways in which people relate to rural and urban areas aredistinct, and there is a powerful historical narrative behindpeasant relations to land and to revolutions throughout LatinAmerica (see Wolf 1971).13 While these relations constituteimportant dynamics, they are beyond the scope of this paper.The material on rural Havana presented here is included solelybecause it provides another, less well documented, illustrationof the intertwining of revolutionary ideology in Havana withnotions of morality, history, and present challenges (see San-

12. The Five Compatriots, also referred to as heroes of the Revolutionand of la patria, have been sentenced by the United States to between15 years and life imprisonment. They and the Cuban government claimthat they were tracking down Cuban Miami-based terrorist groups thatwere plotting terrorist acts against Cuba (Milne 2003).

13. I thank an anonymous reviewer for insisting on this point.

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540 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

Figure 5. The ritual centre of an agricultural cooperative, withportraits of Camilo Cienfuegos (left), “Man of the Vanguard,”and Che Guevara (right), “Until Victory, Always!”

Figure 6. Sign on the wall of the office of an agricultural co-operative. “Freedom for Our Brothers Prisoners of the Empire!”

tos-Granero 1998). A great deal of importance is attributedto the “image” of a cooperative, from its name to its publicappearance. Heroes and the historical continuity of struggleare important elements of the agricultural landscape. Bassonotes that “placenames may be used to summon forth anenormous range of mental and emotional associations—as-sociations of time and space, of history and events, of personsand social activities, of oneself and stages in one’s life” (1988,103). Making a similar point, Tilley claims that in “the processof naming places and things they become captured in socialdiscourses and act as mnemonics for the historical actions ofindividuals and groups” (1994, 18). This creation of a par-ticular emotive universe in the landscape through naming isimportant in conferring historical and social significance ona geographical space. The association of cooperatives withheroes and historic events serves as a device for evoking emo-tional connections to historical and social rhetoric rooted inthe historical continuity of struggle for the liberation andindependence of la patria.

All the agricultural cooperatives in the Havana area arenamed either for heroes of the 1898 War of Independenceand the Revolution or for important landmark events. Theheroes are considered “moral exemplars” (Humphrey 1997)upon whom members’ behaviour should be modelled. Thename of a cooperative is exhibited on a concrete plaque out-side its office. Though I cite Humphrey’s use of the term“exemplar” to portray a particular construction of a morallandscape based on exemplary figures, the “morality of ex-emplars” in Cuba differs in three respects from Humphrey’sMongolian case. First, the exemplars are called “heroes.” Sec-ond, whereas in the Mongolian context exemplars are chosenby individuals depending on their particular circumstances ata given time, in Cuba heroes are universal and the subject ofideological education; Camilo Cienfuegos and Cesar Escalante(both heroes of the struggle for independence) are heroes not

only for the cooperatives that bear their names but also forsociety at large. Third, Humphrey (1997, 40–41) notes,

In the Maoist period in China, and to a lesser extent in the

Stalinist one in Mongolia, we can see the hijacking by the

Party of the very structure [of Mongolian life] I have de-

scribed. Mao himself was not to be emulated, but he, as the

great teacher, presented to the masses “from his own life”

many quasi-invested models of moral qualities. . . . The

important thing to note here is that there were many of

these Maoist exemplars, and unlike the situation in more

politically relaxed periods of Mongolian life, they were de-

signed to blot out all previous models—that is, to take over

the moral landscape.

In Cuba, however, previous models are not blotted out butrather emphasized and constructed through a revolutionaryreading of history and around a moral universe of heroesstruggling for la patria’s freedom from tyrants and oppressors.

In order to present the image of an “exemplary” revolu-tionary cooperative, each cooperative is required to have adesignated space for its monthly assembly meetings and socialevents called the “recreational space.” I refer to this space asthe “ritual centre,” since it is decorated with portraits of therevolutionary hero for whom the cooperative is named andwith the diplomas and certificates awarded to the cooperativeby the ANAP and/or the Party for outstanding individual and/or collective efforts and results (fig. 5). The ritual centre mayalso be decorated with revolutionary graffiti such as the onefound on the wall of a cooperative office reading “Freedomfor Our Brothers Prisoners of the Empire” (referring to theaforementioned five Cubans incarcerated in the United States)(fig. 6).

In the past few years the organization responsible for thepolitical orientation of “private” cooperatives, the ANAP, hasrequired the “exemplary” cooperative to have a rincon Mar-tiano (Martı corner) or plaza Martiana (Martı square), a shri-

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 541

Figure 7. The Martı corner of an agricultural cooperative.

nelike monument to la patria’s “suprahero” Jose Martı, whois considered the grandfather of the Revolution. The Martıcorner is strategically situated at the entrance of each coop-erative’s office and contains such essentials as a miniature ofthe house of Martı’s birth, a bust of him, ornamental flowers,the names of the cooperative’s founding members, and thedate of the cooperative’s founding (fig. 7). Moreover, it mustinclude the national symbols stipulated in Cuba’s NationalConstitution of 1901 (when Cuba was declared a republic):the Cuban flag, the national shield, the national anthem, thenational flower, and the royal palm tree (palma real). The useof botanical metaphors—in this case both the national flowerand the royal palm tree—can create a sense of “identity be-tween people, heritage, territory, and state [and] . . . configurethe nation as limited in its membership, sovereign, and con-tinuous in time. . . . [Such] kinship tropes substantialize hi-erarchical social relations and imbue them with sentimentand morality” (Alonso 1994, 383, 385). As Brow has suggestedelsewhere, the idiom of kinship has a “special potency as abasis of community” because “it can draw upon the past notsimply to posit a common origin but also to claim substantialidentity in the present” (quoted by Alonso 1994, 384).

The Martı shrine finds its symbolic potency in the juxta-position of la patria’s quintessential symbols. These nationalsymbols are honoured by the socioeconomic and political unitrepresentative of the Revolution’s agrarian politics. In thecoexistence of these symbols in the same space we find asymbolic vocabulary of struggle, liberation, and nationalismexpressed as part of an imagined historical revolutionary pro-ject. This construction provides the Revolution with bothmoral and historical legitimacy and, given the Martı corner’srecent introduction as an essential part of the cooperativelandscape, can be seen as part of the repatriotization of rev-olutionary ideology in post-Soviet times.

The importance attached to the Martı corner by the lead-ership is illustrated by several facts. To begin with, the pre-requisites for a Martı corner are found in the ANAP’s generalrules booklet, and the socialist “emulation” in which coop-eratives are ranked twice a year awards points for the “best-kept” Martı corner.

The construction of an image of the “exemplary” coop-erative has wider implications. Following Aretxaga’s point that“names define reality, create history, and shape memory”(1997, 43), such images link historical moments through aparticular discursive historiography, serving as devices for“politicizing” and promoting revolutionary consciousness intimes of struggle. This is also a way of making entities whichwere once neglected for not being particularly “high” formsof production (given that these cooperatives were not, strictlyspeaking, state but “private”) part of the wider revolutionaryproject (Deere, Meurs, and Perez 1992). While private, theyare incorporated into the revolutionary framework becausethey reflect particular values. In this way the cooperatives canbe presented as successful expressions of the revolutionary

structure, with roots deeply embedded in the struggle againstexploitation and giving the land back to “the people.”

The above examples are all sites which are both sociallyand ideologically demarcated. As a result of this demarcation,“the importance of these sites is not only their manifest anddistinctive appearance, but their qualifying and latent mean-ing” (Kuper 1972, 421). Indeed, one of the reasons behindrequiring such sites, as a Party member and ANAP employeeexplained, is that it is part of a wider project of “educating”the campesino and his/her family about Cuba’s official rev-olutionary history of struggle for independence and freedomfrom Spanish colonialism and American-led foreign capitalistexploitation. As the organization’s ideologist said, “I educatethem all on our heroes—so that we don’t forget what is ours,because if we are here it is [thanks to] them, and that cannotbe forgotten.”

Conclusion

The concept of landscape has been employed here as a heu-ristic device to help illustrate the repatriotization of ideologyin state discourse. Havana’s landscape of posters and bill-boards, graffiti, and shrines to historical and revolutionaryheroes is a medium for expressing ideology. This mnemoniclandscape constructs a “politicised memory . . . in which thepolitical cannot be meaningfully studied apart from themoral” (Werbner 1998, 15). It makes revolutionary ideologypertinent to the present and projects it into the future byreminding people of their past and conferring a morality onpast struggles.

The distinction between the Revolution, communism, andsocialism is important in understanding the endurance of theRevolution and the relative ease with which Cuban state dis-course can adapt—through the battle-of-ideas campaign and

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542 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

the repatriotization of revolutionary ideology, for instance—to become more relevant for people and the challenges theyface today. As we have seen, the discourse of “the Revolution”has from the very beginning made many Cubans think interms of belonging to a geographically and historically vul-nerable patria and to link aspirations to remain free and “trulyCuban” to state legitimacy. While this was certainly the basisupon which it came to power in 1959, the Revolution in-creasingly encompassed and emphasized socialism. In post-Soviet times there has been a return to the core values of theRevolution. While this return does not completely excludesocialist ideals, the more “homegrown” foundations of theRevolution—morality, patriotism, and national dignity—havebecome more and more dominant in state discourse and aregradually coming to overshadow “the building of socialism.”

Acknowledgments

The material presented here was gathered during my doctoralfieldwork (2001–2002). I thank David Sneath for his com-ments, ideas, insight, and support and Benjamin Orlove andfive anonymous reviewers for their comments and sugges-tions. I acknowledge the generosity of the following fundingbodies that made my research possible: the Domestic ResearchStudentship (Cambridge University), the Isaac Newton Stu-dentship (Cambridge European Trust), the Pembroke CollegeStudentship, the Richards Fund (Department of Social An-thropology, Cambridge University), the Wyse Fund (TrinityCollege/Department of Social Anthropology), the CambridgePolitical Economy Society Trust (Faculty of Economics, Cam-bridge University), and the David Moore Memorial Fund(The Arkleton Trust). I thank UNESCO for financial assis-tance during the writing of this article. A draft of the articlewas presented to the Senior Seminar, Department of SocialAnthropology, Cambridge University. The views expressed inthe article are mine alone.

Comments

Virginia R. DominguezDepartment of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. ([email protected])13 II 07

Gropas has a sense of something deeply present and conse-quential in contemporary Cuba, and, drawing on some verydifferent types of materials, she is trying here to put togethera plausible narrative that articulates that sense. I have mixedfeelings about the paper, though somewhat less about itsargument.

The essay does not really hang together well, at least to myeditorial eyes. The material offered as evidence is not reallyall that much about landscape or memory (despite the essay’s

title or self-proclaimed frame of analysis), and the overallimpression is of a collage rather than a tight argument. Theanalytic frame that looms large here seems partly appropriatebut largely not, and other frames of understanding (regardingstate socialism, U.S. imperialism, nationalism, and even cap-italism) are so weak or backgrounded that they feel absent.Enormous debates about Cuban politics, Cuba-U.S. relations,Cuba-USSR relations, and the Cuban revolution itself areelided, ignored, or so marginally addressed here that a readerunfamiliar with Latin American studies or the history of statesocialist societies is likely to overestimate the importance ofGropas’s essay or its degree of novelty. And, as an article itself,the essay is not neatly crafted. Too many themes seem bothpresent and equally highlighted, detracting from the sharpnessof argument that I like to see in a journal article. At timesthe essay appears to want to contribute to visual culture, atother times to the lively UK-centered discussions of landscapeand history. And it mentions, more than analyzes, mnemonicdevices. Most frustrating is its handling of Cuba’s post-1959state ideology, government, and shifts in practice, because thisis where it also stands to offer real insight. And to any Cu-banologist or Latin Americanist (and I do not really fall intoeither category with ease) it offers tantalizing but overly briefand underdeveloped insights into Cuba’s relationship withthe United States before and after Castro’s takeover in January1959, the long-standing public hagiography of Che Guevara,the extent of internal dissent in Castro’s Cuba, the nature ofurban/rural differences, and the role of Cuban nationalism inall of this.

Yet I like Gropas’s hunch, and I appreciate her courage intrying to find a way to share it with the rest of us. I find itthere in her term “repatriotization,” with its ambiguity aboutwhether it concerns patriotism or nationalism. I find myselfagreeing that it is there in the interviews and in snippets ofpublic discourse issued by state agencies and by seeminglyprivate parties. Less clear is whether this is really a return toCuban patriotism or a public reaffirmation of it since thecollapse of the USSR. I suspect the latter. “Verde como laspalmas” (green like the palm trees) was something I first heardin the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was there in the earlyperiods of the “Cuban Revolution.” It may have been back-grounded publicly for some years (perhaps mid-1960s to mid-1970s), but much else about Cuban public and private prac-tice and discourse throughout the 1960s to 1990s continuedto reveal a kind of Cuban national self-confidence, a “can-do” attitude, that is easy to see and often rattles the WhiteHouse and the U.S. Congress. It is what frequently leads Cu-bans to seem upbeat and inspiring (but also pushy and ar-rogant) in the eyes of many who encounter them/us, whetherin Cuba or in its diaspora. So I am not so sure that “repa-triotization” is the right term. I do think that the evidenceGropas offers here is persuasive about its current level ofvisibility and even governmental endorsement.

I am less sure how novel it is to suggest that state socialistideologies can coexist with nationalism and patriotism, even

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 543

with a strong version of the latter. I have a hard time con-templating the Vietnam War without it, or the discourse andactions of the North Korean government today, or the long,complex relationship of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’Party to the USSR even at the height of Soviet influence inHungary.

Perhaps we should take Gropas’s essay as a reminder ofhow present, how deeply felt, and how generative national-level patriotism is today, regardless of official political or re-ligious ideologies that may seem more visible or audible, thesheer volume of transnational movement of people, goods,or ideas, and the affirmations of postnationalism and thedemise of the nation-state that began to emerge in the late1990s. Is the alternative not exceptionalism?

Nadine FernandezCentral New York Center, SUNY Empire State College, 219Walton Street, Syracuse, NY 13202, U.S.A. ([email protected]) 8 III 07

Gropas’s work represents the latest in a small but steadystream of anthropological fieldwork in Cuba since the early1990s (e.g., Carter 2000; Crabb 2001; Daniel 1995; Fernadez1996; Forrest 1999; Fosado 2004; Hernandez-Reguant 2002;Perry 2004; Roland 2006). She presents an interesting analysisof what she terms the “repatriotization of revolutionary ide-ology,” that is, state discourse’s emphasis on ideas of patria/nationalism over socialism. She pays close attention to lan-guage and varying views on the revolution, but at times herargument about change can be heavy-handed.

The strength of her argument lies in her focus on the notionof landscape as represented by the ubiquitous billboards andslogans that proclaim the revolution’s successes, values, andideals. This idea of mnemonic landscape, Gropas argues, is ameans of using a politicized memory of the past to create thepresent and ensure the future of the revolution. The emphasison past struggles and heroes (e.g., the war of independence)becomes a way of understanding and valorizing current strug-gles such as the effort to maintain sovereignty (e.g., in theface of U.S. threats). She argues that the landscape of revo-lutionary propaganda fosters a particular reading of Cubanhistory that stresses la patria/nation, duty, and morality. Theseideas, in turn, help to justify current battles and sacrifices asthey are contextualized as extensions of earlier struggles forla patria. This is a fascinating analysis of the meanings anduse of the revolution’s visual messaging and the use of amorally grounded, nationalistic discourse and imagery tobuild support for the revolution both in the city of Havanaand in the rural agricultural cooperative where she worked.It allows her not only to present the revolution as an evolvingprocess rather than a particular event in the past but also toposit an often-overlooked middle ground in the debates aboutthe revolution that characterize much of the academic liter-ature on Cuba.

She moves onto shakier ground, however, when she assertsthat this emphasis on morality, duty, and la patria has emergedwith new vigor since the fall of the socialist bloc. The pre/post-Soviet-period aspect of her argument plays down thefact that the revolutionary government has always relied heav-ily on moral claims and incentives. Che Guevara himself ep-itomized this moral/political connection in advocating moral(over material) incentives for work. This is not an idea thatemerged after 1990 but the very root of the revolution.Changes have certainly taken place since the collapse of thesocialist bloc, but there are also continuities which have helpedto keep the revolution in power for more than 40 years. Amore nuanced analysis of the way these moral/political con-nections have been employed over the past several decadeswould have helped root Gropas’s analysis of landscape.

Gropas found that Cubans she spoke with critiqued Soviet-style socialism as rigid and perceived it as a “foreign” im-position on the “Cubanness” of the revolution. This critiqueof the Soviet period is very interesting and could have beenmore deeply explored. In hindsight, of course, it is clear thatSoviet-style socialism failed. However, for many Cubans theperiod of the 1980s, the heyday of Soviet support, was a timeof relative plenty. The Cuba of the Soviet era was one ofgreater material comfort, economic prosperity, and educa-tional opportunities, thanks to Soviet subsidies and aid. ManyCubans remember it not as something foreign but as a timeof abundance in comparison with the very austere first yearsof the revolution and the extreme scarcities of the early 1990sSpecial Period. In the early 1990s it was common to hearglowing descriptions of Cuba antes (before), referring not to“before” the revolution as in Miami but rather to “before”the Special Period —exactly that period of Soviet support thatGropas suggests is now critiqued as too foreign.

Perhaps perceptions of this more recent past are also beingreshaped in light of yet another “invasion” of foreigners, whonow come bearing beach towels instead of “manuals on howto do socialism.” One piece of the landscape that Gropas doesnot mention is the commercial and tourism billboards whichstand alongside the revolutionary slogans. What images andmemories of the past are these “mnemonic landscapes” res-urrecting, and what present and future are they constructing?She has provided a close reading of one aspect of the visual/ideological reality in Cuba. Now, perhaps we are in a betterposition to think about broadening the panorama.

Martin HallBremner Building, University of Cape Town, ZA-7700Rondebosch, South Africa ([email protected]) 21 II07

For Gropas, Cuba’s landscapes are the mediation of the pre-sent through the construction of the past. The core theme ofthe 1959 Revolution and its images of guns, freedom, andrevolutionary leaders provide a set of icons that organize a

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544 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

rich political discourse of national identity. This discourseplays in opposition to the idea of the Empire—the UnitedStates and its political allies, who encircle the island bothpractically through economic constraints and figuratively byrepresenting Cuba as an exemplar of oppression.

Cuba has a special place in South Africa’s “slow revolution,”which begin with the Soweto uprising in June 1976 and endedwith the first democratic elections in 1994. During the 1980s,the South African Defence Force engaged directly with Cubanmilitia in Angola, culminating in the key 1987 battle of CuitoCuanavale. For the South African state and its U.S. ally, Cubaninvolvement in Southern Africa epitomized the malign in-tentions of the Soviet bloc. For the African National Congressand the broader post-apartheid consensus, Cuba representscommitments to the ideals of liberation, freedom, and dem-ocratic principles. Cuba has provided models of good practicefor the reconstruction of the South African state, whether ineducation, health care, or the arts and culture.

Aspects of post-apartheid landscapes provide parallels tothe post-Revolutionary Cuban landscapes that Gropas dis-cusses. Robben Island, some 5 km from Cape Town’s TableBay, has been constituted as a living representation of theimprisonment of key ANC leaders (including, of course, Nel-son Mandela). Visitors are guided through the prison com-pounds by former political prisoners and are told of the in-tellectual and political work of the exercise yards and the stonequarry as foundations of the liberated state. In one reading,Robben Island could be seen as a simple manifestation ofnationalism. However—and in the same way that Gropas in-sists on a more nuanced reading of Havana’s revolutionarylandscape—this would be to ignore the debates around themeaning of “the Island” in the years after 1994. For example,the emphasis on Nelson Mandela and the ANC has led othersto insist on recognition of the revolutionary role of the PanAfrican Congress and its leader Robert Sobukwe, also im-prisoned on Robben Island. Others have criticized the omis-sion from official memorialization of the anti-racist politicaltraditions of the Western Cape and its own landscapes ofmemory, such as forced removal and the District Six Museum.As with the debates that Gropas describes, all would defendand celebrate the democratic South African state while dis-agreeing on how the past should be understood in the contextof the present. As with the role that Gropas discerns in Ha-vana’s billboards and revolutionary images, so the physicalityof South African landscapes such as Robben Island and Dis-trict Six serves to give substance and shape to verbal for-mulations and exchanges.

There is, though, one key difference between contemporaryCuba and contemporary South Africa. Cuba is enclaved, sur-rounded by “the Empire” which, in Gropas’s account, is asmuch an icon of Cuba’s contemporary conditions as the abid-ing images of Guevara and Castro. South Africa is the op-posite, a poster-child of Western-style freedom and democ-racy. Robben Island is a World Heritage site, the location ofspectacular events such as a joint production with the Swedish

national opera of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and a must for everycelebrity visit. This opens up an interesting set of questionsfor Cuba’s future landscapes “after Castro,” when the cordonis lifted and Havana is again, as before 1959, an integral partthe U.S. tourism industry, a themed destination resort where,perhaps, the Havana Hilton welcomes the world under an-other manifestation of Che and Fidel, now benignly watchingover designer boutiques, beaches, and musical theatre in thetradition of Les Miserables.

South Africa provides useful pointers for imagining suchfuture landscapes. The post-apartheid period has been a rangeof new and largely successful entertainment destinations (Hall2006). A legal requirement that gaming licences be linkedwith community development has seen many of these linkedwith concepts of heritage, while, following global trends inthe entertainment industry, there is invariably a unifyingtheme that seeks distinction through the spectacular. CapeTown has GrandWest, which directly appropriates the “lib-eration landscape” of District Six in a streetscape of shopsand restaurants. Those in Gauteng (the economic and politicalhub of the country, which includes both Johannesburg andPretoria) can choose among an East African landscape (at theEmerald Resort), the imagined landscape of a lost Africa (atthe Lost City), and a form of highveld Tuscany (at Monte-casino—a themed destination in Johannesburg with a capacityof 10,000). Such landscapes are popular with the full spectrumof South Africa’s population. It will be fascinating to see howCuba’s landscapes continue to mediate past and present oncethe Empire’s blockade has been lifted.

Martin HolbraadDepartment of Anthropology, University College London,14 Taviton St., London WCIH 0BW, UK ([email protected]). 12 III 07

Gropas’s ear-to-the-ground ethnography of revolutionary dis-course in present-day Cuba is a much-needed contributionto a field that remains tentative because of political circum-stances on both sides of the Florida straits. With few notableexceptions (e.g., Rosendahl 1997), the ethnographic researchthat began to be carried out in Cuba by non-Cuban anthro-pologists in the 1990s has been limited mainly to the field ofAfro-Cuban culture, often with a view to “Black Atlanticist”concerns (e.g., Dianteill 2000; Hagedorn 2001; Palmie 2002;Brown 2003; Wedel 2004). Indeed, for those of us who haveconducted long-term research on the island, Gropas’s field-work among state functionaries and farmers in an agriculturalcooperative in rural Havana represents an admirable achieve-ment. So do the insights she offers in this article into thesignificance of the “Revolution” to ordinary Cubans, as wellas the ways in which this is moulded by the island’s thoroughlypoliticized “landscape.” By way of building on each of thesetwo strands of Gropas’s argument, I make a couple of points.

The major concern of the article is to show that in recent

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 545

years in Cuba terms like “revolution” and “revolutionary”have shifted in meaning, shedding some of the socialist con-notations of the Soviet era in favour of a moral emphasis onthe national dignity of la patria—what Gropas calls the “re-patriotization” of the Revolution. In this connection, Gropas’sethnographic material shows that notions of “revolution” areat once fluid in their meaning and supremely salient to Cu-bans’ ideological discourse not only politically but also, assome of her informants’ expressions would indicate, at a per-sonal and emotional level. Anthropologically speaking, thiscombination of semantic haziness and moral weight bringsto mind Levi-Strauss’s 1987 influential point that “floatingsignifiers” play a pivotal role in the symbolic constitution ofcosmological thinking. Along these lines, one might think ofthe discursive characteristics of “revolution” by analogy toOceanian notions of mana (Levi-Strauss’s prime example ofa floating signifier) or, indeed, ache, the equivalent of manain Afro-Cuban religion (Holbraad 2007). The point of sucha comparison would be neither to “mystify” Cuban notionsof revolution nor to assent to Levi-Strauss’s contention thatsuch floating signifiers are essentially meaningless (1987, 55,64). Rather, the idea would be to complement Gropas’s mainlypragmatic analysis, which is focused on the political efficacyof ideological discourse, with a more symbolically mindedapproach that would treat the Cuban Revolution as an irre-ducibly cosmological enterprise.

The fact, for example, that the revolutionary character ofCuban society is sustained discursively almost half a centuryafter the events of 1959 (“the Triumph of the Revolution,”as people in Cuba call it even in everyday parlance) arguablylends those events the proportions of a cosmogony. As in-dicated by the matter-of-fact way in which the Revolution isannualized in all manner of texts (e.g., dating this year’s cor-respondence “Ano 49 de la Revolucion”), the Revolution canbe posited as a point of origin—in a relevant sense, the originof time itself—by comparison to what anthropologists inother contexts call “origin myths.” On such a view, a chiefdifference between, say, the origin myths of tribal ethnographyand that of the Cuban Revolution is that while in the formercase time typically is owed to divinities, in the latter it is anachievement of a People and its Leader and Heroes, as Gropasdescribes. Gropas’s argument about the ways in which theRevolution has shifted historically from socialism to patri-otism could then be recast in terms of contrasting ways ofimagining the cosmogonical powers of a peculiarly collectivesubjectivity, for example, the tension between the particularcollectivity of a “Cuban” Revolution and the universal oneof internationalist socialism.

Such a perspective may also serve to qualify Gropas’s ar-gument about the “mnemonic” role of Cuba’s politicizedlandscape. Her discussion of the way memorialized events,heroes, and slogans serve to fuel present-day revolutionarydiscourse draws on theories of landscape and memory thatmay not necessarily be transposed without qualification tothe context of the Cuban Revolution. For example, if, seen

as a “political cosmology,” the Revolution involves a set ofdistinctive temporal notions and practices, then what con-stitutes “memory” and how “past,” “present,” and “future”may be articulated cosmologically must be treated as openethnographic questions. Similarly, if such a cosmology turnson the subjectivity of collectives, then one will have to re-consider traditional anthropological concerns with what usedto be called “socialization,” which seems a premise of Gropas’sdiscussion of the efficacy of state discourse in moulding peo-ple’s memory. In other words, a relevant anthropologicalquestion is who, in revolution, is the subject. Such lines ofinquiry would link Gropas’s fascinating ethnography moreexplicitly to compelling analyses of time, memory, and sub-jectivity in recent anthropological writings on socialist andpost-socialist societies (e.g., Humphrey 1994; Kharkhordin1999; Ssorin-Chaikov 2003, 2006; Yurchak 2006; Pedersen2007).

Mona RosendahlInstitute of Latin American Studies, Stockholm University,Stockholm S-106 91, Sweden ([email protected]) 14 III07

Gropas treats a subject which is and has been a central issuefor decades in Cuba, namely, the visualization in languageand landscape of what Cubans call “the Revolution.” It is apleasure to read her article, especially since this importantissue has received little attention in other research about Cuba.Gropas’s article captures the contradictions in political dis-course as experienced by people in everyday life and showshow the state is able to construct and reconstruct the imageof the Revolution to fit the current situation.

Using the concept “repatriotization,” Gropas argues thatin post-Soviet Cuba a patriotic and nationalist discourse hasreplaced the more socialist and “Sovietified” discourse of the1970s and 1980s. I agree with her that there has been a shiftin official discourse since the disintegration of the Soviet Un-ion. The ideological heritage from Jose Martı, as she shows,stressing dignity and national sovereignty, has become moreand more important in speeches and slogans.

My main objection to an otherwise extremely interestingarticle is precisely the use of the concept repatriotization.Gropas argues that socialism was the main ideological messagein official discourse during the “Soviet era” and that it is stillpresent although to a much lesser degree. My view is exactlythe opposite. I would argue that socialism has never been avery important part of revolutionary discourse, other than inofficial speeches and slogans and then only in high-profileevents such as May 1, which is one of Gropas’s examples. Ialso consider that the shift from socialism to “patriotization”has been partial and gradual and has varied not only overtime but in the different fields of discourse—official statediscourse, local political discourse, and the discourse ofindividuals.

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546 Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 4, August 2007

During my fieldwork in a small town in the East of Cuba

in the 1980s (see Rosendahl 1997), local politicians hardly

ever mentioned socialism or Marxism/Leninism but talked

about the achievements of the Revolution in terms of the

people’s rights to education, medical care, jobs, etc. They also

often quoted Jose Martı, and dignity was an important catch-

word in speeches, along with historical comparisons with the

bad times before the Revolution (referred to as antes). The

subjects echoed those treated in speeches by Fidel Castro or

the other national leaders, since the local leaders followed the

“Party line” very closely. Although many people did not agree

with the excessive descriptions of improvements, many, es-

pecially those who had experienced extreme poverty before

the Revolution, could concur that there had been improve-

ments, and this gave the discourse legitimacy.

When the economic crisis deepened in Cuba in the mid-

1990s, official discourse among top-level politicians also

changed, as Gropas shows. One of the reasons for this, I

believe, was that earlier discourse had programmatically

stressed the achievements of the Revolution, often by citing

long lists of feats. When the country fell into economic crisis,

it was no longer possible for the leaders to legitimately make

these claims, and this led to silences (Rosendahl 2002) and

eventually to a discourse with stronger emphasis on the his-

torical links to the wars of independence and on the ideas of

Martı on dignity, la patria, and national sovereignty.

I would like to stress that the collapse of the Soviet Union

meant a stronger emphasis not only on la patria but some-

times also on socialism. Precisely at the beginning of the so-

called special period in 1990, when the world expected, hoped,

or feared that Cuba would leave the socialist path, the slogan

“Socialism or Death” (echoing the slogan used from the be-

ginning of the Revolution “Patria o Muerte”/“Homeland or

Death”) was introduced. This was done, Fidel Castro ex-

plained, to reassure the Cuban people and the world that

Cuba would continue on its socialist path.

As Gropas shows, people without political posts have much

more complex and nuanced views of the Revolution than is

usually depicted. For most people in everyday life the social

achievements of the Revolution are the most important, as

well as the patriotic aspect. Even those who are very critical

of the government and the political system defend their coun-

try. Gropas quotes a man from her fieldwork in 2001–2 as

saying, “Even though I am against Castro, I love my country.”

This is almost verbatim what a man said to me during my

study in 1998–90. Although he didn’t like the system, he said,

“I would defend my country to the last drop of my blood.”

Gropas’s article makes a vital contribution to Cuban studies

and to political anthropology. It also shows the importance

of a historical approach and the difficulty of pursuing such

an approach, especially in a field that has been little studied.

Reply

I thank the commentators for having taken the time to readmy article and provide such insight. Their comments give methe opportunity to clarify a few points.

First, the concept of “repatriotization” seems to have at-tracted the most interest. I explicitly noted that in speakingof “repatriotization” I was not suggesting either (a) that thesocialist element was no longer present in post-Soviet Cubanstate discourse or (b) that this patriotic discourse was new topost-Soviet Cuba. I emphasized that the discourse of la patriadated back to the times of Jose Martı and that the 1959revolution did not start off being about socialism. What Itried to show here is that, while reference to socialism startedmoving toward center stage after 1961, in more recent yearswe have noted a greater emphasis on the independent patriathan on the building of a socialist and/or communist society.This is not to say that discourse on morality and patria wasnot present before. On the contrary, I have insisted that oneof the Revolution’s constants has been the reference to ahistorical continuity of struggle for la patria’s independence.My fieldwork experience indicates that in post-Soviet Havanaofficial state narratives seem to be “going back to basics,” asit were.

Indeed, during my fieldwork I found that, in Havana atleast, people were now (in contrast to the 1960s) more willingto accept doing things and making sacrifices for la patria thanfor the building of socialism. By no means did I intend toclaim that there was a sharp dichotomy in the discourse ofpre-and post-Soviet times. Nor did I claim that the two dis-courses (on la patria and on socialism) were mutually exclu-sive. I may not have succeeded in wholly escaping this di-chotomy, but I believe that there is analytical utility in seeingrevolutionary discourse as shifting and adapting.

Rosendahl points out that in the 1980s local politiciansspoke about “the Revolution” rather than about Marxist Len-inism and that in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet col-lapse official discourse greatly emphasized socialism at a timewhen the world expected that Cuba would abandon it. Herpoint actually strengthens my argument that state narrativesin Cuba are forever adapting to the challenges of the time.This is why ideological discourse cannot be viewed as mono-lithic. Indeed, it would be of great interest to see whether,following the relatively recent rise to power of various left-leaning governments across Latin America (e.g., those of Mo-rales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Bachelet in Chile, Chavezin Venezuela, and Lula in Brazil), state narratives in Cubahave seen a recent shift—however slight—toward a greateremphasis on socialist discourse.

Some very interesting points for further research haveemerged from the comments. Fernandez, Hall, and Holbraad

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Gropas The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology 547

have suggested ways in which research on Cuba can be takenfurther.

Fernandez points to an aspect of Cuban history which hasnot been documented: the Cuban critique of the Soviet pe-riod. I completely agree with her that the Soviet period wasplentiful from a material perspective. Indeed, I was often toldabout the tins of ham that came from the Soviet Union, which,at the time, were often rejected but during the Special Periodwere recalled nostalgically. My fieldwork data suggest, how-ever, that from an ideological perspective perceptions weremore complex. I am inclined to think that this plentifulnessis on some level associated with the scarcity that followed inthe early ’90s. Indeed, as time passes, research on Cuban-Soviet relations may shed more light on the way that periodwas perceived locally.

Hall’s discussion of the South African case opens up a wholenew way of seeing the Cuban material. An anonymous re-viewer of my article wrote that it would be interesting toknow whether this study might have wider implications. Hall’scomments indicate that postapartheid landscapes present par-allels to the landscapes I have discussed. Further research onsuch parallels would, I believe, be most valuable.

Holbraad’s perceptive theorization of the article’s morepragmatic approach is constructive, and the approach he sug-gests is extremely valuable. His question of who, in revolution,is the subject is an intriguing idea for further research. I haveone slight reservation, however, reading his idea that the Rev-olution could be seen as taking on the proportions of a cos-mogony or “origin myth.” A key constant of the Revolution’sdiscourse is precisely the idea that the Revolution is part ofa process which dates back to the Spanish occupation—anachievement of a historical trajectory of struggle. Given thecontinuous delving into history that is so common in revo-lutionary discourse, I am unsure whether the revolution isdiscursively constructed as a point of origin or as a constel-lation of several such points found throughout Cuba’s history.

Dominguez’s comment provides insight into the challengesone faces in writing about Cuba. First, it differs from theothers in being personal rather than academic, based, as sheherself writes, on feelings. Feelings about style or approachshould not be allowed to cloud the academic judgment ofthe material presented. It is also the only comment whichfocuses largely on what is “missing” from the article or shouldhave been included. Silences and omissions are unavoidable;inevitably, a great deal will be left out or merely touched upon.In the end, the guiding principle is to do justice to one’smaterial. Indeed, I remember being taught in my first yearof anthropology at Cambridge to go where my fieldwork tookme and not where I thought it should take me.

My article is overwhelmingly ethnographic, and this, in myopinion, is its main contribution. The Cuban-studies litera-ture includes books and article on the internal dissent andthe Cuban-USSR and Cuban-U.S.A. relations that interestDominguez. These contributions are valuable for an under-

standing of the Cuba of yesterday and today and provide afoundation for further research. They are, however, largelythe work of historians, political scientists, sociologists, andeconomists. The fieldwork reports of anthropologists cancomplement and extend them.

Dominguez’s misreads my article when she says that itclaims to be novel by suggesting that state ideologies cancoexist with nationalism and patriotism. No such claim hasbeen made. This article is an exposition of the fluidity of thenotion of revolution and of its salience in ideological dis-course. It explores the differences locally perceived betweenthe concepts of revolution, socialism, and communism andapproaches these concepts as analytically distinct. Herein, Ibelieve, lies its novelty and interest.

—Maria Gropas

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