La Lucha for Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami

4. Machismo: Creating Structures of Oppression

chapter 4 Machismo Creating Structures of Oppression Historically, it has always been easy to blame Euroamericans for Cuba’s economic, social, and political situation. Yet not all Cuba’s woes can be attributed to the United States and its neoimperialism, or to the embargo , or even to global capitalism. José Martí advises, “[i]n Nuestra America [Our America] it is vital to know the truth about the United States. We should not exaggerate its faults purposely, out of a desire to deny it all virtue, nor should these faults be concealed or proclaimed as virtues” (1977, 49). In the previous chapter, I debunked fantasies of Cuban ethnicity, unmasking how structures of oppression were established within el exilio in the form of religious expression called la lucha. This chapter continues an examination of la lucha by investigating the foundations of intra-Cuban oppression. The division caused by the 1959 Revolution and its aftermath had deep roots in long-standing forms of oppression based on gender, race, and class, each reinforcing the other. These forms of oppression are not recent phenomena caused by the political ideologies created either by Resident or Exilic Cubans. Rather, they are traceable to Cuba’s foundation . Thus it is important to examine the historical development of Cuba’s different marginalized groups, remaining conscious of the fact that the official history of Cuba runs the risk of becoming a product of the imagination of its chroniclers, especially of those who benefit from the retelling of history. In most cases, interpreting history has little to do with what actually happened and more to do with what is believed to have happened. It 81 82 MACHISMO could even be argued that historians speak of things that have never existed except in their own imaginations. All perspectives are subjective. Interpreting Cuban history as a history of marginality alone, using the “insider-outsider” dichotomy, oversimplifies the problem. Just as when “outsiders” constructed Cuban history, thereby oppressing Cubans under the colonial gaze, so too does the construction of history by Cuban “insiders” oppress all that is Other to the Cuban elite. When those in power, either the inside elite or the “outside” colonizer, write history, they do not record the events of Cuba; rather, they recount their own stories in regard to all they have plundered and violated. Thus Cuban history has existed in its relationship to Spain, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Its history is the history of the dominant global powers. Its retelling contains the biases of the historian and the value-laden models used for interpreting past events, with the historian’s ideological production becoming imposed on the narrative. Specifically, before the colonizer’s subjective “I,” all Cubans occupy the space “I am not.” And when posed before the white Cuban male elite’s subjective “I,” all Cuban nonmales, nonwhites, and nonelites occupy the object “I am not.” For theological reflection to be relevant to Cuban reality, the identity of this “I am not,” constructed by the dominant “I,” must be exposed. Exhibiting the social fabrication of the “I” disrupts the prevailing normalization of gender, race, and class distinctions and unveils the hidden dynamics of Cuban oppression. In maintaining the position of subject, both the colonizer and the Cuban elite are guilty of a “syntax of forgetting.” Nation-building usually requires an epic tale of triumphant wars, heroic figures, and aweinspiring achievements, elevating the dominant culture while disenfranchising the Other (Bhabha 1994, 160–61). History is retold to serve the interests of those who benefit from present societal structures. Cuba’s national identity discourse and official history not only disguises the complex political forces responsible for bringing forth that history, but more important, it also suppresses sexual differences, racial divisions, and class conflicts. To understand the intra-Cuban web of oppression, one must begin by examining the historical development of Cuba, a history involving several continuous stages of domination. If the domination of a certain people by others creates an ethical system, then historical writings justify this system and the social positions of those who are in the dominant position to write history. This relationship of domination is not a “relationship ” per se but becomes fixed throughout history through meticu- MACHISMO 83 lous procedures conferring and imposing rights on one group and obligations on another. The dominant culture reproduces itself in history and normalizes its power by...