In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

58 3 Revolution under Siege Theatre, Globalization, and the Special Period The Special Period dealt us a bad hand. The habit of idealism ran dry. —Nara Mansur, Ignacio y Maria In August 1990, the Cuban government officially recognized that the nation’s economic situation was unsustainable and demanded drastic measures be undertaken during what it called El periódo especiál (the Special Period). The previously inconceivable demise of the Soviet Union left Cuba and its inhabitants in financial turmoil, as the country was forced to completely reorganize in order to participate in a now globalized world economy. For decades, extensive bartering agreements with the Soviets were Cuba’s economic protection from the immediate effects of the U.S. embargo. The loss of major trading partners throughout Eastern Europe created a catastrophic contraction in Cuba’s economy. Many trade shipments that were essential for Cuban industry (such as raw materials and spare parts) ceased altogether. Imported consumer goods declined nearly 75 percent, and favorable markets for Cuba’s primary exports—sugar, coffee, and tobacco—vanished. Cuba’s access to credit, oil, raw materials, equipment, spare parts, and affordable foodstuffs declined precipitously. These changes had a profound impact on development and living standards across the island. Cubans were expected to make daily concessions wherever they could, reducing their use of fuel and other products and abiding by stringent governmental restrictions. During the Special Period, “Life in Cuba settled into a grim and unremitting cycle of scarcity,” writes historian Louis Pérez, “in which shortage begat shortage and where some of the most basic daily needs and wants could be satisfied only by Herculean efforts.”1 The immediate consequences of ongoing “shortages” and “efforts” are represented by Cuban playwrights Miguel Terry (also known as Miguel Terry Valdespino) and Nara Mansur, who depict the exceptional circumstances faced by Cubans living between fractured modernity and postmodernity . These writers portray how the economics of globalization and the R evolution un der Siege 59 Special Period affected individual identities and relationships. Terry and Mansur illustrate how Cubans integrated the “costs and ideological risks”2 implied by market reforms such as self-employment and booming tourism. Their plays theatrically convey the losses and inventiveness, the connectedness and isolation, and the disruptions, fissures, and indeterminacy of the Special Period. Desire, fear, hope, despair, and imagination are common themes of the extraordinary era of evolution wrought by the globalization of Cuba. The complications of the island’s solitary social and economic positions affect the daily experiences of the Cuban people, especially their individual identities and intimate relationships. Néstor García Canclini writes, “the whole crisis of modernity . . . lead to a postmodern problematic (not a phase) in the sense that the modern explodes and is mixed with what is not modern.” Recent Cuban theatre claims that this problematic is “affirmed and debated at the same time,” as García Canclini does.3 While many studies have suggested that postmodern political autonomy has declined since the globalization of capitalist production, the specific effects of this decline on people living in a country like Cuba are understudied. Terry, in his early Special Period play entitled Laberinto de lobos (Labyrinth of Wolves, published in 1994), questions the very nature of relationships themselves within Cuba’s newly skewed, transmodern economy . His Cuban characters have lifelong relationships that are permanently altered by attempts to participate in the global market, with its threats of calamity juxtaposed with its potential for reward. Daily interactions between Cubans are transformed by outsiders in the play, namely tourists and foreigners who have access to wealth. Nara Mansur’s play Ignacio y Maria (published in 2003) also reveals the tension the Special Period and globalization create within everyday situations on the island, but from much later in the era. Mansur’s work is framed by the conflicts over the desire for, acceptance of, resignation to, and defiance toward the economic and social integration of Cuba into the world market. Together, these plays depict the personal consequences of a socialist nation’s efforts to negotiate the global hegemony, examining cooperation and resistance in national and global relationships by closely investigating personal ones. Laberinto de lobos Afro-Cuban writer Miguel Terry is best known as a respected journalist and novelist. Born in 1963 in Ceiba del Agua, Caimito (Havana Province), Terry studied journalism at the University of Havana, earning his degree in 1989. He has garnered numerous theatre awards, including El Premio La Habana, Teatro, 1991 (Havana Prize for Theatre) for his...

Share