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87 4 Revolution from Afar Cuban American Perspectives [Relational space] . . . is another space . . . actually lived and socially created spatiality, concrete and abstract at the same time, the habitus of social practices. It is a space rarely seen for it has been obscured by bifocal vision that traditionally views space as either a mental construct or a physical form. —Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory On 13 August 2006, Cuban president Fidel Castro celebrated his eightieth birthday, although recovering from major surgery and ominously absent from view. Miami Cubans who identify as political refugees danced in the streets at the news of Fidel’s failing health but were also forced, yet again, to acknowledge his spectacular longevity as Cuba’s charismatic leader. Their reaction added another episode to the problematic relationship between Cuba and the United States that deeply informs the entire Cuban diaspora. Cuba’s reach extends far beyond the Miami-Havana nexus that Juan Flores insists is “incomplete without Washington, and New York, and by extension San Juan, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Madrid, Tokyo”1 and, recently, Caracas or Beijing. Yet it is also clear that Cuba’s “borders have proliferated, all the while showing their limited ability to contain, arrest, or limit the historic and present exchanges that continue to sneak through its cracks.”2 Years of exchange and influence have permanently linked the island to its northern neighbor. However, since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, decades of unresolved political clashes, ideological disagreements, economic sanctions, and immigration crises have marred the two countries’ once affable political, financial, and social affiliations. According to scholar Román De la Campa, the Cuban Revolution has certainly, “found its primary source of inspiration in confronting American brawn”3 and to date, nearly a dozen American presidents have encountered a resolute, fiercely independent Fidel Castro. Political differences have had a profound effect on Cubans at home and in the diaspora. While more than one million former Cuban citizens live in exile in the United States, I contend that other Cubans have been undeniably R evolution f rom Afar 88 exiled by the United States. This chapter investigates how the experience of this postmodern dislocation is making itself heard in the theatrical language of two contemporary Cuban American playwrights, Rogelio Martinez and Nilo Cruz, both of whom concentrate on the interstitial space of the blended subject. They are a part of an ongoing conversation by a prominent group of Cuban American playwrights (including María Irene Fornés, Eduardo Machado, Carmelita Tropicana, Caridad Svich, Dolores Prida, and Jorge Cortiñas) writing about identifications, exile, and the island. While exile can serve as a space of potentiality or a ground of possibility, it can also engender wrenching estrangement—its participants are not fully at ease in any country. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba has been notably positioned as peripheral to the United States. The individual, personal consequences of Cuba’s position are manifest in many Cuban American plays, including Illuminating Veronica by Rogelio Martinez (2000) and Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams by Nilo Cruz (2004). Both plays engage the ways in which various views of the United States as a “home” to the exiled are translated, transferred, and transformed by Cubans in the United States and in Cuba. Martinez and Cruz vividly express the tension of living at a murky, hyphenated crossroads. Both Martinez and Cruz come from families that were ruptured by moves from Cuba to the United States. Rogelio Martinez came to the country with his mother when he was nine years old, during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, but his father was unable to join them until ten years later. Nilo Cruz left Cuba before his tenth birthday; he emigrated from Matanzas to Miami with his parents, leaving two older sisters behind on the island. Clearly, these two playwrights were children when they emigrated and did not make personal or political decisions to leave Cuba. Illuminating Veronica and Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams are included here because they take place in Cuba, but at the time they were written (in the early 2000s), neither Martinez nor Cruz had ever returned to the island. Unlike many other Cuban American writers, both Martinez and Cruz must fictionalize Cuba entirely or rely on their memories and research about their native country. Both authors rely on their intimate and immediate knowledge of life as Cuban Americans in the United States, allowing them to complicate the experience of...

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