Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution

2. Private Space

2 Private Space In defining private space in Cuba, I must first recognize some contrasting attributes of public space, and what important private, citizen-consumer details do not register on the radar in public space and the official domain. Some official buildings are the lumbering, gray, Soviet-headquarters kind. Others are the colorful, mansion-converted-to-ministry kind that dot many residential neighborhoods in the city.1 These buildings are pillared and majestically repainted in what I came to think of as “Caribbean socialist colors” such as canary yellow, salmon, or aquamarine—emblematic of the state’s capacity to envelop lavish, formerly private homes in order to house public services. Mansion to Ministry I would at times seek the shade and the cool breeze of the electric fans that the lobbies of such buildings offered, but my most important task was to approach the simple, wooden, computer-less reception desks to inquire about opportunities that would allow me to stay in the country while following tight Cuban regulations concerning research visas. Sympathetic but powerless secretarias, ambivalent handmaidens of the state, lured me into the bureaucratic labyrinth, telling me to come back again on a certain day, since the person with whom I really needed to speak was not in. While I rarely met the important, faceless characters lurking in the recesses of such buildings, I did come to know the secretaries, and while we could rarely discuss anything substantial, we would greet each other with a kiss on the cheek, and they would recommend that I sit and rest, have a drink, nurse the baby, and keep company in the quiet inactivity of the aptly termed sala de espera (waiting room). Down a side corridor of one Health Ministry building, I changed the baby’s diaper on a bench next to a lolling pile of freshly minted José Martí busts that were to be distributed to other official buildings in the municipality (figure 2.1).2 Another breezy, marbled waiting area in a research institute seemed to have a soporific effect: male professors with pens in their shirt-front pockets dozed peacefully on worn, vinyl couches. 40 / Part I. Private These ministry images reflect the absence of bustle in public, official spaces—and also a distinct lack of productivity and meaningful interaction. It is such ministries’ simultaneous ubiquity and inactivity, albeit framed within part of the bureaucratic rationale, that allows the current communist system to be maintained. These are the buildings in which citizens are officially employed as state functionaries. But nothing really gets done in them. Rather, they are subdivisions of a state that prevents anything out of the ordinary from occurring. Such institutions keep people, as David, my key informant explained , inmovilizado (immobilized, tied up, unable to go any farther). Some systems are maintained through changes in policy, but the stronger, more elusive systems are upheld through a constant dormancy.3 Figure 2.1. Busts of José Martí not only mark most public buildings but here his likeness towers over the Plaza de la Revolución (Revolution Square). Leader of the Cuban independence movement, Martí is at once a Cuban state icon and a hero among dissidents, representing freedom, independence, and democracy. Private Space / 41 Public Posts The state not only envelops buildings in order to maintain its system, it also shapes the Cuban urban and neighborhood landscape—billboards, murals, slogans, and state-sponsored, neatly stenciled “graffiti” on walls serving as a constant reminder of state presence, further marking off official, public space (see also Rosenberg 1995; Gordy 2006). Despite recent market-oriented reforms , public space still lacks a sense of overt commerciality and consumer choice or citizen opinion. Commercial billboards, banned by law since the triumph of the revolution, have been famously replaced by state-sponsored socialist messages, as if the state were “selling a new brand of cigarettes” (Brotherton 2005: 340, quoting fiction writer Cristina García). This means that the most visible messages in public space are official, are posted by the Communist Party, and fall under what I consider seven basic categories: 1. Promoting the triumphs of the revolution 2. Denouncing U.S. imperial aggression at home and abroad 3. Commemorating revolutionary events or achievements 4. Promoting tourism in Cuba 5. Advertising upcoming patriotic events 6. Promoting national public health or social service campaigns 7. Celebrating the strength and presence of the Comité de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR), the nationwide...