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8 Freedom Offstage If migration is the shadow public’s exit from a crumbling state, as I described in chapter 7, quiet, offstage forms of criticism are a form of voice in that same system.1 Members of the shadow public are not notable citizens. In other words, they do not try to stand out or make their voices heard. Again, they are not therefore—nor can they be—activists. For example, they do not participate in the mild dissident activity that has surfaced following Fidel’s ceding power to his brother, such as gathering for a silent demonstration in a public park (International Human Rights Day, December 2006) or wearing white rubber bracelets that have “cambio” (change) inscribed on them (November 2007). They are certainly not engaging in riots or circulating public petitions. The absence of public political activity does not mean that members of the shadow public can be described as politically apathetic, individualistic, purely materialistic, or in need of having their consciousness raised. In fact, they frequently are quite educated about local, national, and often international politics. They express political views, have visions of change, and occasionally express ideas for intentional collective action, even if they do not follow through with it. But they no longer see the state as “a means to address their own interests, nor the broader concerns for their society, [so] they have little incentive to be engaged in civic life,” as Powers (2001: 238) said of Argentina. Furthermore, they cannot justify spending time and energy on the unpaid work of activism, especially if that might lure a bugaboo state—a state that causes persistent fear, worry, and problems—any closer to the family hearth. Discussing “offstage” resistance and “hidden transcripts” (à la Scott 1990) has largely fallen out of favor in contemporary analysis of Cuban citizen protest . Hagedorn (2001), Hernandez-Reguant (2004), Frederick (2005), Fernandes (2006), and others have demonstrated the problems that arise from imposing readings derived from dualistic models such as offstage versus onstage on categories of engagement, such as dissent, censorship, or participation . A growing body of scholarship has documented increasing tolerance in Cuba, particularly after the 1990s, that have opened up new spaces of critique and public expressions of disagreement, especially in the world of Cuban Freedom Offstage / 143 art, music, and film. In fact, since the 1980s Cuban films have regularly contained critiques of totalitarianism. Furthermore, recent scholarship has also demonstrated the difficulty of differentiating the state from society. It argues that daily practices follow a multiplicity of agendas that are not always selfconsciously defined vis-à-vis government ideology; and that engagement and disengagement, identification and dis-identification are at times intertwined. This stream of analysis is an important one. It does not, however, shed light on the shadow public, whose members remain in intentional obscurity, criticizing the state in private while withdrawing from public expressions of disagreement . Thus far, I have described how the shadow public engages in criticizing or subverting state domination, but usually only in ways that will better their families’ economic condition in the short term, keep their families free from harm, and improve, or at least invest, in their quality of life. Yet despite their lack of overt activism or contribution to a broad, popular call for political change, they are nevertheless social and political agents whose dissatisfaction can challenge the limitations imposed on them by the state (see also analysis by Kittrell 2004). Although I situate shadow public concerns and actions in the late-socialist era, scholarship regarding Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s reported on similar patterns; for example, nonmembership or nonparticipation in officially sponsored so-called mass organizations. In particular, the Lewis, Lewis, and Rigdon (1977–78) anthropological project in Cuba documented lack of engagement with officially sponsored themes or forms of participation at the individual level, indicating that problems of disengagement and development of a shadow public have existed for some time. I suspect that the intensifying social and economic problems of the Special Period and its aftermath have likely caused the shadow public to expand. In this chapter, I focus on what I argue have been three common offstage forms of state criticism in Cuba: in-house protests to broadcasts of Fidel’s televised speeches on TV; using metaphors and aphorisms among friends to criticize the socialist (welfare) state; and withdrawal from state-orchestrated political rituals. These rituals include elections, political “debates,” and “citizen organizing,” but I focus particularly on the practice of avoiding marches. Using Randall Collins...

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