Havana beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings after 1989

2. The Bitter Trinquennium and the Dystopian City: Autopsy of a Utopia

................ 2 ................ The Bitter Trinquennium and the Dystopian City: Autopsy of a Utopia mario coyula Translated by Elisabeth Enenbach Why a Name With the term Gray Quinquennium (1971–1976), Ambrosio Fornet condensed not only a more expansive time period of sad memories but also a twisted conception of the world built upon intolerance, exclusion, and the rejection of everything new and di√erent. For Cuban architecture, this period began earlier and some of its consequences continue today, totaling at least three quinquennia (a period of five years). Hence my use of the term trinquennium, as nonexistent as that place utopia, where we all want to go without knowing how. On the other hand, flavors can be more evocative than those deceptive colors, as a brilliant neurotic observed upon dipping a madeleine in his tea, and hence the bitter. Writing about urbanism and urban culture entails an ever-increasing component of imagination. Perhaps for this reason I have recently resorted to writing fiction, a novel where I am condemned to the frustration of pursuing the most beautiful woman in Cuba, who died before I was born. 32 mario coyula In the Beginning Were the Principles In contemporary cities, as well as Cuban architecture, there appeared—with some distinctive nuances—the e√ects of the same rigid and authoritative cultural politics that damaged thought, literature, theater, and other intellectual and artistic works in the 1970s. That persistence is largely due to the extent, cost, social repercussions, public placement, and lasting nature of the construction works, and above all to their ties to politics and politicians. This last point makes criticism and debate on the subject of construction particularly di≈cult. The 1970s began earlier for Cuban architecture, masked by the nostalgic charm of the Prodigious Decade of the 1960s, and still have not ended. The dogmatism denounced in 1962, as being consubstantial with a Sovietizing sectarian microfaction whose flame did not last long, turned out not to be exclusive to a determined generation or political militancy.∞ That deviation had been dismantled by a genuine, young, and iconoclastic revolution, which had triumphed because of its transgressive and renewing nature that had allowed it to mobilize the expectation for change that had seemed dormant among Cubans. However, the Manichean dogmatism that systematically erases di√erence and su√ocates individualism would continue to survive, sealed o√ like an opportunist and recurring virus. It was associated with a mediocrity in ascent that crushed any manifestation of creativity for being suspicious. Just like herpes simplex, dogmatism has no definitive cure, but there are ways of keeping it in remission. There are essential principles for the sustainment of ecosystems that are also valid for all human activities and institutions, such as tending to current needs without compromising the possibility that future generations might resolve their own, even those that are as yet unknown; remaining within the capacity of the system to allow for its self-regeneration; or the need for one element to be able to develop various functions, and for allowing the same function to be carried about by various di√erent elements. All of this requires the preservation of diversity and plurality and that the population be allowed active and conscious participation in the identification and solution of its own problems. Curiously, these healthy principles awoke the distrust of those who were dogmatic. Tolerance, that shameful variant of the recognition of diversity, was seen as a weakness inappropriate for revolutionaries, and intransigence came to be seen as a virtue instead of a defect. A provincial xenophobia rejected that which was di√erent and that which came from outside the island, including fashions and tastes that were considered too ‘‘foreign’’ and penetrated cultur- the bitter trinquennium 33 ally by the decadent capitalist world. Ironically, those who thought that way tried to impose models from a much more distant, cold world—both geographically and culturally—that lasted as long as the life of a person. That other cultural penetration, by a socialism that proclaimed itself real, has left some dusty manuals in Cuba, a collection of conventional, grotesque monuments that attempt to give homage to unconventional heroes, and many innocent Ivans and Tatianas, increasingly cornered by the later hemorrhage of Yosvanys and Yumisleidys, where the proliferation of the letter Y reveals an escapist air. Long Die the Di√erence In the second half of the 1960s, the Art Schools of Cubanacán were collectively demonized...