Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in Cuba, 1933-1959

8 The Prospect of cubanidad: Figural Forms and the Palacio de las Palmas

U nder a Havana dateline on July 18, 1957, Cuban newspapers reported General Batista’s unveiling of the design for the Palacio de las Palmas (Palace of the Palms) (see Plate 10, Figure 8.1). This new presidential palace was to accommodate all of the components of the executive branch— the oªces of the presidential ministry, facilities for the press, formal reception halls, and the private residence of the president and his family. It would, declared Batista, fulfill the executive’s need for a building comparable to the Capitolio Nacional and the Palacio de Justicia occupied, respectively, by the legislative and judicial branches of government. It would also provide a unifying national monument ; its use of suitably evocative “Cuban materials” and its site, positioned between two historic fortresses on the heights looking across the harbor entrance toward Old Havana, would suggest that the “new Republic is sitting upon this base of historic colonial tradition.”1 Called upon to contrive an expression of cubanidad worthy of this new national monument, the architects—José Luis Sert, working with Mario Romañach and Gabriela Menéndez—responded with an enormous canopy roof, formed by dozens of individual parasols. In their size and shape, these parasols were intended to resemble royal palm trees, elements that Batista called “most typical of Cuba.”2 Although Batista had technically restored the Constitution of 1940 in 1955— it had been periodically suspended after the 1952 golpe de estado—few hesitated to describe him as a caudillo, and many were willing to declare outright that his regime was a dictatorship. His decision to build the third-place scheme for the Monumento a Martí instead of the winning design by Maza and Sicre certainly 253 8 The Prospect of cubanidad Figural Forms and the Palacio de las Palmas had the air of executive caprice, and the announcement of the Palace of the Palms must have been viewed in architectural circles in a similar light. The architects involved were not ignorant of the political significance that could attach to their participation—in 1957, Wiener would advise Sert that it seemed inadvisable to publicize the project in Cuba because of the political climate. Nicolás Arroyo, as a member of Batista’s cabinet, had clearly tied his professional status to the government, but Romañach appears to have remained more detached from political a¤airs with his private practice flourishing during the 1950s and consuming much of the professional attention. He did not have any formal political association with Batista, though he participated extensively in the tasks of the 254 The Prospect of cubanidad figure 8.1 General Fulgencio Batista viewing model of presidential palace. Nicolás Arroyo is at far left, and Paul Lester Wiener can be seen in the background to the right of Batista. Unidentified newspaper clipping, July 1958. Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design. JNP and specifically requested to join the palace project. Sert and Wiener both held progressive political views, yet nevertheless eagerly pursued the palace commission . Unlike their work with the JNP, which all the protagonists probably saw as technical and therefore almost apolitical in nature, this commission was quite directly tied to Batista and his personal patronage. Given their respective relations to and understandings of the political situation of Cuba, di¤erent motivations might be surmised. They might have been complacently unconcerned with the connection between architectural work and political dimensions, content with the opportunity to work on significant and dramatic projects; or they might have supported Batista, tacitly or actively, accepting as compensation for diminished political freedom the potentially increased possibility of realizing projects under a central authority; or they may have been motivated by a belief in transformative change, seeing Batista’s government as only the latest among several that had risen and fallen over the previous twenty years, soon to be superseded ; or they may even have regarded architecture and planning as the actual instruments of progressive reform. Most likely, a mixture of these motivations were present, and though the evidence that remains from this unbuilt project— a detailed model, drawings, a few sketches, and fragmentary correspondence— provides no decisive answer, the protagonists were unquestionably fully cognizant of the political dimension of the proposed Palace of the Palms.3 Indeed, the summary compulsion to construct a representation of cubanidad produced a representational crisis in both the political and aesthetic...