- Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos
Louis Pérez is such a prolific and authoritative historian of Cuba that he now provides his own historiographical context. This latest offering, on U.S. metaphors about Cuba from the nineteenth century to the present, wedges itself between two of his other works, 1998’s The War of 1898, which redefined the historiography of that watershed, and 1999’s On Becoming Cuban, a counterpart of sorts for this present volume in that it examined the formation of Cuban national identity vis-à-vis the United States.
The author now argues in Cuba in the American Imagination that metaphors of Cuba legitimated U.S. power by articulating a moral imperative that compelled Americans to dominate the island for their self-interest while pretending to do so selflessly for Cuba’s benefit. From the day Americans imagined Cuba “at our very door” or as a “ripe fruit” in the nineteenth century, through turning points such as the war against Spain (and Cuban sovereignty) and the Cuban Revolution, Americans thought of Cuba using naturalized images—Cuba as a woman, as a child—that fit into normative patterns that the American public and its policymakers read as a warrant for imperial behavior (pp. 28, 30).
The argument is not necessarily new. Pérez himself has made it previously, and John Johnson in Latin America in Caricature presented several cartoons in support of it. But the astounding variety and specificity of the metaphors examined and the breadth of the evidence make this book a must-read. The author reproduces no less than 105 illustrations, almost all of them U.S. cartoons.
In them, as well as in Congressional speeches, editorials, histories, films, travel books, novels, poems, theatre, and commemorations, the metaphors were obvious. In the nineteenth century, the image of proximity—Cuba as “almost within sight”—indicated that the colony beckoned to be taken from Spain (p. 27). Right after 1898, Cuba as child either misbehaving in a classroom, learning to ride a bike, or navigating a raft telegraphed U.S. doubts about Cuban self-government. Metaphors of cleanliness, meanwhile, buttressed U.S. military and civilizational policies. Later, Cuba as owing gratitude to the U.S. “liberator” justified the Platt Amendment and still today, the metaphor of “neighborhood” allowed U.S. observers either to express concern or to restore order if the island made too much “trouble” (p. 37).
Pérez offers a few metaphors of his own—“laboratory” and “microcosm,” for instance—to add how the U.S.-Cuba relationship, while unique, also exemplified the cultural deployment of U.S. power elsewhere (p. 1). He even claims that this metaphorical armada helped Americans define themselves as a nation—a pure, selfless, moral global power.
It was not until the 1920s and 1930s, when the first generation of Cubans with no memories of 1898 came of age, that rejections of these metaphors began. Cubans [End Page 629] rewrote histories to inject the military accomplishment of patriots and rejected the notion of an independence “owed” to the Americans. But the major paradigm shift occurred in 1959–1961, when Fidel Castro explicitly reclaimed independence and defied Washington’s dominant perceptions. Pérez usefully argues that Washington’s inaction during these years was largely due to being straightjacketed by metaphors that had robbed Cuba of agency.
Given the comprehensiveness of the book, its gaps appear even more noticeable. The author notes that Cuba as woman tended to be white and Cuba as child, black, yet barely elaborates. Similarly, Pérez asserts that these images were “entirely” U.S. creations yet pays little if any attention to U.S.-based Cubans such as José Martí and his peers in New York and Florida who ran newspapers and lobbied against Spain (p. 22). Might they have shared the blame for perpetuating some metaphors?
Finally, although the writing is elegant and free of jargon, early explanatory chapters will appear repetitive and turgid to a...