Art and Revolution in Latin America: 1910–1990 by David Craven (review)

Book Reviews 103 models of disease causation, even in widely disparate temporal and geographic contexts, have been shaped by cultural values regarding appropriate gender norms and sexual behaviors. In both cases, public health prevention efforts subsequently became rendered less effective due to cultural beliefs surrounding stigmatized forms of sexual activity. Other chapters explore processes of medicalization and mental health, detailing the way undesirable social behavior has been reified in medical discourse as a means of controlling minorities, women or other disenfranchised populations. Overall the essays in the book are strong, and work well to collectively achieve the goals detailed by Armus in his introduction. Minor areas of weakness emerge not from poor scholarship but from embedded contradictions or limitations in the theoretical models chosen by individual authors. Foucaultian analyses can be quite powerful, but occasionally suffer from an excess of constructionism. Illnesses, bodies and clinics may be social constructs, but at some point an empirical biology of cellular pathology and microbial assaults should be acknowledged as relevant. And critical scholarship of United States foreign policy in Latin America should also strive for a more careful definition and discriminating use of such terms as “imperialism” and “colonialism” when talking of international health policies in the region. Overall, the strengths of the book far outweigh any weaknesses, and the authors and editor are to be congratulatedfor assembling such an insightful and compelling series of essays. Mary Katherine Crubb University of Oklahoma Art and Revolution in Latin America: 1910-1990. By David Craven.Yale University Press, 2002, p. 228, $55.00. In this beautifully illustrated volume, David Craven examines the relationship between art and politics within the three major Latin American social revolutions of the twentieth century. The author also presents and analyzes the tendencies and canonical works of art produced in revolutionary Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua. As is the case generally in the arts, there was considerable conflict in these countriesoverthe nature and purpose of art. Some sought to create a new art, one that would bring production and 104 The Latin Arnericanist Spring 2005 consumption of art to the popular classes. They conceived of art as a collective, social activity, and sought to destroy the Bourgeois conception of art as the work of an isolated individual talent. In some cases artistic production was viewed as simply another form of labor. Most, however, wanted art to ally itself with politics, to support and reflect their revolutionary processes. While it may be true that all art is political, the idea that an authoritarian state, of any ideological stripe, can direct or allow to come into being a liberating, revolutionary art is a questionable proposition. In a 1993 interview. Sandinista poet Julio Valle-Castillo said the following about testimonial literature (a very political literary form) and the relationship between politicians and artists in revolutionary Nicaragua: La listima es que a veces 10stestimonios son obras de politicos, y 10spoliticos suelen manejarse, suelen guardar equilibrios. Los politicos se mueven sobre la relatividad ; 10s escritores, 10s artistas a veces pretendemos el absoluto. Los politicos se desdicen; 10s escritores queremos decir. ‘ Valle-Castillo also characterized the artistic environment within the revolution with the following words: ...el proceso sandinista fue muy complejo, muy contradictorio , lleno de pugnas internas, de guerrilla literaria , de ataques mutuos en ceniculos donde a veces 10s sandinistas tuvimos que defendernos mis que de 10s enemigos naturales del proceso sandinista, nos tuvimos que defender de 10s propios sandinistas.”* While Craven does comment upon the conflicts that occurred among artists in Nicaragua and the more than occasional repression of artistic freedom in Cuba, he tends to emphasize successes in “democratization” of the arts in the two countries. Of course, these revolutions produced a lot of dissident art, particularly in literature, which is not the focus of this study. This work is thoroughly documented, well conceived and executed. In his introduction, “Resolving Definitions of the Word ‘Revolution,”’ Craven lays out the ideological framework for his analysis of art in the three revolutions, which are considered in three chapters: “The Mexican Revolution (1910-19401,” “The Cuban Revolution (1959-1990)” and “The Nicaraguan Revolution (1979-1990).” The predominant art forms focused on for each revolution differ somewhat. For revolutionary Mexico...