Between Two Revolutions: Cultural Relations between Cuba and Chile during Unidad Popular

In this article, I analyze the cultural relations between post-Revolutionary Cuba and Chile during the government of Salvador Allende (1970–1973). Instead of tracing the convergences of Cuban and Chilean revolutionary processes, it is necessary to underline the particularities and differences of both cases, and how Cuba affected the articulation of the Chilean Road to Socialism (known as Vía Chilena al Socialismo). Cuba permeated the cultural and discursive imaginary of Allende’s coalition, providing a broad repertoire of images and rhetorical tropes of Latin American unity, anti-Imperialist struggle, and geopolitical liberation in the context of the Cold War. In addition, the Chilean Road to Socialism had to define itself as an autonomous and independent project that was not mechanically replicating the Cuban model. For the Chilean left, Cuba was both an example to follow and a problem to surpass. Cultural production played a key role in Cuba-Chile relations, recognizing the mutual solidarity but also underlining the differences of each process. Rather than reading cultural production as a mechanical reflection of each political agendas, I argue that culture played an autonomous role of negotiation between both revolutionary models, opening channels of communication that had limited chances of happening in official discourses. By reading cultural artifacts that put Cuba and Chile in contact during this period, we can get a more nuanced vision of the relations between the two revolutions, in the sense that artistic discourses articulated a message that did not necessarily replicate the mandates of political power.