The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past

2. Intimations of Nationality

INTIMATIONS OF NATIONALITY What we are is the guarantee of what we will become. — Domingo Méndez Capote, “Manifesto de la revolución rechazando la autonomía” (1897) A people define themselves by what they propose to become. — Jorge Mañach, Pasado vigente (1939) It was not until the nineteenth century that we knew what we wished to become. — Fernando G. Campoamor, “Ser cubano” (1964) Cuba’s past is the best guarantee of its future. — Cuban general Federico Cavada to Fernando Escobar (July 22, 1870) It cannot be said of the Cubans that they lack a history. That is why, some say, we are unhappy. — Manuel de la Cruz to Manuel Sanguily (May 1893) 2 32 | INTIMATIONS OF NATIONALITY I t is not clear precisely when or exactly how the possibility of a separate nationality insinuated itself into domains of popular awareness. Until late in the eighteenth century, vernacular convention favored the use of criollo as the designation of choice to describe native-born residents of the island, as distinct from peninsular, used to denote Spanish-born inhabitants . At some point early into the nineteenth century, usage changed, and the proposition of cubano acquired currency among the native-born residents , that is, at about the same time that the idea of nation seized hold of the criollo imagination, a time too when the difference between the needs of the island and the interests of the peninsula settled into ever-sharper contrast— or perhaps it was the other way around. But it was true too that the claim to nation (patria) drew into its premise a complex epistemology, principally as a perspective from which to assemble categories of usable knowledge, at once inspirational and instrumental, as a sourceof self-definition and means of self-determination.To contemplate the possibility of nation necessarily implied the need to develop a deeper knowledge of the collective modes through which to articulate aspirations to nationality . The plausibility of claim to nation could not be sustained without the presence of a past: a people possessed of a history of their own as a necessary condition for a nation of their own. Historical knowledge provided the means with which to join past and present in a dialectical relationship, a way through which a people could presume to establish the basis of a separate nationality. The enduring subjectivity of the history of Cuba was thus fixed at its inception .To conferon the proposition of patria the premiseofa proper history was to historicize pretensions to a separate nation and inscribe a record of chronology into the claim of a separate nationality, that is, to fashion something of a legitimacy to the proposition of sovereign nationhood. History offered a way with which todifferentiate Cuba from Spain, to fashion the past as source of nationality and at the same time promote affection for and appreciation of the reciprocities through which to foster awareness of a shared identity. Almost from the moment of its inception, the historical narrative was structured around and informed by oppositional intent, for to suggest the possibility of a separate Cuban past could not but challenge the premise upon which the colonial moral order depended. The very paradigm of a past implied the use of history as a means to differentiate Cubans from Spaniards INTIMATIONS OF NATIONALITY | 33 and offered a discursive device of subversive purport. The claim to a proper past served to decrease or otherwise diminish the relevance of the Spanish presence from the Cuban past as a means to eliminate the Spanish presence from the Cuban future. Historical knowledge served at once as a source of national formation, for which it was summoned, and product of national consciousness, to which it contributed. The subjectivity of historical knowledge emerged out of a deepening national self-awareness, a process in which Cubans made an immense leap of faith as a means to will themselves to be subjects of history, as actors and agents, a people possessed of the idea ofdestinyas the minimum condition with which to aspire to sovereign nationhood. The claim that Cuba had a past of its own, and that this past was proper to acknowledge and appropriate to act upon, and that indeed a separate history existed to which Cubans could turn and interrogate as a source of selfdefinition , suggested notions of sovereignty of far-reaching significance. Much had to do with a deepening awareness of the possibility of Cubans as a...