Re-membering Cuba
1
In truth, this project was first conceived when
I was about seven years old. Driven by what I have come to believe
is an ancestral impulse to listen, remember and record, I used to beg to
hear my grandparents repeat their stories about Cuba - stories which fed
my imagination and have since become the well-spring of my scholarly work
and much of my fiction. At one point, I even followed my grandfather,
Pipa, around the borders of his beloved garden with a tape recorder, watching
him pull the stubborn weeds from among the lavender and blue hydrangeas.
We all knew that he had been involved in some type of clandestine activity
in Cuba, but he persistently refused to talk about it. Unable to
overcome my gnawing curiosity, I pleaded with him, convinced that my dogged
persistence (a universal family trait) would eventually wear his resistance
down and convince him to record these stories. I can still remember
the way that he mopped his brow with the handkerchief that perpetually
hung out from his back trouser pocket like a panting dog's tongue.
His agitation was visible to me in the impatient movement of his hands;
his resignation in the long sigh that he gave out. In the first place,
he told me in his booming voice, which usually sent his grandchildren scattering
in all directions, I cannot tell you those stories, mostly because I am
afraid. For whom? I asked. For those who are left behind, he
answered, lowering his voice. In the second place, he added, no one
would ever believe me if I told them what I knew.
THE actual catalyst which prompted me to begin
the arduous task of recording occurred many years later in the wake of
my grandfather's death. It was during a trip to South Florida, where
I attended the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute at the University of
Miami (1996). During the course of that trip, I had the opportunity to
reunite - after many years - with family members and close friends who
had all left Cuba under duress during the various waves of immigration
following the 1959 revolution. Although they all shared the same
urgency to relate their experiences and to talk about their lives in exile,
perhaps the most emotional reunion was with two of my grandfather's sisters,
both of whom had never learned to speak English and both of whom still
considered themselves to be in a state of exile after nearly forty years.
The eldest, Tía Asela, was one hundred
and one years old at the time. When I asked her to tell me stories,
she began by recalling the changed atmosphere in Cuba following the Spanish
American War. Gently stroking my hand as she spoke, she then told
me about the volunteer work she'd been involved in following her husband's
premature death. Tell me stories about Cuba after the revolution,
I finally asked; at my words, Tía grew silent, her mouth drawn into
a thin curve of pain and sorrow. After a few moments, she signalled
to Tía Yoyín, the youngest of her siblings. "Tell her
about when the soldiers took the house," she said, leaning forward in her
chair and gesturing at her sister. "We had only a half-an-hour to
pack our bags," Tía Yoyín began, taking up the cue.
"A lifetime of memories," she added, with lowered eyes, "in only one bag."
For the remainder of the afternoon I, along with
my husband and three children, listened to Tía Yoyín, as
she recited a series of stories at her sister's prompting - stories, she
told me, that were too painful for Asela to relay herself; nevertheless,
she wanted me to know. Just like my grandparents before her, she
wanted me to know what they had witnessed - what we had lost. At
the time, I could not help but recall my first visit to Miami, not long
after Tía Asela had arrived from Cuba. I will never forget
the tone of their voices as she and her sisters described the conditions
under which they had lived. In vain, I attempted to record their
stories and capture with words the emotion that thickened their voices
and galvanised their slight bodies. It wasn't until I saw for the
first time in the Prado Museum the "Dark Paintings" of Goya that I found
images that came close to representing the nightmarish vision that my old
aunts described.
TIA Asela died shortly after celebrating her one
hundred and second birthday; though I choose to believe that chance had
nothing to do with it, I was in Miami at the time of her death and was
able to hold vigil (with a room full of women who recited a litany of prayers
together in one voice) and wish Asela safe passage to the other side.
After the funeral mass, we buried Tía in a mausoleum beside her
sister, Teté. (Long before the three sisters had arranged
to be laid to rest side by side.) As I watched her coffin slide into
the slot between Tía Teté's and gazed at the empty crypt
where Tía Yoyín would eventually lie, I could not help but
think that we were laying Asela, the matriarch of our family, to rest in
what was to her a foreign land. She had left us with the unfulfilled
hope of seeing her beloved motherland again. Exile, for her, was
a permanent mutilation; a wound that would not heal. Never before
had this loss, this tragedy, seemed so immediate and so great to me.
Now, each time that I return to my adopted home
in Colorado Springs, I know that the next time I return to Miami all three
Tías might be gone, taking with them the stories - the memories
- of this world that I have never seen, but to which I somehow belong.
Filled with regret at the thought that I can no longer sit on the arm of
my grandmother's recliner at her shore house, listening to her and my grandfather
recite stories (as she rubbed circles into my back and he rocked back and
forth in his brown leather chair, twirling his thumbs together), and frustrated
at the ground that seems to be slipping away at my feet and the immense
distance that separates me from my family, it occurs to me that my sacred
task of delivering over these testimonials is finally at hand.
2
AS Ricardo Pau-Llosa observes, "The reality of
exile has been a constant in the development of the Cuban imagination for
[more than] two centuries . . . But no exodus has been as massive or prolonged
as the one brought on by the revolution of 1959." 1 Over
the years, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have explored the
complex relationships and differences among Cuban political refugees and
their offspring residing in the United States, and considered the manner
in which the various generations have adapted to, and transformed, their
receiving cultures. All too often, however, the painful realities
of this diaspora and exile have been obscured, minimised, fetishised and
even effaced by the thick cloud bank of theoretical jargon and statistics
that claim to describe and analyse the relationship between culture and
identity, the post-colonial condition, and the diasporic and/or nomadic
consciousness. This painful, yet joyous, reunion with my great aunts
and with family members and children of the exile who had left lived with
us for varying periods of time, coupled with the urgency with which they
communicated to me their stories, made me conscious of the pressing need
to record not only their experiences in Cuba, but their thoughts on exile.
Although I was aware that the events of 1959 had shaped my political consciousness
and nurtured my imagination since childhood, and I had always struggled
with a sense of cultural dislocation and fragmentation - a notion which
is embodied in my name: Carmen (for my grandmother) Andrea (for my great-grandmother)
Teresa (for my mother) O'Reilly - communicating the magnitude of the loss,
both in personal terms and in respect to an entire civilisation, became
an imperative.
When I first began circulating my call for testimonials,
I imagined that I would receive a series of straight-forward narratives
which either sought to verbally reconstruct the pre-Castro Cuba which I
had grown up hearing about or described the conditions under which potential
contributors escaped the Island. The project, however, soon began
to take on a life of its own, for in addition to those who had fled Cuba
under mental and physical duress, among the most enthusiastic respondents
was an Anglo American woman, who had resided on the Island before 1959
for significant portions of time and whose scholarly work primarily focused
on Cuba; a third-generation tampeña, who identified herself as "a
born again Cuban"; and several people who referred to themselves as "ABCs"
(American Born Cubans), the acronym Gustavo Pérez Firmat devised
for the children of Cuban émigrés born in the United States
but raised with a Cuban sensibility. 2 In the case of
the Anglo American and the tampeña, birthright or heritage had little
to do with their deep-felt sensibilities; on the other hand, not one of
the "ABCs" had ever been to Cuba. All of them, however, claimed that
their cultural identities and consciousnesses were as deeply informed and
shaped by Cuba and/or Cuban culture as any of the contributors who had
been born and raised on the Island. In short, their responses made me aware
of the additional need to formulate a more inclusive thematic for the Cuban
"presences" in the United States and rework some of the existing paradigms
regarding cultural identity and exile.
As the word spread about my call, potential contributors
- representing an increasingly complex array of responses and an even wider
range of perceived cultural identities in relation to Cuba and the United
States - continued to contact me. Although the peripheral boundaries
of the collection were clearly defined, in that it would primarily feature
the voices of Cuban-American exiles and their offspring residing in the
United States, I chose not to discourage anyone who responded to the call
and encouraged everyone to consider and freely respond to a set of general
guide questions which focused upon the intertwined themes of exile and
loss, identity formation, and the preservation or perpetuation of Cuban
culture. I also insisted that they need not feel as though they were
required to respond in any prescribed manner, despite the fact that many
were convinced that I had some pre-determined or hidden agenda. In
addition, I made it clear that they were free to negotiate the discursive
or artistic conditions of their submissions and, in my view, there was
no inherent conflict between what Mary Beth Tierney-Tello (who, in turn,
is citing Theodor Adorno) refers to as "politically committed," as opposed
to "autonomous" or "aesthetically complex,"3 art.
On the contrary, my perceived role as editor was to act as a kind of midwife
- as opposed to a censor, prompter or curator - standing ready to assist
them with what many have since described to me as a laborious task which
was as therapeutic as it was painful.
In addition to suggesting the inadequacy of the
available generic forms to articulate personal experience and thought regarding
the relationship between culture and identity formation, the visual and
verbal responses I received, coupled with the many conversations I've had
with people who are not directly represented in the collection, 4
also raised fundamental questions for me about how one begins to define
exile. Not only do the various responses bring into play the recognition
of the immense diversity and differentiation among a variety of cultural
subjectivities which are all - in one way or another - linked to Cuba and
the Cuban diaspora, the richly textured voices that together constitute
the body of this collection simultaneously sound the depths and reveal
the heterogeneity of the Cuban "presences" in the United States.
Furthermore, they suggest that no single response to, or definition of,
ethnicity, culture or exile exists.
In its total effect, Re-Membering Cuba
is (to borrow an image employed by both Fernando Ortiz and Gustavo Pérez
Firmat) an ajiaco cubano - the Cuban stew that takes all and accepts everything.
However, it neither pretends to be comprehensive or all-inclusive,5
nor does it purport or claim to be a sociological or psychoanalytical analysis
of the Cuban "presences" in the United States or a definitive historical
interpretation of the Cuban émigré experience. Nevertheless
it does attempt to acknowledge and, to some extent, redress the need for
a more representative concept of Cuban exile identity.
Inhabited Woman
three women reside within me
grandmothergreatgrandmother mother
spooning and nesting
three women
reside within me.
Footnotes:
1 Identity and Variations: Cuban
Visual Thinking in Exile Since 1959, Outside Cuba/Fuera Cuba (New Brunswick:
Office of Hispanic Arts, Rutgers University, 1988) 41-59.
Copyright remains with contributors.
All rights are reserved.
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Over
the years, I have never forgotten his response - little did he know that
his words had only sharpened my desire to act as the guardian of our stories,
our history.
The meditations on exile that I consequently
received not only profoundly destabilised my previously held, perhaps naïve,
notions regarding what constitutes cultural identity, but they confounded
and broke down the thick, stone walls that separate language and history;
history and imagination; imagination and memory; and memory and art (to
the point at which several contributors freely blur the lines between fiction
and "reality" in their submissions and one refers to himself in our correspondence
as a character in his testimonial). More fundamentally, however,
they challenged my traditional assumptions regarding testimonial practice
and agency.
Although some may regard this collection as being
disproportionate, while others may view it as being radically inclusive,
it partly seeks to de-territorialise (to borrow Ray Chow's term) the fenced
off terrain of testimonial practice and complicate the monolithic stereotype
of Cubans in the United States that is portrayed in the media, and consequently
widely accepted, both here and abroad. In addition, it points to
the correlative need to explode what Gareth Griffiths refers to as the
"myth of authenticity" which purportedly determines not only who, but how
one, can and cannot speak about exile and loss and convey personal experience.
In short, among its aims this collection simultaneously seeks to give voice
or narrative/artistic status to those whom the dominant discourse in academia
and in the media, the self-appointed centre as it were, have suppressed
or silenced and acknowledge the existence and the ongoing struggle and
suffering of those who remain exiled on Cuban soil.
pushing and pressing
vying for my attention.
all three peer
with unwavering gaze,
as though from a single pair of almond eyes.
the third raises our brows in Pyranean arches,
as she transforms us into a garden of powder
and cologne.
then unannounced, the first appears in profile
-
her lavender skirts spread out around her like
a framboyán.
with small, child-like hands,
she pulls at the nylons that fold around our
ankles and knees -
impatiently discards the modern, choosing instead
a circle of scarabs on linen,
cameos and pearls.
all the while, I sense the second
present,
hidden among the shadows between two shores,
riding the dark waves of my hair,
across these endless tourmaline seas
that unite us and divide us.
carmenAndreateresa
2 Life on the Hyphen, The Cuban-American
Way (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
3 See Tierney-Tello's insightful
discussion of testimonial writing in Testimony, Ethics, and the Aesthetic
in Diamela Eltit, PMLA 114:1 (January 1999): 78-96.
4 The testimonials and meditations
in this collection only represent a portion of the conversations and stories
I have heard over the years. Many people declined my invitation to
participate either because they have "segregated" or "individuated" their
Cuban and American identities and, as a result, do not perceive themselves
to be suffering from the dislocation of exile. Several told me that
their experiences in Cuba and/or the United States were too painful to
record; others feared retribution, either for themselves or for their friends
and/or relatives who remained on the Island.
5 As one contributor noted,
for example, the collection is heavily weighted with the voices of those
who left Cuba in the early '60s.