Beyond Cuban Waters

Paul Ryer

Description

Twenty-first century Cuba is a cultural stew. Tommy Hilfiger and socialism. Nike products and poverty in Africa. The New York Yankees and the meaning of "blackness." The quest for American consumer goods and the struggle in Africa for political and cultural independence inform the daily life of Cubans at every cultural level, as anthropologist Paul Ryer argues in Beyond Cuban Waters. Focusing on the everyday world of ordinary Cubans, this book examines Cuban understandings of the world and of Cuba's place in it, especially as illuminated by two contrasting notions: "La Yuma," a distinctly Cuban concept of the American experience, and "África," the ideological understanding of that continent's experience. Ryer takes us into the homes of Cuban families, out to the streets and nightlife of bustling cities, and on boat journeys that reach beyond the typical destinations, all to better understand the nature of the cultural life of a nation.

This pursuit of Western status symbols represents a uniquely Cuban experience, set apart from other cultures pursuing the same things. In the Cuban case, this represents neither an acceptance nor rejection of the American cultural influence, but rather a co-opting or "Yumanizing" of these influences.

Sujets

• Caribbean Studies
• Social Science
• Popular Culture
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826521200
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

BEYOND CUBAN WATERS
BEYOND CUBAN WATERS
ÁFRICA , LA YUMA , AND THE ISLAND’S GLOBAL IMAGINATION
Paul Ryer
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville
© 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2018
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
This book was made possible in part by financial assistance from the
RUTH LANDES MEMORIAL RESEARCH FUND, a program of the Reed Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2016030964
LC classification number F1760 .R94 2016
Dewey classification number 972.91—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2016030964
ISBN 978-0-8265-2118-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2119-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2120-0 (ebook)
for Kelly
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Antillean Archipelago
1. The Rise and Decline of La Yuma
2. África in Revolutionary Cuba
3. Color, Mestizaje , and Belonging in Cuba
4. Beyond a Boundary
Conclusion: Geographies of Imagination
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although it is impossible to acknowledge every important impact on this project, I must begin with my father, Joseph Ryer, whose decision to sail with my sister and me to Haiti and the Caribbean from 1979 to 1981 set the stage for my anthropological consciousness and commitments. I have also been fortunate to have had a number of special teachers, including Mrs. Lambert, Mrs. Dailey, and Mr. Stoval. David Edwards and Deborah Gewertz redefine collegiate mentorship, and words are inadequate to thank either of them. At the University of Chicago, many colleagues and classmates contributed invaluable critiques, comments, and informal support, including especially Paul Silverstein, Kimbra Smith, Frank Romagosa, Daniel Wall, Keith Brown, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Frank Bechter, David Altshuler, Christopher Nelson, Matthew Hull, Hylton White, Krisztina Fehérváry, Robin Derby, Emily Vogt, and Greg Beckett. Among the faculty of the department, Marshall Sahlins, Andy Apter, Jean Comaroff, Susan Gal, John Kelly, James Fernandez, R. T. Smith, Stephan Palmié, and, most particularly, Michel-Rolph Trouillot taught me, step-by-step, to become a professional anthropologist.
The Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund of the Reed Foundation, the University of Chicago, the Trustees of Amherst College, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of California provided essential field research support. Beatriz Riefkohl, Josh Beck, and the staff of the University of Chicago’s Center for Latin American Studies provided invaluable support during the difficult initial years of the project. My studies in Cuba also could not have succeeded without the extraordinary assistance of my parents, Marianne and Dean Lewis, who not only repeatedly brought assorted supplies, mail, and tax forms to Havana and a steady flow of books, articles, stories, and their own Cuban visitors back to the United States over the years, but also provided a quiet writing space in their attic.
Lynn Morgan and Debbora Battaglia were fantastic colleagues and mentors at Mount Holyoke College and beyond. The University of California provided a warm welcome and a welcome refuge, with special thanks to Amalia Cabezas, Deborah Wong, Jonathan Ritter, David Biggs, and Hong-Anh Ly. The staff and all my colleagues in the Department of Anthropology have been incredibly supportive. Particular thanks are due to Christina Schwenkel, Sally Ness, Susan Ossman, Robin Nelson, Derick Fay, T. S. Harvey, Karl Taube, Yolanda Moses, Christine Gailey, and Sang-Hee Lee, who each in different ways have made me a better scholar and anthropologist. Heartfelt thanks also to Felipe Vélez and Iván Noel Pérez for proofreading the text, to Eli Bortz and the editorial team at Vanderbilt University Press for their tremendous patience and faith in this project, and to the anonymous reviewers whose careful and insightful readings have greatly improved the argument and lucidity of the book.
It is such a gift to have a marvelous cohort of fellow ethnographers and students of contemporary Cuban life, especially including: Nadine Fernandez, Mona Rosendahl, Robin Moore, Audrey Charlton, Nancy Stout, Thomas Carter, Nancy Burke, Matthew Hill, Denni Blum, Kristina Wirtz, Ivor Miller, Kenneth Routon, Kaifa Roland, Michael Mason, David Forrest, Ariana Hernández Reguant, Katherine Hagedorn, Laurie Frederik, Shawn Wells, Sean Brotherton, Anna Cristina Pertierra, Noelle Stout, Jafari S. Allen, Benjamin Eastman, João Felipe Gonçalves, Teresa Maribel Sanchez, Hannah Garth, Mrinalini Tankha, and Laura-Zoe Humphreys. Too many Cubans to name individually put up with my questions and idiosyncrasies and shared their lives with breathtaking generosity, goodwill, and grace. Among them, special thanks to Lina, Rolando, Fernando, María Elena, Eladio, Verna, Mario and Sara, Fonsy, Zeida, Aymara, Mario and Marta, and especially Iván Noel Pérez, as well as Gregory Biniowsky, John Kim, René Flinn, and many, many others. The lessons they have taught me go far beyond the academic contents of this text, and I carry them with me every day.
Last but not least, Kelly, Liam, Martin, and Timothy have suffered through the writing of this book more than anyone and, although innocent of its inevitable shortcomings, are full partners in its accomplishment.

En aquellos últimos años, Esteban había asistido al desarrollo, en sí misma, de una propensión crítica—enojosa, a veces, por cuanto le vedaba el goce de ciertos entusiasmos inmediatos, compartidos por lo más—que se negaba a dejarse llevar por un criterio generalizado. Cuando la Revolución le era presentada como un acontecimiento sublime, sin taras ni fallas, la Revolución se le hacía vulnerable y torcida. Pero ante un monárquico la hubiera defendido con los mismos argumentos que lo exasperaban cuando salían de boca de un Collot d’Herbois. Aborrecía la desaforada demagogia del Pére Duchesne, tanto como las monsergas apocalípticas de los emigrados. Se sentía cura frente a los anticuras; anticura frente a los curas; monárquico cuando le decían que todos los reyes—¡un Jaime de Escocia, un Enrique IV, un Carlos de Suecia, dígame usted!—habían sido unos degenerados; antimonárquico cuando oía alabar a ciertos Borbones de España. “Soy un discutidor—admitía, recordando lo que Víctor le había dicho unos días antes—Pero discutidor conmigo mismo, que es peor.”
Alejo Carpentier, El siglo de las luces

During these last years Esteban had witnessed the development within himself of a critical propensity—annoying at times, inasmuch as it deprived him of the pleasure of certain spontaneous enthusiasms, shared by the majority—which refused to allow itself to be guided by any general criterion. When the Revolution was offered to him as a sublime event, without blemish or fault, the Revolution thereby became warped and vulnerable. Yet to a monarchist he would have defended it with the same arguments which exasperated him when they came from the lips of Collot d’Herbois. He abominated the outrageous demagogy of the “Père Duchesne” as much as he did the apocalyptic ravings of the émigrés. When he was with anti-clericals he became a priest, and with priests he became anti-clerical; he was a monarchist when he was told that all kings—James of Scotland, Henry the Fourth, Charles of Sweden forsooth!—had been degenerate, and an anti-monarchist, when he heard some of the Spanish Bourbons being praised. “I’m too fond of arguing,” he admitted, remembering what Victor had said to him a few days before, “but I argue with myself, which is worse.”
Alejo Carpentier, Explosion in a Cathedral (translated by John Sturrock)
INTRODUCTION
AN ANTILLEAN ARCHIPELAGO
I first met Michel-Rolph Trouillot at a party in Chicago, shortly after concluding field research in Cuba. 1 He was new to the university, and I was full of enthusiasm for Cuba and thrilled to have the opportunity to engage with one of the great Caribbeanist thinkers of our time. At some point in the conversation, he asked me to characterize changes in the racial dynamics of contemporary Cuba in the context of an economic crisis and yet an enduring socialist state dedicated to Marxist models of equality. In answering, I began to retell an aphorism commonly heard in Cuba, in which a young white woman tells her mother she’s met and is about to marry a black man. “No!” says the mom. “But he’s a doctor,” says the daughter. At this point Rolph leaned forward and finished the story for me: “ ‘Ah then, he’s not black, he’s mulatto!’ ‘And Mom, he has a car.’ ‘No no no, then he’s white!’ the story concludes,” Rolph said animatedly. “I heard this exact story all the time growing up in Haiti.”
This recollected conversation highlights a central concern of this book: What wider patterns and connections are overlooked when we specialists focus strictly on Cuba as a culture or an island unto itself? What are the enduring cultural legacies of Cuban colonial and plantation history, as well as a half century of state socialism, and how do those articulate with other socialisms as well as wider regional and transnational realities? Not only is the Republic of Cuba in actuality an archipelago that includes two of the largest Caribbean islands and many smaller cays, but it is an archipelago within an Antilles of archipelagos with deeply global ties. Surely it is worthwhil