June 2 & 3: History and the economy

Our lectures were very interesting and engaging, however it is quite hot and a fan was our only refresher ( I quickly invested in my own hand held fan after borrowing Christine’s so much!).  Our first speaker was Dr. Jesus Guanche ( Centro Fernando Ortiz), an anthropologist who explained the historical roots in Cuba, the significance of acknowledging and understanding how Afro-Cuban roots are still very much incorporated in Cuban culture and life.  Through various analysis of African symbols, language, customs, religion, traditions and agriculture I am able to see the prevalent historical Afro-Cuban intersections present in Cuban culture today.  Dr. Guanche also touched on Arab and Spanish history in Cuba and touched on historical relations between the United States and Cuba and the  different impacts through migration. I find this topic of research and discussion fascinating.  As an artist that connects our historical roots to our current life and who we are presently. I feel it is essential to understand where we come from and how this is represented, silenced and manifested in our current culture and ultimately our lives.  Through language, traditions and customs I am able to better understand how many things have been incorporated into Cuban culture and ultimately my own life.

June 3, 2011

Speaker Professor Yordany Landa de Saa ( lic. University of Habana, Economy Department)  explained the economy of Cuba, which is quite complex.  Basically, the points outlined were; economic base, structure of economic base, infrastructure and super structure and its influences to the economy.  This was all pre-faced with a historical view of Cuba in order to better understand Cuba’s position as an island land mass, colonization and its current economy.  The highlights from this speaker are; in nearly 30 years the population of Cuba has doubled from 6 million in 1959 to 11.25 million.  The economic crisis or ‘Periodo Especiale’ that Cuba endured with the fall of the former Soviet Union was devastating to the people. Tourism came out of this period as a means of surviving by the local people. Cuba is not as isolated as I had believed, there is investment in technology, specifically Biotech of pharmaceutical, industrial and agriculture. There is production and export with Europe and Latin America, India, China and Korea.  Immigration of Cubans to other countries, transient families, remittances and political reasons all account for a migratory changing Cuban citizen and economy. The Cuban economy has two money exchanges; la moneda nacionale y cuc’s.  The Cuban citizen is paid with moneda nacionale their monthly salary, they purchase everything with it.  The cuc is what tourist use to spend, and it is common, as I did to take Euro’s and exchange it into cuc’s at the airport in Cuba.

This topic of conversation was also fascinating and complicated, because of the global market and capitalism being linked, and Cuba aspiring to be socialist, is stuck somewhere in the middle negotiating.  The lecture ended with this thought, paraphrased of course; ” Cuba is not socialist. It is trying to build socialism in a capital global economy, enmeshed in capitalism by innovation.”

Our activity this afternoon was going to an Agro-market with a similar salary of what the average Cuban citizen receives a month and seeing how much it actually buys.  This activity was very insightful and awkward.  The first agro we went to was in a more economically prosperous area, so they sold meat and dry beans.  It was quite expensive, especially meat,  I felt overwhelmed and consequently we ( Chenjerai and Lino)  left after being there for a short amount of time. We went to a second agro and it was a considerable difference, the prices were lower, there was no meat or beans but rice, oil, spices, fruits and vegetables.  It was clear to see that the monthly salary is simply enough to barely get by, there is no notion of abundance. It is a mindset of day-to-day, and making the most of what you have. 

Streets of La Habana

We took a double-decker bus tour of La habana vieja, and our guides pointed out the monuments and historical sites ( which are a lot!) and their historical significance.  Something else that Cuba values, history, culture and art, it is evident.

CHE

We ended a lot of our days at El Malecon, which is a beautiful long strip right at the ocean’s edge where everyone hangs out and relaxes at night. There are street vendors, roaming musicians and people selling this or that.  It is quite common for many Cubans to smoke and of course rum is very popular and affordable.

The Complexities of Cuban Hip-Hop

By Chenjerai Kumanyika

When trying to understand various aspects of Cuban cultural and political life, and contrasting it with United State political and cultural life, it is extremely important to avoid simplistic dichotomies. However this is difficult for two reasons. First, the diversity of influences and lived experiences that comprise Cuban life is tremendously complex. When confronted with this, the mind naturally reaches for categories and shortcuts to try to impose some type of order. Second, in the west, conversations about culture have historically been plagued by binary thinking -that is the tendency to think through simplistic oppositional categories such as “authentic” versus “pure”, “political” versus “mundane”, “cerebral” versus “bodily” etc. My experiences of Hip-Hop in Cuba were similar to my experience of other aspects of Cuban life in that it forced a more complex, thorough and messy assessment.
During my time in Cuba I experienced Hip-Hop at least four different ways. First, we had the rare and enlightening opportunity to participate in a discussion with several generations of Cuban Hip-Hop artists. These artists shared the different paths through which they arrived at their careers and their successes and challenges and their different understandings of what it means to be a hip-hop artist. While there was periodically some overlap in what they shared, it would be disrespectful to crudely summarize what they took hours to express.
I also had the opportunity to record and interact creatively with several of these artists. I worked most closely with a gifted and influential artist named Etian who was formerly a member of a popular group called Explosion Suprema. I also worked with a creatively sophisticated and courageous female artist named La Fina. La Fina is an artist whose images is both coherent and powerful but she doesn’t really fit into convenient categories. She rapped about a diversity of subjects and spoke out aggressively about her unwillingness to be dominated by the Machista norms in Cuban culture. Malcoln, a member of another group, OndaLivre, was one of the few Cuban hip-hop producers trying to support female artists with more messages and images like La Fina. During one session with Etian, I was also able to work with a producer named Fila. Fila was an extremely skilled, vocalist, producer and songwriter whose sound included a level of polish and impact indistinguishable from what one might hear on a U.S. radio stations. (But in a good way)
Additionally,I had the opportunity to participate briefly in two hip-hop performances with these artists. One of these performances was in a nightclub in Havana, the second was in a show that was sponsored in part by state affiliated hip-hop agency, but executed in full by Etian and several other artists with limited resources.
Finally, I had various experiences of listening to Cuban Hip-Hop. I mention this because I think that listening is important in general, but also because the experience of listening to Cuban hip-hop on an old mp3 player, where the artists is listening with you as you share one set of ipod earphones is different than other kinds of listening. I also had the experience of various Cubans playing both American and Cuban hip-hop that they liked, and explaining what it meant for them. The fact that my Spanish is extremely rudimentary also changed these listening experiences. Each of these experiences with Cuban Hip-Hop deserves much more discussion. But I would like to say a couple of words on some general ideas that I took from them.
The most important point is the recognition of the tremendous complexity within the categories that are lumped together as Cuban Hip-Hop. While the aforementioned tensions between authentic versus pure, and resistant versus commodified etc. are very much at work in Cuban contexts, they play out through a whole range of more nuanced and culturally –hybrid articulations. One example of this was the tensions between what was understood as Hip-Hop and Reggaeton. In many of the conversations that I had with Cuban hip-hop artists and fans Reggaeton was seen as the more commodified, apolitical, bodily focused, and hence impure form. However, I did not get a chance to interact with the Cuban artists who used a more reggaeton style and it was clear that there was diversity on all of these parameters even within reggaeton. But even within the non-Reggaeton styles of hip-hop there is a staggering range of different instrumental combinations, vocal phrasings, patterns of vocal arrangement and subject matters.
One interesting aspect of Cuban Hip-Hop(s) is that several factors that make it challenging to understand what terms like “political” and “resistant” mean in Cuban contexts. Interestingly, Many of the artists who are registered with the Cuban State Hip-Hop agency discuss issues of identity politics that would be understood in an American context as resistant. And in indeed in the Cuban context they can be understood as even more radically resistant in that they discuss lived realities of inequality for which there is no culturally or politically sanctioned language. Those languages had been stomped out by the discourses such as blanquimiento and mestizaje discourses that spoke of Cuba as a classless, raceless society.
However unlike in the U.S., these same artists may be unlikely to be overtly critical of the state because of their contractual arrangement with the state agency. This is understood by some of these artists as a strategic choice that enables them to operate without censorship while fostering some mode of discourse about these issues. Their relationship with the state may cause them to be even more widely influential than their counterparts with similar messages in the United States. Meanwhile artists who are overtly critical of the Cuban state may often be less concerned with identity politics such as racial or gender bias but also more susceptible to being coopted by United States media outlets to be used as examples the injustice of Cuban authoritarianism.
These are of course gross generalizations and based on my extremely limited experience and observations. But they point to the complexities of understanding Cuban Hip-hop and it’s political meanings. Both organic intellectuals such as Ariel Hernandez as well as more “formally” trained scholars are just at the beginning of producing the volumes of scholarship that will be needed to do justice to this constantly unfolding diversity.

Cuba, esperame

For three days, I was restricted to a Cuban hospital bed. Every hour I anticipated the re-swelling and reddening of my skin. I watched the nurses walk around me, my eyes taking in very little, causing me to understand nothing of their personal lives. Instead, the continuous pain of swollen skin, mouth, cheeks and itchy scalp distracted me from empathizing with anyone else.

I was in a hospital somewhere in Havana, Cuba, cut off from the rest of my group. The two professors in charge of the group and, occasionally, a friend visited me. So many thoughts and feelings evoked anger, jealousy and relief. I thought about my group wandering the beautiful streets of Havana (albeit within restrictions) and contemplated my visit to Cuba. While anger filled by veins, I sat thinking: Why am I here? Yet, I knew it was not the group’s fault.

Maybe it was everything and nothing that determined my fate. The night I went to the hospital was the same day we visited a santero. His family welcomed us into their home. As part of the experience, we ate received readings about our future and ate a delicious dinner.

At the time, I wondered whether some evil spirits entered me that day, causing me to have a mysterious severe allergic reaction (it was mysterious because no one knew how it happened). I also thought: Is this Karma? What have I done? But that’s me being dramatic and giving into my wondrous imagination. In reality, I don’t think santeria had anything to do with my allergic reaction. People who are not familiar with non-traditional religious practices often tend to delegitimize and criminalize santeria and other African-influenced religions. I do not wish to reinforce these stereotypes. The santeria practices we consumed (as outsiders) seemed to emphasize positivity and goodness. And, yes, although we attempted to experience Cuba as non-tourists, in some ways we still consumed the “other” whether we realize it or not.

But lets return to my hospital visit. Realistically, the accumulation of exhaustion and stress caused my allergic reaction.

I still remember the night I went to the hospital as if it happened today, yesterday or last week. Doctors surrounded me, poked me with needles, asked me questions (that I answered a million times) and looked at me with an intensity that I never encountered in the U.S. (but maybe that’s because I have never been hospitalized in the states).

I don’t want to sound misleading by suggesting that my three-day hospital “visit” was horrible. Misery, depression, self-loathing and pain made the experience unforgettable. Most of the doctors and nurses, however, treated me well.

Perhaps, my healthcare experience in Cuba is not truly representative of what Cubans encounter in their local clinics. I received care at a tourist hospital that required payment for medical services(although not nearly as much as I would have paid in the U.S.)

And that was how I ended my trip in Cuba. I began the trip by staying behind in Cancun, Mexico for one night and ended it with a short (but very long) trip to a Cuban hospital. And yet…I still want to go back. Cuba, esperame (Cuba, wait for me).

All good things must come to an end: Reflection of my time on our trip

June 14, 2011 – It’s our last academic day in Cuba before we leave back to the states tomorrow. It has hit me for a while now, but I’m not ready. There is still so much that I want to see and do and learn. I just can’t believe that I have grown to love this culture that I was so scared and nervous to experience just 2 weeks ago. Would you have asked me a year ago if I would have had the chance to go to Cuba, would I have taken it? Probably not, I had never been so interested in US-Cuban affairs, but WMNST497A and Professor Garcia have open up new interests, not just about Cuba, but Latino culture and society and anthropology that was buried deep down inside, and because of this trip, they have been released and I now know what it is that I am truly interested in researching and studying. Interests in race relations in Cuba and Latin America are what i am leaning towards in terms of research. The theory of intersectionality makes a lot more sense now, and I would like further apply it to other situations in Latino culture as well. I am still looking for the very specific theme and topic that I would like to further study, but I can see what options I have and I am taking them into strong consideration.

This has truly been a once in a lifetime experience that I have taken in, every single moment has been special, important, eye-opening and fulfilling. Even though our program is intense and our time is micro-managed and we have to so much work to do for this class and this trip, I am so grateful for this opportunity. I’m glad that I decided to come and that I got a lot of help from Profe and from school, and I just hope that this isn’t the last time students from PSU get to come on this trip, and I am definitely hope that this is not the last time I am here either.

-Andrea

Sunday’s Best: La Pena Y El Tambor; A Day of Festivities and

June 6, 2011 – Yesterday was a very emotional day for me. I knew that it was going to be a day where I would reflect a lot on myself and my family, but I didn’t expect to be so overwhelmed by it. First, we went to the Cabildo and witnessed the most amazing peña ever! A peña is an event of celebration with music, dance and song. The children dancing and portraying the Orishas (the Afro-Cuban saints) were absolutely amazing. It made me miss my acting and singing classes and my flute from middle school. It also reminded me how much I love and appreciate the performing and visual arts. For me, the arts did save me from being another statistic of a failed Latina student who didn’t finish high school or got pregnant at 16. Music and art are the core of my life and define a lot of what I do and how I feel about things in this world, and to see such young talent really inspired me and moved me to a whole other level for that day.
As if the peña wasn’t enough, we had our lecture on Religion with Padrino, Dr. Enrique Aleman. From the moment I saw him, I respected him and loved him like my own godfather-descanse en paz (Rest in Peace)- because he looked just like him. Being in his presence and having him speak and knowing what he did was almost like a déjà vu for me. For this lecture, Dr. Aleman had invited officials from the governement to come in and sit on the lecture with as well. As he was speaking and lecturing, there was a moment where I noticed some of the statements he was making were a little too sugar-coated for our critical-thinking class, (all thanks to Profe for teaching us to critique everything, lol!) That is when I realized that everything that the revolution has allowed needs to not interfere with itself, the government, and the government’s teachings. Big brother always looked out for who he was caring for in his house.
Finally we were a part of a tambor at the Cabildo. A tambor is a ceremony where an Orisha is called upon and he makes himself present in human form to his/her believers. The santo (Saint) that was called upon was Chango – the king of kings. He is a very manly, hyper-sexual orisha who is very strong and stubborn. I wasn’t scared of the way the Caballo (the person who becomes is the medium and “recieves” the saint) became the orisha, I was just incredibly moved – close to tears – by the ceremony, how open and alive it was, how much energy I felt, how even though I was tired I didn’t want to miss a single beat of the drums. From that moment, I knew that this Afro-Cuban religion was going to be a new interest of mine and that I wanted to learn as much about it as I could.

-Andrea

An afternoon at the Agros: Cuban Dual Economy

June 4,2011 – Yesterday for our afternoon activity, we also went to two different agros. Little did we know that Profe had a scheme up her sleeve for us. We went to the first agro; I didn’t think much of it, just another open food market with vendors and buyers. We were split us up into three groups; I was paired with Christine and our professor as our guide. Our mission was to see how much food we could buy with a month’s worth of salary. In Cuba, a month’s salary for an average person is US$14, which is about MN$300 Cuban Pesos- the currency of the Cuban people. As non-Cubans, we use the CUC, Peso Convertible, Dolar Cubano – this currency is a monopoly-type of money that is only used in Cuba, and is supposedly for foreigners to use. It is approximately in equal value to the American dollar, and it means a whole lot more to the Cubans than it does to us. For the agro though, we used Moneda Nacional (Cuban Peso). We picked up what a typical Cuban dinner would involve for ingredients, and ended up spending about MN$90.00 at the first agro. At the second agro, we noticed that there wasn’t as much variety, things were cheaper, and the service wasn’t as brusque as the first one, meaning that the customer service was more nonchalant than the first one. Once we bought the food that we wanted, we still had money left over that we decided not to use. When we all came together to evaluate our groceries, Profe reveals to us that the first agro is the most expensive agro in Havana – its considered the “Dolce&Gabbana” of agros. In recap, I could definitely see why it was the most expensive one, it had meats that the second agro didn’t have, it had certain fruits that the second one didn’t have, and it had more vegetables than the second one, where the second one had more starches than the first. What we discussed after we had purchased the groceries at the agros was the deeper implications of having these two agros be so different in environment, pricing and selection of products was the underlying statement of class in society. The large majority of people were not buying at the 1st agro, but instead the 2nd one. Having the first agro have more of a variety of quality food than the 2nd one demonstrated the accessibility that people have to quality products. While it was easy for us to go to both agros, those who actually live there do not have the easy accessibility that we had. The realization of this was a very big deal and made me think about socioeconomic status even more. This was one of my favorite activities so far, because it allowed for us to be a part of the culture we we’re studying. I learn best from trial and error, so an activity like this is one of the best lessons learned while in Cuba.

-Andrea

Curious Contradictions

by Chenjerai Kumanyika

For me, traveling to Cuba was partially about going to a place that represented a set of different cultural, political, and economic possibilities. Although I consider myself a critical cultural scholar and I have had many travel experiences, I remain aware that living in the United States has shaped my assumptions and worldview in ways that are difficult to grasp.

As a student and instructor of international communications and critical cultural studies, I knew enough about Cuba to avoid romanticizing it as some kind of socialist utopia. (After all we all know that socialist utopia is in Scandinavia right?) I’ve studied (not enough) different narratives of Cuban history, and I have some basic familiarity with the struggles that have shaped contemporary Cuba. I’ve talked with Cuban dissidents about their experiences of overt censorship and repression, and (in Women’s Studies 497a with Dr. Alyssa Garcia and elsewhere) I had read many more accounts of racial and gender hierarchies, poverty, disillusionment, and intensity of the daily struggle for survival. When hearing these stories, I forced myself to sit with these realities of suffering and to make them vivid in my mental and bodily imagination. It was rarely hard to empathize, but sometimes difficult juxtapose the sometimes horrific implications of these lived experiences with more inspiring accounts of Cuba. But I would also try to situate these stories within the context of the neocolonial propaganda, policies, and aggressions against Cuba by the United States.

Further complicating my struggles to imagine Cuba, was the fact that in many ways these accounts of Cuba didn’t sound completely distinct from my experience of the United States. Recent statistics on both poverty and wealth distribution have made it impossible to ignore the extremely wide spread nature of gendered and racialized inequality in the United States. When considering statistical information regarding violence against women in the United States, I’ve often wondered what kind of ideological environment would allow for the consistent reproduction of the murder, domestic violence, sexual assault and infinitude of less recognized but equally problematic aggressions against women?

On a more personal level, as a dark skinned African male, I’ve been on the business end of a police officers gun twice (once in Baltimore and once in New Jersey) and forcibly searched on several occasions just because I happened to match a profile or be in the wrong area.  As a hip-hop artist, I’ve experienced both the overt censorship of the FCC, and both the subtle and overt censorship of the corporate music markets. The latter while subtler is also more insidious as it works to marginalize, sanitize, and trivialize messages of political critique while fostering overtly misogynistic and banal expression. So I was aware of the darker realities of Cuba, but I was also aware of their ideologically disguised counterparts in the U.S.

But my desire to travel to Cuba was also informed by a wholly different set of accounts. For about twenty years I’ve been a part of a community of African Americans who informally and professionally perform West African and Afro-Cuban drumming and dance. Many members of this community, including myself, are also practitioners of various types and combinations of traditional African and Afro-Caribbean spirituality.  Members of our community who have traveled to Cuba generally return  filled up, healed, and inspired by their engagements with sound, movement and ritual. They brought back compelling stories about the long legacies and intertwined nature of musical and spiritual culture in Cuba.

Legacies of slavery and the domination of western religions in the United States has meant that here, these spiritual traditions are mostly practiced underground and often with a stigma attached. My friends who traveled to Cuba described it in contrast as a place where the African and Indigenous roots of Caribbean culture were above board, omnipresent, and proudly displayed. In retrospect, I have a better sense of the limitations of these accounts and I can see that they were not completely distinct from tourist gazes. Accounts of the deliciousness of Cuban rum and the beauty of many shades of Cuban skin were mixed up with compelling stories of “coming home” to a more “authentic” version of African Culture. These friends didn’t share the kinds of experiences of state repression or poverty that I would eventually experience. This could have been because they were inevitably beneficiaries of American privilege, or it could have been because poverty and state repression are accepted and unremarkable facts of life for many African people throughout the diaspora. Either way their stories probably informed the most vivid parts of my imagination about Cuba….

My own experiences in Cuba wouldn’t resolve these contradictions. Rather they would plunge me more deeply into them…..

See Curious Contradictions Part Two