ABSTRACT
A cycle of revolution and rejuvenation has characterized the imagining of Cuban nationhood since its independence from Spain in 1902. Its shifting approach to nationalism and decolonization has been punctuated by a neocolonialist phase from 1902, the communist period that followed the 1959 revolution and the current phase that was inaugurated by the end of the Cold War in 1989. However, although the post-Cold-War period has heralded the adoption of a more pragmatic foreign policy, it has not diminished the island’s ideological adherence to socialist principles as the foundation of Cuban nationalism. Given the peculiar circumstances of Cuba’s history of colonization and slavery and its more than 40 decades of socialism, this chapter argues for a very specific approach to analysing the notion of Cuban nationhood. While acknowledging the many virtues that recommend two of the more influential theories of nation – namely, the imagined community and the narrated nation, as advanced by Benedict Anderson and Homi K. Bhabha respectively1 – it is proposed here that auto/biography,2 as appropriated by Cuban, Latin American and other minority writers and artists, offers an alternative conceptual tool by which nation can be understood and theorized. With a focus on the communist phase of Cuban nationhood, I shall be pursuing a comparative analysis of two texts, Fidel Castro Ruz’s ‘History Will Absolve Me’ and Cristina García’s auto/biographical novel Dreaming in Cuban. Taken together, the texts facilitate an examination of the nature and range of auto/biographical practice, illustrating its complicity in the imagining of nation (and identity) in the specific context of communist Cuba. Contrasting in perspective, date of publication and historical context, they also illustrate the diversity of that imagining. After surveying some of the advantages of auto/biography for the study of national construction over the theories of Anderson and Bhabha, this chapter will explore the competing and changing imaginings of the communist Cuban nation from the perspective of its main architect, as well as its enthusiastic participants and dissidents.
