ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the politics of a group of items of memorabilia in the collection of material culture and ephemera Cuba Material. Created in 2012 as a methodological instrument, Cuba Material evolved into a digital archive of Cuban material culture and a collection of objects, clothing, accessories, appliances, ephemera, and memorabilia consumed in Cuba during the Cold War years. Cuba Material is presented as a dispositive for the recuperation of memory from the Cuban state socialist past, of interest to the study of Cuba and the Caribbean region during the Cold War years, especially now when the country is on the verge of change. The Soviet-era artifacts and documents preserved, collected, and shared online through the Cuba Material website attest of the mechanisms of socialization, domination, accommodation, consent, and dissent developed in Cold War Cuba. This chapter discusses, in particular, a group of bureaucratic dispositives of discipline and surveillance developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s in the country.
