Dreaming in Cuban: An Historical Perspective
by Dorte Rasmussen
In Christina García’s Dreaming in Cuban from 1992, we learn about and experience the history and culture of Cuba from both inside and outside the Caribbean island. Three generations of women dominate this magically told story of a family divided by the political, social and geographical split, caused by the communist revolution in Cuba. García brilliantly intertwines the factual and historical aspect of Cuba with her own fictional and magical story of the woman, making Cuba an active and important character in the story, by using the history events as time reference to tell the story of the women.
Cuba was from the beginning of colonization commercially and strategically important, due to its central location in the Caribbean, and it immediately became a starting point for Columbus’s expeditions to the rest of Latin America. During the colonial period “the Spaniards wiped out more Indians with smallpox than with muskets” and Cuba was like all the other countries in the region; slave based export-orientated agricultural society. In the book Celia works all day with the sugarcane, Cuba’s main product. It is typically Latin American to have a one product economy, but focusing on a single commodity, made Cuba extremely vulnerable to flux and change in the market. Indeed in the book, Cuba seems to be vulnerable in every aspect, represented by the ever existing threat of the tide and the rain.
But Cuba differed in one aspect; in late 19th century it was still a colony, and it quickly became linked to the US with respect to trade and investment, and a wish to be annexed by the US grew. Independence came in 1898 after the Spanish-American war, where US’s economic interest in Cuba led to the full support in fighting off Spain. Cuba then became under US military occupation, and its status as non-independent became even clearer with the enforcement of the Platt Amendment, which gave the US the power to intervene in domestic Cuban policy. Cuba remained a US protectorate until 1934. In that period the US build infrastructure, schools and so on in order to get Cuba closer to the US’s orbit.
“The waiting began in 1934” when Celia begins her romance with a Spaniard and Cuba enters the Batista era. Batista ruled trough puppet presidents in a period of 25 years. Little changed in this period, which Celia also expresses when se talks about her fear of Cuba being left behind when the rest of the world will physically and ideologically move to the west. Cuba was still not totally independent (dependent on US trade as US purchased 80% of Cuban sugar production). In the 1950s American culture was all over, and tourism along side materialism, flourished. Cuba had become a playground for the American and Cuban elite. Ordinary Cubans was outraged and felt exploited; “Cuba has become the joke of the Caribbean, a place where everything and everyone is for sale”.
García uses Fidel Castro, El Líder, to tell her story the same way se uses Cuba, constantly referring to him to mark the viewpoints and happenings in the women’s lives. Fidel was born in 1927 a son of Spanish immigrant and was from the very beginning a strong nationalist, who wanted to change America.In 1953 he was imprisoned for an attack on the Batista’s army, where afterwards he fled to the Mexican mountains to begin organizing new revolutionary force. Here he hooked up with young Ernesto “Che” Guevara who had a utopian idea of one united Latin American. Among the attacks is the one with the Granma, “the American yacht El Líder took from Mexico to Cuba in 1956”. On New Years Eve 1958/59 Batista resigned as president, having lost all public support. The revolution was a fact, marked by the end of a romance for Celia who writes her last letter to Spanish lover shortly after, and the beginning of a new romance with El Líder. At the same time it marks an end of a romance for Cuba, cutting off US relations, and the birth of Pilar in the aftermath of the revolution represents a new beginning.
Lourdes and Rufino are forced away from their farm, due to the agrarian reform that expropriated land that made their land “property of the revolutionary government”. Castro was extremely anti-American, and quickly nationalized the Cuban economy. At the same time as he began to swing to the Soviet bloc, implementing an authoritarian regime, and egalitarian socioeconomic policy.
Before the revolution Jorge sold electric brooms for an American firm, and he wanted to show his gringo boss that they weren’t different from each other. But, tension between the US and Cuba quickly reached a peak when the US suspended the sugar quotas, and Castro seized the rest of the US’s property making them put a trade embargo on Cuba. The Soviet Union bought Fidel’s support by taking over the US’s sugar quotas wanting him as a communist ally.
Castro was dedicated to fight for the poor, and when Celia thinks of what the revolution has brought she sees that; “No one is starving or denied medical care, no one sleeps on the street”. Castro built one of the world’s best educational system and medical services and illiteracy fell drastically. Life expectancy rose from 63 to 76 in 30 years. In 1975 the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) made the egalitarian family code saying that men should do half the chores at home. In her book, García clearly criticise the patriarchal system of Latin America by focusing on the women, and portraying the male characters as either non-existing or extremely weak.
From her porch Celia would be able to spot another Bay of Pigs invasion; in 1961 the US made a failed invasion, due to fear of loosing all of Latin America to communism. Shortly after, in 1963 US-Cuban relations deteriorated with the Cuban missile crisis.
In 1979 the Cuban population realized that they had no consumer goods, after 100.000 relatives were allowed into Cuba; “I feel like we’re back in time, in a kind of Cuban version of an earlier America”. This caused a huge exodus from Cuba in 1980 when 125.000 fled through the Peruvian embassy (among these, Lourdes and Ivanito).In 1992, the same year as the book was written, and shortly after the Soviet Union collapse, Cuba experienced an enormous economic blow, worse than Great Depression which left even worse conditions for the Cubans. There were fewer food rations, less electricity and no busses due to an oil shortage. In the late 1990s, tourism and money from relatives abroad, kept Cuba afloat.
Identity is another major issue in Latin America, and Cuba is no exception. There exists a notion of blacks and Indians being inferior, animal and childlike, and stupid and an everlasting fear of blackness; like when the sister uses “whitening cream to remove any evidence of her mulatto blood”. In Cuba blackness is mostly defined by the curliness of ones hair. The curlier the more black. The book also addresses the problem of belonging and the trouble an exile Cuban might have in finding an identity for him/herself feeling torn between two nations, and lacking a sense of feeling at home in both countries.
In Miami, where all the boats with fleeing Cubans wanting to pursue the American Dream reach, there exist some profound stereotypes and unhappy destinies; Lourdes talks about leaving Miami unable to bear “the endless brooding over their wealth, the competition for dishwasher jobs”. Though the main part of Latin America is catholic, there still exist some old sects with roots in Africa, Asia and the Latin American culture pre-colonization. An example is the Santería movements, which Felicia is devoted to. This is a set of religious practices brought to Cuba by the African slaves up until abolition in 1886.
Cuba is still under Castro-rule, and it could seem that Celia is right in fearing that Cuba will be left behind or maybe, even disappear into the rain and the tide, just as Celia does in the end. “Cuba is a peculiar exile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all”.
