What does it mean, at the twilight of the twentieth century, to be part of a divided nation, to belong to a Latin American people separated by political, economic, social, and cultural realities? How do those severed from the homeland transform their longings into a different cartography from that drawn by those who claim, both inside and outside the natal country, to speak for the entire nation? This book is an attempt to transcend the discourses and political praxes that still dwell on “the polarization of Cold War thinking.” It is “a meeting place” in which ethnic, cultural, social, political, and gender identities are reconceptualized to produce less rigid codes of nationhood.
Thus, in opposition to the authoritarian voices of the most adamant members of the Cuban regime and the unyielding sectors of the “exiled community,” the multiple voices heard in this book constitute a truly democratic utterance. They represent a search for a “third option,” wherein emotion, art, and memory—and therefore, history —intermingle to construct new meanings of Cubanness.
An anthology of work by writers, artists, journalists, literary and art critics, and scholars, Bridges to Cuba offers some distinctive testimonies on the personal and political nuances of constructing cultural and national identities. Although history is not its strongest side, Louis Pérez, Jr., in a provocative piece, studies the relations between Cuba and the United States, delving into Cuba’s role “in North American meditations on power” (p. 164). Other pieces show the intricate ways the authors came to terms with their particular forms of understanding, living, and conveying their Cubanness. For most of them, the process involved recasting their political views and memories, and often, redefining their familial and professional relations. Cubanness surely has come at a high price.
Although the book does not offer a unified theoretical proposal about the future of Cuban nationality, it suggests a rethinking of Cubanness, founded not on a hard core, an essence, but on a multiplicity of “fragments.” Thus, while Ruth Behar argues that “women’s subtle rereadings of Cuban history and contemporary politics” counterbalance the dominant male constructions of nationhood (p. 12), Flavio Risech, using the “metaphor of cross-dressing,” advocates the right to use a “wide array of identity ‘garments’” (p. 57). For her part, Coco Fusco, claiming that “nationality has been a Cold War game,” defends the emergence of new “alliances not on the basis of territoriality but shared interests” (p. 207). This would mean, in Madeline Cámaras’ words, opting for notions of knowledge and identity “independently of the institutions of the state” (p. 220). Only in such an “imaginary homeland” does it seem possible for the Cuban people “to return to the place of origin ... to gather or to try to gather the little pieces of the shattered mirror” (p. 82).
