The events of the Cuban revolution remain incredibly significant for the left wing political movement not only in Cuba but all over the world. The ideology of the Cuban revolution put forward the slogan of people's power, unity, liberty and common distrust in political parties and traditional politicians of all types. The tendencies which originate from Cuba are very similar to the spirit of the current transformations in Latin America and anti-globalization movements around the world. There is still an indelible mark of the Revolution, especially on the international status of the Cuban state and its relations with the major world powers. The Cuban –USA relations have constantly been the issue of the heated debates, especially now within the framework of the current events.
Moreover, it gave rise to the unique and inimitable cultural phenomena which influenced all forms of art all over the world. The inspiration of that time is widely exploited in literature, art and other artistic realms. One of such literature examples is “Socialist Equality and the Color-Blind Revolution” by Fernandez N.T. He raises the issue of inequality and the often blindness of it by the people in society (Fernandez).
Ethnographic work of Mona Rosendahl deals with the implementation of revolutionary slogans into practice, to the lives of ordinary Cubans. The author describes the non-weakening support of the socialist past, inseparability of politics and the party in lives of common Cubans. Focusing on the single town of Palmera she succeeds through her own eyes to communicate the realities of life, socioeconomic aspects that are directly reflected on everyone’s life. People tend to build reciprocal relations, constantly interrelating with each other, especially with friends and neighbors, which aids common people to survive through the struggles of everyday life in Cuba. (Rosendahl, 45).
The most appealing for me in terms of learning about Cuba was Garcia’s book Dreaming in Cuban, which is founded on the comparison of the life in Cuba and the USA through the life of one family. Garcia decided to expose the developments of Cuban Revolution through a very peculiar lens. By revealing the memories and feeling of all three generations of Cuban women, he thrives to make the reader understand the events of that time better. It is fascinating how the author depicts the unbreakable relation between the characters of the novel and their Motherland, though they are unable to be present there.
As a matter of fact it is a totally different thing to learn about the revolution from history books, memoires of politicians and treaties. The scope of a person’s life is able to reveal those facets of the same events, which are being constantly overlooked due to doctrine and prejudices.
The tragedy of people being forced away from the land of their ancestors created a whole society of people separated from their homeland, who are doomed never to be really integrated into their old nor new home. They find themselves in the position when they are able neither to come back to their home, nor fully adapt to new cultural and social background.
For each woman from their family the revolution has its own meaning. Actually it is the way it took place in real life, when there were as many perceptions of the events occurring as there were many people encountering the events. Celia is the closest to Cuba, since all the best years of her life were spent there, and this fact allows her to tolerate the imperfection of her country. The revolutionary Cuba is her life, since it was the background of her loving and dreaming, what explains her enthusiasm toward the revolution. The further generations are less sympathetic with the Revolution, Celia’s daughters and granddaughters seem to have scarcer bounds with the Revolution. In “A Grove of lemons” Lourdes despises the single reminding of Cuba, which distorted her youth and destroyed her life. I suppose that in this particular chapter the reminiscence of her father is the symbolic embodiment of Cuba. It seems as if one might have escaped from the land, but the part of the Cuban identity would always remain with the immigrant (García, 64).
I believe that the most useful piece for me to understand the Cuban culture within the context of the immigration is “Enough Attitude” that sets the story of the Lourdes life in USA. Interestingly, the opposition that she holds, her attitude to her new home is constantly highlighted by Garcia as the way to eradicate any remains of her Cuban past. She works for the state, as a part of the state, and dreams of having had a gun, she now carries as a policeman, back then in Cuba. The episode with her slapping her daughter’s face for mocking at Armstrong’s first words on the Moon clearly defines her attitude towards the land that saved her from her past. The position of Lourdes described in this chapter goes in line with the well-known US policy of granting the asylum and reintegration of Cubans fleeing from their country (García, 129).
The remains of her Cuban past may be traced to her perception of equality. Lourdes believed it to be an abstraction, especially in her attitude to other social minorities. That contradicts the commonly accepted feature of equality as a feature of socialist democracy the values of which she has obviously left while leaving.
The gap of the plot is that not all immigrants were able to follow the example of Lourdes in order to push away their previous lifestyle and continued to be typical representatives of their community, finding it difficult to adopt a new set of thought.
The tone of the problems in “Dreaming in Cuban” is compatible with the status of Cuban emigrant community, which went its way from moderation to gradual turning back to their origins, and American Cubans started visiting Cuba. As it is noted in “Looking Forward” the influx of money from formed Cuban citizens to Cuba exceeded that of tourism and some other economical branches (Pérez-Stable, 249-250).
Overall within the contexts of the historical events the passages of the book give a notion of the generation of constantly displaced people, their drive to make their way home where they belong, or to avoid any relation with their previous life. Similarly to the character of Lourdes’s father the halo of Cuba always remains with them. The exile many Cubbins found in the USA was not the solution, but if actually posed many questions. And as it is mentioned in “Looking Forward” the flow of American Cubans doesn’t decrease, which makes it possible to predict the gradual improvements in lives of Cubin, who owing to the support of their family are able to manage the basic everyday issues more successfully.
Work Cited
García, Cristina. Dreaming In Cuban. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print.
Pérez-Stable, Marifeli. Looking Forward. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Print.
Rosendahl, Mona. Inside The Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997. Print.
Fernandez, Nadine T. Socialist Equality and the Color-Blind Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Print.
