A recent photo-essay on North Korea in the New York Times provides some perspective on how to record and document Cuba (or not), with all its contradictions and complexities. Photographer David Guttenfelder, who has travelled to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) some forty times, offers a rich portfolio of images, from photos of Kim Il Sung Square, to women in traditional attire, to workers in the countryside, to views of the DMZ that divides the DPRK from South Korea, and an enchanting if not bizarre shot of three children at a kindergarten in Pyongyang playing guitars that are larger than they are. Even more intriguing are shots of everyday objects that he has collected and documented: a 3GB thumb drive, a doll of a crossing guard (women officers who direct traffic), a friendship pin, a Hangover Chaser Tea (boy, that would be helpful in Cuba!), a CD of the Korean People’s Army Merited Chorus, and toothpicks made out of the spine of hedgehogs (my favorite). Guttenfelder’s collection and documentation of ordinary objects reminds of that memorable phrase of Blanchot: “The everyday: what is most difficult to discover.”
What makes the everyday so difficult in the DPRK is its lack of accessibility, with one having to walk around with minders of the regime and a population not eager to open up to strangers; in Cuba it is perhaps the reverse: the somewhat bustling street life, the chatter, the easy intimacy so quickly established with Cubans can, however, blind one, or reveal a certain opaqueness. Cuba seems to be a place that opens itself up immediately: Cubans are talkative, love to complain and tell jokes; they are friendly, hospitable, exude great warmth; and are extremely sociable, even flirtatious. Even for a first-time visitor, after a first few hours in Cuba they feel a kind of laidback relief that in a country they have never visited or without a command of Spanish, they can feel completely at ease. The charm, the warmth, the carefree attitude can be deceitful, not because Cubans are devious or have a sinister agenda behind their friendly demeanor, but because the layers of Cuban society are manifold and friendliness is not synonymous with authenticity or truth. All societies have these layers, Communist ones perhaps add an additional one in creating what on the island is called “la doble moral” (the difference between your private and public self), beautifully alluded to in Fernando Perez’s film Life is to Whistle, where the mere saying of the expression makes people faint in the street.
All societies, however, have taboos or make some distinction between public and private lives— whether pre-capitalist, capitalist, or socialist. However, Communist systems in the past have tried to minimize or even abolish that distance, particularly in the fervor of early revolutionary years, more so in the first decade after taking power.
Witness the Soviet 1920s where everything was being made anew, from furniture to toys, clothes and communal dining areas, as well as the arts (especially posters). Cuba experienced a similar fervor in the sixties in terms of institutions (education, health, sports) and the arts (Cuban film posters stand out in this context), but not so much in the re-fashioning of ordinary objects.
One item that stands out from the beginning of the revolution is “El álbum de la Revolución Cubana,” published by La Revista Cinegráfico (under René Jiménez in 1960, it was a reprint of a 1959 first edition), but underwritten by the company Felices, maker of candy and preserves. They had traditionally made their candies offering postalitas (baseball cards), but now they were taking the postalita concept and applying it to an album-length narrative of the Cuban revolution that begins with Batista’s coup on March 10, 1952 and ends with the triumphant arrival of Fidel to Havana on January 8, 1959 (and, interestingly enough, with the execution of prominent batistianos involved in war crimes in the last three closing images). Through 268 card-images, a colorful, if somewhat ideology-laden story unfolds, even if the facts are pretty accurate. There is one ad for Guava Marmalade, on the back cover, from Felices with a little girl in blonde pigtails saying “Thank you, mom, for today’s dessert!”
Pure fifties imagery of what is supposed to be the typical middle class Cuban family, which if not in Spanish could be an ad from any U.S. magazine of the time. The front cover has an explosion of color to match the one depicted of a battle. On top are the Cuban and the July 26th flags, below which, in bold yellow lettering are the words Revolución Cubana in full caps. Next to that lettering stands Fidel himself holding a rifle. He looms large over the landscape and to his right is both the Sierra Maestra (the mountain range that harbored the incipient guerrilla movement), and above the mountains is a kind of spirit-cloud with the face of José Martí, Cuba’s “imaginary monarch” (Rafael Rojas’s words), the political and moral inspiration of the Cuban revolutionary movement. At ground level are scenes of battle (with soldiers, planes, tanks and an explosion with billowing red smoke), as well as a depiction of the Granma, the boat used by the July 26th rebels to go from Mexico to Cuba (now prominently displayed in the Museum of the Revolution). To say the cover is over the top would be an understatement, but it does have an appeal for those who enjoy an action comic aesthetic with clear heroes and villains. The difference between the covers is striking: revolutionary propaganda (Fidel, Martí, July 26th Movement) on the front; capitalist propaganda (Guava marmalade) on the back. Blood and heroism on the cover, sweetness and pleasure on the back: good old Cuban dialectics at work.
Surprisingly, for an object for young collectors, the album depicts many scenes of violence, be it acts of repression of the Batista government to battle scenes with bodies strewn about, to attempts on the life of Batista, to the assassination of underground leader Frank País, or the blowing up of trains in Santa Clara. Indeed, it is a graphic and bloody depiction of an insurrectionary war and those who died in the revolutionary struggle are shown as heroes and spoken about in the language of Christian martyrdom.
The depiction of heroes and martyrs will be a constant theme (or image) for the Cuban Revolution, its culmination being the death of Che in Bolivia and his subsequent iconic symbolic and political resurrection not only in Cuba but in Latin America and globally as well.
“The Album of the Cuban Revolution” is high drama, true to Hitchcock’s dictum that “Drama is life with all the dull bits cut out.” Of course, when you are writing an epic there is no room for the dull parts; it is a heady mix of heroism, determination, sacrifice, bravery, selflessness, and, presumably, good aim. Once in power, this is usually followed by the usual monuments, statues, museums, commemorative plaques, grave sites, mausoleums, anniversaries, and other historical markers. But after all the drama and the monuments comes everyday life and the relationship between the effervescence of drama and the more, quiet elusive, ambiguous and less dramatic world of the quotidian is a vexing one that pulls us in what seem to be opposite directions.
Hegel pointed out, referring to the French Revolution, “that each time the universal is affirmed in its brutal abstract exigency, every particular will and every thought apart falls under suspicion.” Blanchot further argues that the individual, with his or her particular intentions, reflections, and desires “commits each one to an oblique existence”. This obliqueness draws a contrast between what he considers the difference between being guilty and being suspicious. The former relates to the law and is openly judged, the latter is more surreptitious, held back and “tends not only to interfere with the work of the State, but also place it under accusation.”
The everyday, the unfolding of hidden presences and unforeseeable futures is what Fernando Pérez so lovingly and poetically documents in his film Suite Habana (2003), perhaps a warning on how (or not) to speak about and represent everyday Cuba. Mixing a documentary approach with fictional devices (use of certain camera angles, sound overlapping into different scenes, music), he offers both individual portraits of a day in the life of Havana and a collective portrait of a city. There is virtually no dialogue in the film and no voice-over narrator. Pérez structures the characters and their daily routines around one day: getting up in the morning, having breakfast, going to work (or school), attending lunch, returning home, having dinner and enjoying evening leisure time. There are many memorable “characters” such as Francisquito, a ten-year old boy with Down’s Syndrome; Iván Carbonell, who works at a hospital and cross-dresses at night and performs in a club; Juan Carlos Roque, a doctor who also works as a clown; and Amanda Gautier, a peanut vendor who works along the Paseo del Prado. In their everyday activities we see coffee-makers, pressure cookers, the chopping of onions, people getting dressed, beds being made, TVs, people combing their hair, meals being served and eaten, the bustling rhythms of life on the streets, others in transit on foot, bicycle, or taxi (or in one case, airplane). After showing their daily routines, we find out about their dreams: Carbonell wants to perform on a grand stage; Heriberto, who plays sax, wants to be in an orchestra; Roque, the clown, wants to be an actor; Ernesto, who is fixing his mother’s house, wants to be a ballet dancer, and so on.
Suite Habana’s world is as far removed from the drama of the “Album of the Revolution” as you can possibly imagine, or is it? Is the everyday fated to be “suspicious”, escaping (or accusing) forms or structures of the State, or the political, as Blanchot suggests? Are the existences depicted in the film necessarily “oblique”? Raquel, Ivan’s partner, wants to travel and return, not so easy in 2003, much more so in 2013 (though not cheap, then or now); Heriberto wants to play in an orchestra, again not impossible but there is stiff competition in being a musician in Cuba. Roque, the doctor who doubles as a clown wants to be an actor, which is entirely doable within Cuba but possibly difficult if he is starting from scratch and also being middle-aged. Ernesto, the young man fixing his mom’s house (along with Francisquito’s father) can certainly pursue a ballet career, since Cuba is a ballet powerhouse and trains many dancers, some from around the globe. Julio, the shoe repairman, nicknamed El Elegante, wants to have a different suit every night (this one is a stretch, since it implies enough money to buy several suits). Francisquito wants to scale the heights and his family (the dad, grandmother and grandfather) all express dreams of making sure the boy is cared for and not become a burden to others. Of the more than dozen people we meet, only Amanda, the peanut vendor, says “She no longer has dreams.” Many have interpreted her comment as a not so indirect condemnation of the current regime, but as a 79-year old woman clearly in her twilight years with an ailing husband, one can see her life less metaphorically as well. After all, even in “utopia” people get sick, grow old, and die. Still, the crushing sadness of her remarks sting.
What is remarkable about Suite Habana is how many of the people in it show a great affinity with the arts or performance (four), but we must also include Francisquito’s grandmother who paints at night and his father, a former architect: exactly half of the twelve “characters”. Is this the director’s bias, as someone steeped in the arts, or is there something else going on here? Could this be a reflection of the Revolution’s commitment to the arts (with all its successes, failures, and continued problems) or pushback by artists who want to pursue their creativity independent of societal norms, the “suspicious agents” of Blanchot? Fernando Pérez offers no simple answers, but he does suggest that visual representation and narrative are not so transparent, even if they mutually rely on each other. With Suite Habana, Pérez has at least made the everyday a work of art, no easy feat given the subject matter. What Pérez provides that is missing from the Guttenfelder objects from North Korea is a narrative, a context. The friendship pin, was it a gift (from whom?) or did he buy it? The Hangover Chaser Tea, was that a chance encounter in a store or recommended by someone after a long night of drinking? The hedgehog toothpicks, how did he find out what they were really made of?
Objects are not inert pieces of reality; they can also carry with them intimate stories with deep emotional resonance that have great meaning to people.
There is a cutting board in our kitchen that belonged to my wife Ester’s grandmother Adela, from whom she inherited a fascination with food as art, nutrition, metaphor and how it intersects with history. She remembers Adela not only preparing food but telling the story of the family fleeing the Polish shtetl and avoiding the Nazis by settling in rural Matanzas. The cutting board is fairly nondescript, orange on one side, cream-colored on the other; it is used daily, mostly for chopping vegetables and fruit. The dead not only are with us and sometimes speak to us, they also help feed us, everyday.
A less sympathetic view of the Pérez film would say the scenes with Francisquito (the boy with Downs) and the ending of the film with the waves crashing over the Malecón to the melody of Gonzalo Roig’s “Quiéreme Mucho” (sung by Omara Portuondo) are pure kitsch, and following Kundera, claim they are examples of Communist kitsch. Perhaps. Although an interesting critique, this is not the moment to discuss Communism and kitsch (and endless subject to be discussed in a future piece). But there are too many scenes (and persons) in the film that do not trade in on the sentimentality and fake emotion of kitsch, from Ernesto and Iván to Julio and Raquel. Earlier, I mentioned the drama of revolution followed by a period of commemoration, statues, and the like. In a country that loves to build statues, particularly of Martí (even though the most impressive one is to Maceo), the only one we see in “Suite Habana” is one of John Lennon (yes, the Beatle, not Lenin the Bolshevik). In the film he made previous to “Suite Habana”, Peréz quotes Lennon: “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” Life is synonymous here with the everyday, what escapes the plans (an individual makes) or the Plan (that the State proposes).
Cubans have, in their intense dialogue between the demands of history and the opacity of everyday existence, held true to the African roots of their culture. This is exemplified by the song “Bangán” by Pavel Urquiza and Gemma Corredera, where they invoke Elewá (Elegguá), the orisha of the crossroads.
Elewá te enseña el camino/Pero no te enseña el andar/Cada día se hace el destino/La suerte no se sienta a esperar/…y ponle una vela a los santos/pero no te acueste’ a dormir/ si tú mismo no te la juega’/ no hay nadie que lo haga por ti. (My transcription)
Elewá shows you the path/But not how to walk/Fate is made day by day/Fortune does not sit by waiting/…so light a candle to the saints/but don’t lie down and go to sleep/ if you don’t lay it on the line/ no one will do it for you. (My translation)
The song admirably synthesizes the dialectic between the seemingly impersonal powers of fate and the personal determination of an individual to decide (or negotiate with) that fate, day by day. The song alludes to a rooted reality that carries forth unforeseen potential, one that Blanchot expresses as follows: “For in the everyday we are neither born nor do we die: hence the weight and the enigmatic force of everyday truth.” And we might add: the everyday is where we fleetingly enact immortality and shoulder (and suffer?), unknowingly, elusive truths.
*All images scanned from El Album de la Revolución Cubana, property of the author.