A History of the Cuban Revolution by Aviva Chomsky

Author:Aviva Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

Literature

According to literary scholar Roberto González Echevarría, “The Cuban Revolution is the dividing line in contemporary Latin American literature, a literature of before the revolution and one of after the revolution.” In fact, he argues, “it is difficult to conceive of the Boom of the Latin American novel” if not for the Cuban Revolution. The heightened U.S. interest in Latin America sparked by the Revolution not only gave rise to the growth of Latin American Studies in the U.S. academy as discussed earlier, it also led to a proliferation of opportunities for Latin American authors in the United States, just as Cuba was pouring resources into creating its own literary institutions. The result was an unprecedented cornucopia for Latin American authors.9

Probably Cuba’s most influential writer has been Alejo Carpentier, whose prolific career spanned the pre- and post-revolutionary periods until his death in 1980. Author of numerous works that have been widely translated, Carpentier also introduced the concept of “magical realism” into Latin American literature. In his prologue to his 1949 novel El reino de este mundo [The Kingdom of this World] Carpentier coined the phrase “lo real maravilloso americano” – the marvelous real of the Americas. European artists and writers, he argued, had to reach into fantasy to invent the marvelous or magical. In the Americas, there was no need to resort to fantasy. “It had to be an American painter – the Cuban, Wilfredo Lam – who taught us the magic of tropical vegetation, the unbridled creativity of our natural forms with all their metamorphoses and symbioses …”10 Europeans struggled to invent novels of chivalry, while “the only honest-to-goodness book of chivalry that has ever been written” was conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s factual account of the conquest of Mexico. “Without realizing it, Bernal Díaz bested the brave deeds of Amadís of Gaul, Belianis of Greece, and Florismarte of Hircania. He had discovered a world of monarchs crowned with the plumes of green birds, vegetation dating back to the origins of the earth, foods never before tasted, drinks extracted from cacti and palm trees … In such a world, events tend to develop their own style, their own unique trajectories.”11

The Revolution’s investment in literature and culture could be said to span everything from the literacy campaign and the overwhelming emphasis on education, creating the most literate population in the Americas, to the creation of institutes like the Casa de las Américas and the Casa del Caribe, publishing houses, and prizes, to the rediscovery and publication of Cuba’s literary history. The Revolution clearly made the promotion of literature a priority. While other revolutions have given rise to a literature of war, or of social change, González Echevarría suggests, “the literature of the Cuban Revolution has been the one created by the sense of self-questioning made possible by the countless Cuban texts put in the hands of the new writers; the literature that has delved into the opened archives of Cuban memory in search of records to assemble them for the

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