Today's Cuban National Culture and Identity
By Fernando Martínez Heredia

Source: CUBARTE, HAVANA
November 06, 2006

Every October 20th the Cuban National Anthem is heard everywhere, even more cheerful in its brevity of warlike brass band: it is its birthday. It had been baptized with blood, and it accompanied the misfortunes and the heroisms of a whole people that massively sacrificed itself to defeat colonialism and to try to get it out from its bottoms, in order to obtain freedom for the slaves, equal rights for all citizens, so a democratic republic. In the first 30 years it was called the "Anthem of Bayamo", or "The flag's march". People imposed it in the whole country during their remarkable civic campaign to affront North American military occupation of 1898-1902, as the national anthem, the sung concretion of the independence they demanded. Soon after it received its official recognition. During the following half century it was in dispute, token of bourgeois neo colonial hegemony or of a popular project, presiding over even ceremonies of upper class or the resistance and revolt of the popular ones. In fact, it was also a wonderful fuel for Cuban's identity, from its prime infancy, and gave the encounter of each one with its own pertaining, the political bias of their definitive definitions: "To the combat rush… that to die for homeland is to live."

The Revolution that triumphed in 1959 solved the contradiction. Social justice turned into socialism and the republic in national liberation, both together, constitute the only possible way to succeed. So, Cubans´ national identity–which is what we're talking about–could really be a true one, not only a manufacture or a project, in front of a reality of oppression and misery for the majorities and of a foreign domination for Cuba. In a very short period of time both the people and its liberated nation seized ardently-as they had done with the country itself-their symbols and their history, as well as a most radical project of society arised, the one of José Martí, and from the most promising human preconception, socialism, demanded to stay at the same level of those efforts they were making to change themselves, their relationships and institutions. Pride of being Cuban was multiplied, deepened and became militant, that's why either for ancient rulers or the counterrevolution nationality, were also deprived.

Whenever a nation recognizes itself like a singular one, different and unyielding of any other one, may have any kinds of implications. Nation has been--in its advanced bourgeois version—as an instrument of dominance in the hands of the oppressing classes, in the inner, unifying oppressed and the dominated ones, generally under its aegis, and in the outside as chauvinism, a pretended superiority of its nation besides the legitimacy of the spoliation and colonial and neo colonial despise to other people. National culture, economy, education, are other so many issues on which richness of social diversity, the needs, visions and people's projects, as well as local life, can be integrated, but also they can be dissolved or dominated. The market and the State have been the two fundamental agents of that centralization in the history of capitalism. The great majority of nations of the world has been forced to form and develop themselves inside the extraordinary complexity and contradictions implied in fighting to take off the yokes of colonialism-of which the cultural one is the most persistent–and at the same time related themselves in very high degrees with world capitalism .

The Cuban national identity in this last half century is the resultant of a great socialist revolution of national liberation that has taken place on January 1959, and of a wonderful, prolonged and agonic process of socialist transition which today faces old and new challenges.

The unification of diversities, efforts and purposes that a great revolution produces took place in Cuba in a very high degree. In a few years the political union of the revolutionaries and the people was forged; revolutionary power put wealth and national economy at people's service and for national development; so, a great liberating social contract remained as the political base. Cubans made off such a tremendous union around such an ambitious living project, that life would be a paradise for those who came after us; it also was so much transcendent that it was worthwhile to sacrifice one´s self ambitions to it. National identity, so enriched and modified by social justice, experienced a gigantic amplification and another deep modification of its sense with internationalism. The people and the country reached such develop of degree that wouldn´t had been possible given the level of the material reproduction of national life, giving its solidarity, their sweat and their blood to other nations. The internationalism has been a main constant, and has made Cuba much stronger in all the senses with a true worth. With his capacity to expose the epic deed of which he has been the main figure, Fidel said in 1970: "we don't want to build a paradise by the side of a volcano."

North American imperialism, enemy of the Cuban nation even before acquiring the force and the nature that allowed it to subdue us, made war from the very beginning to Cuban liberation, as it was expected. For a second time in the 20th Century anti imperialism took hold of masses in Cuba--the first one was in 1933--but now joined the whole people, who was armed and having power was able to overcome the North American assaults. In front of the blockade and the systematic aggressions that has lasted since then until nowadays, but also as a deep understanding of the exploiting and criminal essence of imperialism and its action against the whole world, anti imperialisms, was added as a distinctive characteristic to Cuban identity, as a way to identify the enemy, and not only so, also as a cultural feature.

I will limit myself to draw a sketch of the long way to arrive to what today is known as identity until today. What one day were events and revolutionary laws, turned into daily life and customs, which produced a deep transformation of the national culture. Nevertheless, the limits of the change also became severe, and they even led to setbacks. The dialectic between liberation and modernizations, which in a first stage of the revolution was lead by the first one, gradually transferred its primacy to the second one. A welfare state of worth and services veiled that reflux. Geopolitics, that has suffered a complete defeat by the hands of a young revolution, has been taking revenge since then against us. The so-called underdevelopment, senior son of capitalism's world expansion, that suffocates the efforts of the great majorities in the world, submits them to looting, tribute and exploitation, has resisted sturdily in Cuba, where in spite of the sovereignty and owning of its own resources, the economic policies of development, the extraordinary advances on education, sciences and their products, and many other achievements. The resultant until today is of a singular complexity. The bureaucratization and the partial abandonment of the project were being confronted by a rectification process when the USSR and the so called socialist field, destructed themselves. Cuba had to face then a terrible economic crisis extended through out social life and to the deep world discredit of socialism.

Fifteen years later, popular wisdom that supported without limits the revolutionary process in order to maintain social justice and the national sovereignty, besides, the exemplary revolutionary leadership that used diverse tactics and a single strategy to save Cuban socialism. But the challenges are also enormous. Nowadays more and more centralized and parasitic capitalism constitutes at the same time an issue of world cultural homogenization which tries to hide its excluding and predatory character, disassemble the resistances and achieve consent even among those that more suffers its effects, throughout a true cultural war. Although it has better weapons than most to defend itself, Cuba is not excluded of that war. The same social advances and the colossal growth of the human capacities of the Cubans have created enormous expectations, without resources to satisfy them under the rules of an individualistic culture of daily life. Today's Cubans identity has its centre in a magnificent cultural accumulation, but it doesn't limit to it, and the current problems cannot be exorcized just by invoking that wealth. Apart from fashions, harms and deviations, there are undoubtedly new features and necessities that requires attention.

An intense cultural conflict takes place in our country. The social relationships and socialist worth, and identity identified with the revolution, in many occasions confronts the individualistic selfishness, the desire of lucre and the relationships and values that they are able to feed. In other cases, both poles of the conflict coexist, in a same environment, and also in the same people. The Cuban socialism has its principal weapons in the systematic struggle without concessions to sustain and deepen social justice, in anti-imperialism and internationalism. If the Cuban cultural accumulation remains at the service of those weapons and of its liberating project, the ensemble will be invincible.

Translation: Mercedes Carballo (Cubarte)

Thanks to David Walters of Marxist Internet Archive who sent this.