Not in much else, at this stage, which is why perhaps a reassessment of the Cuban epic’s true legacy in Latin America is relevant today. Having once wielded enormous influence in the politics of Latin America, the revolution’s political impact now is limited to the small crowds that congregate outside the hotels where Castro rests on his sporadic forays into the region. In the 1960s nearly everyone, from Mexican national hero Lazaro Cardenas to Jean-Paul Sartre and Stokely Carmichael, made the pilgrimage to Havana. Today the revolutionaries and intellectuals have been replaced by middle-aged Spanish, Italian and Mexican tourists taking advantage of Cuba’s beaches, cheap prices and readily available sex.
And yet, despite its ideological isolation and political obsolescence, the Cuban revolution continues to carry disproportionate weight in the vibrant world of Latin American culture: in the literature, art and cinema of a region whose most distinctive–and redeeming–feature is its cultural vigor. While the Cuban cultural presence is nowhere near what it was 30 years ago, the island’s sway among writers, painters, academics and movie directors is still far greater than its size and resources merit. Hence the paradox: Latin America’s most important political event of the second half of the 20th century has left a more lasting imprint among novelists than ideologues, among painters than student activists, among musicians than labor organizers–in short, among cultural figures than politicians.
The allure for the intellectuals flowed from a more selfish perspective: the revolution gave birth to an intellectual-friendly government 40 years ago. Today Cuba’s strategic value is highly reduced: Russia prefers dollars from the IMF to Soviet missiles in Cienfuegos pointed at Miami. But hundreds of graduates from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s School of Cinema and Television in San Antonio de los Banos are scattered across the subcontinent. Every year dozens of Latin American writers still sit in judgment on novels, essays and poetry at Casa de las Americas, the most important international cultural institution created by the revolution at the very outset, and that for years counted among its patrons and friends the greatest literary names in the region. At the University of Buenos Aires, a Che Guevara chair inaugurated in early 1997 still attracts hundreds of students. In Mexico, La Jornada, the mass-circulation daily where Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz published their columns as recently as five years ago, continues to flaunt its enthusiasm for everything Cuban. And a smaller than ever but nonetheless impressive number of distinguished cultural icons, including Garcia Marquez, Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman and Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo GuayasamIn remain fast and true friends of Cuba.
Their continued loyalty to Cuba stems from the ambivalent status of the region’s intelligentsia. During the long night of authoritarian rule in Latin America, intellectuals frequently spoke out at home and abroad against abuses and atrocities, and helped to replace banned or weakened political parties. When democratization finally arrived, the intellectuals were replaced by more traditional voices–political parties, unions–that were accountable to their followers and public opinion in a way that intellectuals were not. The Cuban regime is so discredited in Latin American politics today that the most a fellow traveler of Cuba can get away with is to call for an end to the U.S. embargo and harassment from Miami; but in the field of culture there is greater leeway. There are not enough left-wing readers around in any Latin American country to win an election, but there are more than enough to generate a best seller. In consequence, there are few openly pro-Cuban politicians left in Latin America, but still many pro-Cuban cultural figures.
The festive times of the Cuban revolution ended many years ago, as did the heyday of its influence in Latin American history. What remain are memories and regrets, as well as vestiges of a singular experience in this Latin American century: the way in which a small island with no particular claim to fame was transformed into a cultural beacon and haven for many of the greatest writers the region has ever known, and for some of its finest thinkers, musicians and painters. As in the case of Ernesto Guevara, it is perhaps a fitting tribute to Cuba and Che that they both made a greater mark in the field of Latin culture than in the mundane, mediocre world of Latin politics. If there is a new, emerging left in Latin America, it is largely because the Cubans have been banished from political life in the hemisphere. But if the region’s cultural realm maintains its marvelous vitality, it is partly because of the Cuban’s long-lived, convoluted contribution to it.
