On January 2015, a new set of measures by the United States government opened a path towards the “normalization” of relations with Cuba after decades of mutual mistrust. However, as the expert in Cuban history Antoni Kapcia has argued, this should be seen as another milestone rather than a sea change in the long story of Cuban-U.S. relations. It is one thing to open up relations with the U.S. and another totally different thing to soften the internal power structure and the aggressive discourse towards the exile community in Cuba. Indeed, reconciliation between the “two Cubas” demands much more than political agreements or the abolition of the trade embargo. Since reconciliation is as much political as it is symbolic, it has to be preceded by a transformation of the public symbols and historic narratives that define what constitutes the imagined national community, and who is included or excluded from it. Cultural heritage and museums are tightly linked to the politics of recognition, defining the official discourses about past, present, and future. The politics of heritage have indeed played a fundamental role in this regard since the beginnings of the Cuban Revolution.

My IJCS paper “Transforming Ideology into Heritage: A Return of Nation and Identity in Late Socialist Cuba?” aims to shed light on the transformations of Cuban heritage policies in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This contradictory period is characterized by pragmatism and ideological ambiguity, as Cuba has been hovering in no-man’s-land, not clearly transitioning towards capitalism nor abandoning its communist past. Since Cuba has not enacted a complete break with the symbols and heritages of its communist past, it is still more appropriate to talk about heritage management under communism than about the management of the heritage of communism. The latter applies in Eastern European countries, where post-communism has been characterized by a frenzy of heritage destruction and the construction of new monuments, as well as the musealization of the communist past and a popular nostalgic drive for communist material culture.

Cuba, however, is comparatively closer to countries such as China, Laos, or Vietnam where the communist party leads the transition towards hyper-capitalist economies. The ongoing process could be proof that Cuba is moving in the same direction in terms of economic and heritage policies, although a few decades later. These states endured the Soviet collapse because, as in Cuba, their revolutions enjoyed local support and were grounded on nationalist and anti-colonialist ideas rather than ideas imposed by the Red Army, as in Eastern Europe. The commoditization of the communist past in these Asian countries is paralleled by a growing divergence between the official heritage discourse and the capitalist values and beliefs that pervade their societies. The question remains whether Cuba will follow their steps or whether the representational regime inherited from communism will still be the dominant symbolic and representational regime. If this were the case, it is not feasible to expect abrupt short-term changes in the official discourse of the Cuban leadership — although the erratic trajectory of the Cuban Revolution defies any attempt to foreshadow its future routes.

The IJCS paper attempts to ground these questions in terms of heritage by showing how heritage policies have been tightly connected to government interests. Late socialist Cuba has concentrated on creating a sense of historic depth, triggering a memory-war to reinforce the idea of siege by an external enemy — globalization and the U.S. — and reinforcing the geopolitical links with Latin American left-wing governments. In addition, national identity has been highlighted over the class identity that had formerly permeated Cuban discourse under Soviet influence. These transformations are encapsulated in what I call the transformation of ideology into heritage. This process implies that every new ideological shift is immediately given heritage status through monuments and museums. The twofold aim is to emphasize the significance and future endurance of the new ideology, and to make it look older and therefore to appear more legitimate. The transformation of ideology into heritage involves a construction of identity in exclusionary nationalist and dialectic terms, thus posing a challenge to reconciliation. The revolutionary insistence in defining Cuban identity against an external Other and to reinforce the sense of collective belonging can indeed be problematic if a transition towards more inclusive forms of discourse is intended in the new period.

Statue of Cuban intellectual and national hero José Martí in the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, Havana. Martí is holding the children Elián González and pointing with an accusatory finger to the US Interest Section, the potential future full-embassy of the US. This hostile symbology of the area illustrates the need to revisit public symbolic landscapes in Cuba if new political and social identities are to be constructed.

Reconciliation should not be limited exclusively to giving exiles the possibility to travel or live  in Cuba; it should consider their inclusion in the narratives and symbols of the nation, which still present them largely as traitors or “others” rather than as constituent subjects of the national community. Heritage has been fundamental in the negotiation of these identities, both in the island and abroad. In Miami, a parallel Cuban exile heritage industry has emerged where monuments and museums make different claims from the past, commemorating other Cuban stories, heroes, and values. On the island, an utterly ambiguous but clearly more open institution that could pave the way for reconciliation in heritage terms is the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad (Office of the City Historian of Havana), led by the charismatic Eusebio Leal. The Office revisits the Republican and Colonial pasts of Havana while restoring Old Havana and packaging it for international tourists.

The official discourse of the Office avoids state propaganda and aims to establish more friendly relationships with foreign cultural and political institutions. Certainly, the new Cuban-U.S. agreements will boost tourism and will probably force the Cuban government to follow the path of the Office in presenting a friendlier image for tourists through heritage representations. The maintenance of two images of Cuba for different target publics (domestic and foreign) will not be feasible to sustain as tourism rockets. However, it is unlikely that the regime will market the communist past and symbols because those have become the official “language of power” and representational regimes of the state (e.g., socialist realism).

Understanding the roots of this process is fundamental to current prospects of reconciliation with Cuban exiles, as Cuba will surely not get rid of the burdens of the past right away. The radical nationalist approach to heritage policies and the politics of recognition deriving from it distort history prevent the possibility of learning from past errors and conflicts. Because inclusion can only be successful by recognizing the narratives of others and representing them publicly, the endurance of exclusionary and acritical heritage policies hampers any move in this direction. Cuba is thus beset by a complex conundrum. If the revolutionary past is ignored and the country draws a line under the past to move on, the society that caused the Revolution might reproduce their conflict. But, if Cubans strive to deal with the heritage of the Revolution, they will most likely cling to partisan views and be surely conditioned by their involvement with the system in one way or another. The new turn in the Cuban-U.S. relations therefore opens more questions than it solves in terms of the future political and cultural trajectory of the Revolution and the question of reconciliation. Without doubt, however, heritage will be a terrain of struggle for Cubans, both on the island and abroad, in the years to come.

[For the full article, see Pablo Alonso González “Transforming Ideology Into Heritage: A Return of Nation and Identity in Late Socialist Cuba?,” forthcoming in International Journal of Cultural Studies. Currently available as an OnlineFirst publication: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/12/23/1367877914562712.abstract]

The debates, however, were not completely without meaning. Though we learned very little about policy positions that we didn’t already know, it was a moment in which U.S. paternalism and egoism took center stage. The language we use to talk about foreign policy is not just about whether Obama or Romney think we should bomb Syria, or how we should deal with Afghanistan, even though those are important things to know about a President. It also reflects how we think about other countries and our relationships with them. When we talk about Iran and how it would be “completely unacceptable” for Iran to gain nuclear capability, it begs the question—when did we get elected in Iran? At what point did we decide that we could dictate what a country could and could not do? Of course the United States has been doing that since we decided that Germany had no right to violate the sovereignty of other nations and subjugate them (i.e. World War I). Ironically, the candidates both agreed that should the sanctions fail we would use military force to secure our own safety. In 1963 John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “American University” speech in which he declared that, “the world knows that America will never start a war.” To imply that we would violate the sanctity of sovereignty for our own sake is pride at it’s most dangerous. To boldly claim that war is justified if it keeps America safe opens a door that could lead to a new era in U.S. colonization in which any country that could be labeled “dangerous” runs the risk of invasion. The fact that Romney and Obama pledge to use violence if necessary is deeply problematic, and that the public sees this as an option in the future is even more cause for concern.

Another example of U.S. paternalism and egoism was exemplified in the conversation on Pakistan. Bob Schieffer asked Romney if it was time for the U.S. to “divorce” Pakistan and stop sending billions in “aid” to a country that “still provides safe haven for terrorists.” His reply was simple. We cannot sever our ties with Pakistan because they have nuclear weapons, and if they become a failed state terrorists will use those weapons to bomb us. This, of course, implies that if Pakistan is not a democratic nation, then it is a failed nation. Romney then goes on to argue that in order to “save” nations like Pakistan, the US must create an “effective and comprehensive strategy to help move the world away from terror and Islamic extremism.” The implication is that the Arab countries like Egypt, Libya, or Pakistan first need us to identify those threats for them, and then “help” neutralize them. Again we see Obama and Romney very casually discussing what in essence is a violation of state sovereignty. Imagine for a moment if Hu Jintao or Kim Jong-un gave a speech in which they stated they would create a comprehensive plan to move America away from extremist capitalism and towards a more communist system of government. Hard to imagine? That might be because it seems to be the sole responsibility of the U.S. to craft a domestic policy for the world.

As the campaign season comes to a close, many of these same policies and opinions will be repeated again (and again…and again). Perhaps listeners will become more enamored with the arguments once they’ve been repeated ad-nauseam. Or perhaps listeners will become more critical of the language used to communicate policy and will look beyond the words to see the ideological underpinnings and their consequences for the U.S. and for the world. And if I keep trying, maybe I’ll come to like mushrooms.