BY MARTÍN KOPPEL AND LUIS MADRID
The ability to engage in political discussion and debate within the Cuban-American community in Miami "is opening up somewhat," says Achy Obejas in an interview appearing in the latest issue of La Gaceta de Cuba. The magazine interviewed her and fellow Cuban-American writer Cristina García in Havana following their participation in the conference held there last June on National Identity and Culture.
Obejas is author of We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? - a collection of short stories in which all the main characters are gay. She also writes on culture for the Chicago Tribune. García wrote the novel Dreaming in Cuban, one of the best-known books by a Cuban- American writer. The interview was conducted by Waldo Leyva and Norberto Codina, editor of La Gaceta, and appears in its September-October issue.
Obejas's comment referred to the differing reactions she got to her book while on a promotional tour in Miami. As she explained in the La Gaceta interview, one major bookstore canceled a reading after discovering that her stories, which are not primarily political, did not openly take a position against the Cuban revolution, and some rightists threatened her over the radio; an event held at another major bookstore was a success.
Cuban-American literature "is still in its infancy," continued García. "Perhaps in about a decade we will have an interesting, experimental literature." But, according to Obejas, this literature "is already becoming part of the Latin American culture within the context of the United States."
Published by the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), La Gaceta de Cuba is the leading journal for discussion and debate on culture, politics, and the challenges facing the Cuban revolution today. The latest issue contains a wide array of articles, reviews, interviews, essays, and poems.
In an interview, editor Codina, who is presently on a U.S. speaking tour (see accompanying article), noted other highlights of the new issue. "In particular there is a dossier devoted to Severo Sarduy, one of the most outstanding Cuban writers. He emigrated to France in the early 1960s and died there in 1993." The dossier includes articles on Sarduy by Brazilian essayist Irlemar Chiampi and a young Cuban author, Jorge Fornet, as well as a little-known, 1986 work by Sarduy himself.
"Despite his literary stature, Sarduy is not known very much in Cuba," Codina emphasized. "His work - novels, essays, and poetry - was ignored for many years because he lived outside Cuba, although he was never hostile to the revolution. This was due to the then-prevalent idea, very Stalin-like, that if you leave Cuba, you are no longer a Cuban writer."
Embracing Cuban writers and artists abroad as part of the nation's living cultural wealth, as La Gaceta does, is one of the changes taking place in revolutionary Cuba today, Codina underlined.
Other articles in this issue include:
A discussion of the work of Roberto Fabelo, "considered
by many the best graphic artist in Cuba today," as Codina
put it. This includes a piece by distinguished Cuban
writer Miguel Barnet.
An essay on the music of the late Ernesto Lecuona, Cuba's premier popular composer.
An article by Esther Suárez Durán that according to Codina "rescues the legacy of Cuban teatro bufo [popular comic theater], which flourished at the turn of the century but was long considered a `minor art' through elitist or dogmatic prejudice."
A literary piece, "The Circle and the Cross," that comments on the Cuban electoral process.
An interview in which Brazilian novelist Nélida Piñón draws on her own experiences to describe the challenges faced by artists under the dictatorship that ruled Brazil in the 1970s.
What is Marx's Marxism?
The previous issue of La Gaceta features a range of
articles as well. One, titled "History and Marxism," was
published to mark the 100th anniversary of Fredericks
Engels's death. In it, author Fernando Martínez Heredia
says that "the question of what constitutes Marx's Marxism
in Cuba today is extremely difficult." Among the reasons
for this problem, he states, have been the "lack of direct
sources" of the works of Marx and Engels, as well as "a
thick layer of vulgar interpretations and absurd speeches
claiming to be Marxist that were imposed on us as
ideological preconditions."
Martínez argues that the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe "is potentially positive for the eventual development of a liberation thought around the world, but there is still a ways to go before we can overcome the negative consequences of what [they] left behind."
In the United States La Gaceta is distributed by Pathfinder. The New York-based publisher has just announced the expansion of its distribution of the magazine to include the United Kingdom.