The Apparatus of Oblivion: Myth, History and Power in Cuba
Author: Rafael Rojas
In La Maquina del Olvido: Mito, Historia y Poder en Cuba, or “The Apparatus of Oblivion: Myth, History and Power in Cuba,” (ISBN: 978-6071-11667-3), Rafael Rojas critiques the official history of modern Cuba from a variety of progressive angles to urge a more diverse understanding of the island’s past and a return to “remembering” by the Cuban people.
Rojas, a Cuban historian living in Mexico, assails the Castro government’s version of history, which he sums up like this:
Before 1959, the island was a colony of Spain and then, a neocolony of the United States. The 1959 revolution finally made Cuba a nation-state. Fidel led Cuba to true independence, a goal advocated by José Martí in the 1890s that had been repeatedly frustrated.
Citing scholars worldwide, Rojas argues instead that Cuba had a rich and diverse intellectual life before 1959.
The common front that rose up against Gen. Fulgencio Batista’s 1952 coup was varied too, including many groups who sought to return Cuba to its 1940 Constitution and never called for independence or socialism.
It’s a myth, Rojas writes, that Castro’s revolution culminated a decades-old struggle for sovereignty, always thwarted by the United States. Instead, Washington recognized the 1959 revolution within days and welcomed Cuba’s push toward democracy.
The United States only broke relations with Cuba after Havana nationalized U.S. companies and began trading with the Soviet bloc and China; after Cuba became a one-party state, and after Cuba formed a military alliance with Moscow, writes Rojas.
Havana’s nationalistic line gives cover for the Cuban government to denounce critics as anti-Cuban and even mercenaries of the United States.
But that view cuts off the open circulation of ideas that can help address Cuba’s nagging problems.
Many scholars on and off the island want to contribute ideas based on progressive theories from neo-Marxism to post-modernism and multi-culturalism, he writes.
“Revolution can’t mean the same thing as homeland, nation or socialism, nor can it serve as a metaphor for power — Fidel, Raúl and the Communist Party — or as another name for the regime, the community or the country,” Rojas writes.
“The Revolution was — as in France, Russia and Mexico — a specific historical phenomenon that had to do with the transformation of the Cuban economy, society, politics and culture in 1959.
“To the extent the concept can be reduced to its historic meaning and stripped of ideological form, then the history of the revolution can be approached more critically.”
Rojas takes the title for his book of eight essays from anti-imperialist Aime Cesaire of the French Caribbean island of Martinique.
In his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism, Cesaire referred to the “forgetting machine” to describe how ruling powers colonize the minds of their subjects.
Cesaire said resistance to colonialism involved a policy of memory to re-connect with the identity of those subjected.
Rojas calls it a paradox that the Castro regime — in the name of sovereignty and decolonization — instead has confiscated Cubans’ public memory.
The 224-page scholarly critique, full of academic footnotes, comes from an intellectual with stellar credentials.
Born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Rafael is the son of Fernando Rojas, a medical doctor who was rector of the University of Havana from 1980 to 1992. Rafael Rojas studied philosophy at that university and earned his doctorate in history in Mexico.
He has written more than 15 books and 100 academic essays, including some honored with international awards.
Rojas has taught at universities in Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Ecuador, Argentina and Puerto Rico, and on the U.S. mainland at Princeton and Columbia. He now works at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.
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