CUBA, SI! LIFE AND DESIGN ON THE EMBARGOED ARCHIPELAGO
Part one of three
In October 2007, La Habana, Cuba will host the 2007 Icograda World Design Congress. Prografica, Icograda's professional Member, and the Consejo National de las Artes Plasticas (CNAP) are partners with Icograda in organsing this event.
Above: A collage of images illustrates the diversity of contemporary life and design in Cuba today.
The
Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a watershed event that bestowed on Cubans
extraordinary gifts of social justice and equality, dramatic advances
in public health and education, and an equitable distribution of the
national wealth. It also brought unprecedented attention to the
Caribbean, placed Cuba in opposition to the U.S. in the midst of the
Cold War, and has unalterably changed the course of history and
politics throughout the Americas.
"Limited means
beget new forms, invite creation..." wrote Georges Braques, the famous
French painter. His thesis that progress lies not in extension, but in
a deeper knowledge of limitations oVers an apt depiction for the lot
and creative life of modern Cuba just as necessity gives birth to
invention, post-Revolutionary Cubans have had to exercise ingenuity,
inventiveness and resiliency through more than four decades of ensuing
marginalization and economic hardship.
Land of eternal spring
Cuba
is the largest and most populous island nation in the Caribbean, with a
crocodile-shaped landmass of 110,860 km2 (42,800 square miles, slightly
smaller than Pennsylvania), and a population of 11.3 million
Spanish-speaking citizens. Situated just 150 km (90 miles) from the
coast of Florida, and stretching 1,250 km (780 miles) eastward, Cuba is
actually an archipelago of two large islands and 4,195 keys, islands
and islets. Its coastline, natural beaches and vibrant coral reef
provide a marine wonderland lying between the Atlantic to Cuba's north,
the calmer Caribbean Sea to the south and the Gulf of Mexico to the
west.
When Columbus landed in Cuba in 1492 (thinking
that he had found Asia) he described it as "the most beautiful land
human eyes have ever seen," a view still shared by the millions of
(non-U.S.) tourists who visit annually to savor the island's languid
tropical climate, remarkably varied flora and fauna, historical
heritage and, of course, exquisite beach resorts and all things
aquatic. Although Cuba trades with almost every nation on earth (except
the U.S.) and is famous the world over for its Revolutionary and
egalitarian ideals (it has been sending medical, educational and
nutritional aid to under-privileged nations in Latin America, Africa
and Asia since the 1960s); its venerable export of sugar, rum, coffee,
cocoa and cigars (aboriginals in Cuba were already growing tobacco when
Columbus arrived); its mining of copper, magnesium and nickel (Cuba has
the world's largest nickel deposits, some 34% of global reserves); its
advanced biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry (monoclonal
antibodies, therapeutic vaccines); its rich musical legacy (Habanera,
Guajira, Samba, Timba, Latin Jazz, Son think Buena Vista Social Club
for the latter); its vibrant arts culture; its ex-patriot baseball
superstars; as well as today's hedonic-health-and-eco tourism; the
country is little known to the average citizen of the United States, a
result of the sustained embargo that Washington has imposed since 1962.
Beleaguered history
Cuba's
Amerindian population came under control of the Spanish Crown following
the imperialist expedition of Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, who sailed
over from nearby Hispaniola in 1512. The Spanish conquistadors brought
"the heathens" a brutal system of forced indigenous labor, Christianity
(with its promise of salvation) and widespread disease a combination
that effectively exterminated the Natives by the middle of the
sixteenth century. As elsewhere in the Americas, thousands of African
slaves were then "imported" as a work force for the extraction of gold
and minerals, and for labor to run the massive sugar, coffee and
tobacco plantations. From the mid-sixteenth through mid-eighteenth
century, Cuba was the focus of an ongoing power-struggle between
Spanish traders, European monarchs and ransacking pirates.
Britain
invaded Cuba in 1762 (while Spain was battling Britain and France in
the Seven Years War), but traded it back to Spain in exchange for
Florida the following year in the Peace of Paris treaty. By the 1820s,
Cuba was the world's largest sugar producer (making the U.S. very sweet
on it), a position supported by the import of ever more slaves by 1840,
there were more than 400,000 Africans on the island.
The
colony's struggle for independence from Spain began in 1868, and
continued through uprisings by criollo landowners and several failed
wars. In 1892, poet, patriot and independence leader Jos Marti headed a
successful revolution that led to the weakening of Spanish control
(though he himself was killed in 1895, attaining the status of heroic
martyr). In 1898 the battleship Maine (sent to Cuba to "protect U.S.
citizens") exploded in Havana's harbor, killing 266 U.S. sailors and
triggering the "Spanish-American" war (fueled by sensationalized war
fever stoked by William Randolph Hearst and the U.S. tabloid press).
The Spanish claimed that the Maine's demise was an accident, the
Americans blamed the Spanish and some Cubans accused the U.S., claiming
the incident provided a "convenient pretext for intervention." The war
was over within the year, the Teller Resolution committed the U.S. to
respect Cuban self-determination and the Platt Amendment (among other
things) allowed the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever they
saw it.
A Republic is born
Cuba
finally became an "independent" republic in 1902, though with a series
of weak, corrupt, governments highly dependent upon the U.S. (who
intervened militarily in 1906, 1912 and 1917). At the turn of the
century, Cuba s mono-crop sugar-economy was basically a U.S. monopoly
by the 1920s, American companies owned two-thirds of Cuba's farmland
and most of its mines. Between 1919 and 1933 (Prohibition in the U.S.),
tourism based on drinking, gambling and prostitution flourished in
Cuba, though the following Great Depression brought plummeting
commodity prices, plunged Cuba into chaos and led to devastating
general strikes. In the ensuing power vacuum, sergeant Fulgencio
Batista stepped in first as the army's chief of staff, then as elected
president for a term, and following two additional corrupt and
ineYcient "neocolonial" governments, by means of a coup as military
dictator. (Batista's regime enjoyed a 50,000-man army with cannon and
armor, an air force and a navy, a "murderously efficient" uniformed and
secret police, and full U.S. backing, including access to American
arms, tanks and artillery.)
Tropical chic (or not)
From
1910 to the late 1950s, Cuba became a playground for the rich and
privileged while at the same time, peasants and the voiceless working
classes suffered under ever-worsening conditions of poverty and
degradation. A playground for vice, mobsters and the American mafia
(Lucky Luciano moved to Havana in 1946, the notorious Meyer Lansky
operated the Riveria hotel and casino), Havana had been turned into a
popular destination for prostitution and gambling.
Billed
as an "anything-goes tropical paradise, and land of romance," and
vigorously promoted around the world by the travel industry, Cuba was
portrayed as "The Paris of the Caribbean" by means of "the unique
graphic style of Cubanos graphistos," as documented in the recent book
Cuba Style: Graphics from the Golden Age of Design by Vicki Gold Levi
and Steven Heller. The book compiles "hundreds of vintage graphics of
Cuba" combining elements of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Bauhaus, Modernism
and "Vegas-style kitsch in a distinctly Cuban sensibility" in what
Heller defines as the "Golden Age of Cuban Design."
Pepe
Menendez, great-nephew of Enrique Garcia Cabrera (one of that era's
most famous painters and illustrators), and now the creative director
at the famed cultural publishing house Casa des las Am ricas, disagrees
strongly with Heller's celebration of Cuba's "merry capitalist style,"
stating: "The 'Golden Age of Cuban Design' was certainly not the
pre-revolutionary period, but rather the mid-'60s through the mid-'70s
this really represented a unique freshness and a distinctive change of
visual vocabulary in Cuba."
Patria y Libertad
By
the 1950s, Cuba was ripe for dramatic change. Batista's cronies were
enriching themselves with bribes, and his thugs were bullying the
country's citizens (and suppressing the increasingly-frequent
spontaneous public strikes with police-state brutality). In the
countryside, three-quarters of farmable land was owned by foreigners
"Patria y Libertad" (homeland and liberty) was clearly just a nascent
dream. Following Batista's second coup, a revolutionary circle formed
in Havana in 1953, leading to a (failed) assault on the Moncada army
barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Among the handful of survivors was the
young lawyer and activist Fidel Castro, sentenced to fifteen years of
imprisonment though he was released two years later (as part of a
general amnesty granted to political prisoners following Batista s
fraudulent election win in 1955) and went to Mexico to prepare an
ex-patriot revolutionary force.
On December 2, 1956,
Castro and 81 rebel companieros navigated a small yacht (the Granma,
now the name of the Cuban Communist Party's official newspaper) across
the Gulf of Mexico and landed at Las Coloradas Beach in eastern Cuba to
begin what would become the Cuban Revolution. Though the rebels were
decimated in early fighting, a dozen stalwarts (Castro, his brother
Raul, the Argentine doctor Che Guevara and future commandante Camilo
Cienfuegos among them) managed to escape to the rugged Sierra Maestra
mountains, where they set up a command post from which to extend their
Revolutionary activities. A series of attacks against Batista's forces,
aided by growing support of the populace, led to an overthrow of the
government in the last days of 1958 Batista led to the Dominican
Republic on January 1, 1959, workers across the country responded to
the call for a general strike and Castro was named prime minister two
weeks later.
Among the new government's first acts
were rent and electricity cost reductions, followed by the abolition of
racial discrimination. Next, the First Agrarian Reform nationalized all
land holdings over 400 hectares (988 acres), infuriating Cuba's largest
landowners, primarily U.S. companies. A purge of the judicial system
triggered the exodus of many judges and lawyers, followed by
professionals, managers and technicians who did not share Castro s
vision. Nationalization of Cuba s oil refineries, banks and hundreds of
the largest Cuban firms continued to raise the ire of the formerly
privileged in Cuba, as well as the U.S. between 1959 and 1970, a
half-million Cubans left the country, most of them headed for Miami.
The Battle of Playa Giron
In
the U.S., the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Cuba
(documented in the National Security Council's approval of a resolution
mandating an overthrow of the Cuban regime, yet stipulating that this
must be done so as not to implicate the U.S., and thereby threaten its
credibility among other Latin American states). Championed by Richard
Nixon (then vice president), the CIA secured government funding and
began recruiting and training Cuban exiles in 1960, months before
diplomatic relations were severed with Cuba (January 1961). Throughout
the year, growing ranks of "Brigade 2506" mercenaries trained at
locations in southern Florida and Guatemala for a planned Cuban
invasion, entailing a beach landing and possible mountain retreat.
Based on previous successes in "assisting the removal of foreign
governments" (such as those of Iranian prime minister Mohammed
Mossadegh in 1953, and Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzm n in
1954), the CIA was confident that it could overthrow Castro and spark a
popular uprising this in turn was meant to lead to a request (from
Cuban soil) for U.S. military support, the only "politically
defensible" option for formal intervention that would not spark
undesired geopolitical reactions.
On the morning of
April 15, 1961, lights of U.S. light bomber aircraft displaying Cuban
Fuerza Aerea Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Air Force) markings left
bases in Nicaragua for bombing raids on Cuban air fields, aiming to
secure air superiority over the island in advance of troop landings.
Two days later, some 1,500 armed exiles disembarked from U.S. warships
on the Giron and Larga beaches of Bahia de Cochinos (the Bay of Pigs,
on Cuba s southern coast), where they hoped to find support from the
local population before advancing to Havana.
The
resulting "heroic battle" of the Bay of Pigs that ensued over the next
72 hours (a victory that Cubans still celebrate, though they call it
the "Battle of Playa Giron"), saw outnumbered civil defense militiamen
chase the disorganized would-be invaders into the Zapata marshes,
before they were eventually captured, and later traded back to the U.S.
for a substantial financial ransom. The attempted invasion had failed
miserably, the fiasco proved to be a major international embarrassment
for the Kennedy administration, and the directors of the CIA were
forced to resign. The incident also greatly fueled Castro's popularity,
added nationalistic support to his socialist policies and made Cubans
justifiably wary of future U.S. interventions. Immediately following
the invasion attempt, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for support
against further aggression from its giant neighbor, helping pave the
way for the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis that would follow eighteen
months later.
Crisis and embargo
To
this day, Cuba carries the dubious distinction of having been the scene
of humankind s closest brush with annihilation, as the Cold War
teetered on the brink of becoming full-blown nuclear war. For thirteen
tense and momentous days in October 1962, the U.S. and the Soviet Union
faced each other down over nuclear missile installations in Cuba and a
fullscale naval blockade, in what Cubans refer to as the "October
Crisis," Russians the "Caribbean Crisis" and Americans the "Cuban
Missile Crisis." Though history shows Cuba to have been a largely
unwitting pawn of the two super-powers' brinksmanship (the U.S.
possessed the strategic fire-power of nuclear submarines, and in 1961
had deployed Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles
aimed at Russia from Izmir, Turkey this in turn had prompted Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at
Washington and other U.S. cities within a 2,000 km (1,250 miles)
range), the tropical island nation has seemingly been saddled with the
doomsday moniker. The showdown ended dramatically with Khrushchev
offering to withdraw the Soviet missiles from Cuba in return for
President Kennedy's guarantee not to invade Cuba, not to support any
future invasion and for the U.S. to withdraw its missiles from Turkey.
Following
the failed invasion attempt and missile fiasco, the U.S. began an
economic, commercial and financial embargo on February 7, 1962, a
sustained impediment on Cuba that (as of 2006) is still in effect. This
ongoing attempt at economic strangulation, cultural quarantine and
intimidation of anyone who might attempt to break Cuba s isolation is
widely seen as bullying and punishment, a factor that has polarized
much of Latin America (and socialist sentiment around the world) in
favor of the Cuban "underdog." Some critics argue that the embargo
actually helps Castro more than it hurts him, by providing a scapegoat
to blame for Cuba's problems (which he does). Free market advocates
argue that, as long as the embargo continues, non-U.S. foreign
businesses in Cuba don t have to compete with U.S. businesses and thus
will gain a head-start advantage if and when the embargo is ended. The
United Nations General Assembly has condemned el bloqueo (the blockade)
against Cuba for the last fifteen years running. The widely supported
U.N. resolution has become an annual event students and countless
workers across the island stop their regular activities to watch the
special one-hour feature on Cuba's state-run television and then follow
the voting at the U.N.'s General Assembly session.
About the article
This is the first of three parts of an article that originally appeared in Communications Arts (May/June 2006). It is reprinted with permission.
Next week
Patriots, martyrs, icons: Cuba is a land that reveres its history,
and that celebrates its heroes almost as deities from its legendary
first freedom fighter Huey, a sixteenth-century Taino chief who led
uprisings against the Spanish (and was burned at the stake for his
efforts), to the thirteen-year old Eli n Gonz lez, now living with his
father in Cardenas (the six-year-old survivor of a failed Florida
Straits crossing made world news in 2002, at the center of a dramatic
international custody battle), and the much-publicized "Five Cuban
Heroes" currently being held in U.S. jails.