Oriente y Granma: different histories

• In Event: Culture, identity and Oriente, Cuba: La Cuba profunda, past and present

Abstract

If culture is fundamental to defining a society’s collective identity (defining the ‘us’ as different from ‘them’), then, within that, a consensual version of that society’s history is also fundamental, in creating an agreed narrative to explain its past, present and future with a degree of pride, but also demanding that (to prevent ossification and irrelevance) that narrative remains dynamic, adapting to new challenges, discoveries and focal points in the collective past. In that respect, the region of Oriente has always exercised a special place in the historical framework of a Cuban national identity, from Hatuey to the Sierra Maestra, and thus has long been a focus of historiographical attention. However, if Oriente is ‘special’, what about Oriente’s own identity? How did orientales see themselves as proudly different? And what has happened since 1976, when Oriente was fragmented into four and half new provinces? How and how far did each new province seek to create a separate identity, either through a particular cultural definers or through a newly constructed historical narrative? And how has this new identity related to both the nation and to Oriente, the former basis of ‘local’ identity? If cultural identity is about defining ‘us’, as not ‘them’, then who are the ‘them’ for Granma (for example), and how far are both Oriente and Cuba either the ‘them’ or extensions of the ‘us’? Based on on-ongoing research in the province, this paper reflects on some curious (and often very local) emerging patterns and layers of historical identification.

Author

• Antoni M Kapcia, University of Nottingham