The white Poet and the emaciated Revolution

• In Event: Literatura, Identidad, Campo Cultural II

Abstract

In the mid-sixties, the Cuban cultural and political institutions was infused with the idea of creating a "new man". In Socialism and Man in Cuba, published in 1965, Ernesto Guevara denounced the "stigmata" marking the "artists and intellectuals trained before the Revolution." The state thus began looking for a group of young writers capable of embodying this new man and becoming the official writers of the Revolution. A movement of young poets had already formed around the independent editions El Puente, which included blacks, homosexuals and women. However, the Cuban Communist Party disbanded this movement, on the basis of its racial and gender identities, which were considered a threat to the unity of the Revolution. The CCP replaced them with another group, gathered around the magazine Bearded Caiman, composed exclusively of young white and heterosexual men. Considered harmful to the class struggle, questions of race and sex were erased from these new official writers’ texts. I will examine the impact of this institutional policy on their writing by questioning if, on the contrary, it did not hinder the emergence of a new revolutionary Marxist poetic aesthetic.

Author

• Amina Damerdji