Abstract
I (John I. Gilderbloom) have visited Cuba thirty-five times and spent a total of 18 months on the island between 1997 and 2007. I have traveled by bus, boat, private car, plane, and bike throughout the island on missions of historic preservation, sustainable development, economic development, and human rights. I organized and attended several academic conferences in Cuba. I have seen the very best and worst of Cuban socialism—much of it invisible to the typical tourists who stay in gated resorts. Books on Cuba tend to be framed as mustering support for or opposition to the revolution that is now more than 50-years-old. While Western Democratic countries have a treasure trove of data that is seemingly objective, “good data” is difficult to find for academics interested in objective and balanced research. What we take for granted in Western Europe and North America is simply not available in Cuba and in many other developing Caribbean countries. While many books on Cuba are highly ideological, there are only a handful that could be considered scholarly: Henry Louis Taylor’s Inside El Barrio, Mario Coyula, Robert Segre, and Joseph Scarpaci: Havana: Two Faces of Antillean Metropolis, and probably one of the best urban and public affairs books: Revolution in Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools by John A. Loomis.
This book is a welcome addition to this short list of quality academic books.
The authors paint a portrait of Cuba under different political systems, including, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and socialism. It attempts to present a balanced view, although the more negative aspects of Cuba are either ignored or given little attention. The book approaches the concept of landscape from a kaleidoscope of perspectives, giving broader meaning to the term. Geomorphology, culture, history, economy, and political foundation are interwoven as landscapes through the book’s seven chapters.
Chapter 1, “On Cuban Landscapes” sets the stage. It states “The study of landscapes is an eclectic discipline, requiring us to cast a necessarily broad net to capture the many nuances of Cuba and Cubanidad (‘Cubaness').” The diversity of focus encompasses architecture, music, literature, art and art history, education, industry, and more. The contemporary and vernacular landscape even extends to the ubiquitous American “Fifties” cars, as well as cigars, sugar, and slavery.
Chapter 2 views the Cuban landscape through the prism of Alexander von Humboldt’s association with the island in 1800 and 1804. This iconic German aristocratic “Renaissance Man” documented a variety of landscapes in his book, The Island of Cuba, focusing on both the human and physical elements. His lasting touch remains part of the Cuban landscape in so many ways, ranging from parks, statues, and buildings erected in his honor to the bicentennial anniversary edition of his original work issued in 2002 by Fidel Castro. The chapter also includes enlightening passages drawn from Humboldt’s book, technically superb woodcuts depicting a variety of punishments inflicted on slaves, as well as a diagram of sociopolitical hierarchy of colonial Cuba.
Chapter 3 is devoted entirely to “Sugar,” a product central to the essence of Cuba. Columbus introduced the plant to the island during his second visit, and it is principally sugar that sets Cuba’s position relative to the rest of the world. Rising and falling with the price and demand for the commodity, Cuban economic development as a result of sugar production serves as a self-contained model of classic urban economic theory. Evolutionary technological advancement such as road building, ship building, and forestry were followed by the spread of railroads throughout the island (the only one in the Caribbean). This increased demand for labor, which was resolved by the explosive growth in slavery. Eventually, a symbiotic relationship arose between U.S. financial speculators investing in sugar and railroads, the so-called “sugarocracy.” Because of the extensive railway access to the interior of the island, the Cuban population has been very evenly distributed away from urban areas and beaches.
The transformation of the sugar industry after the Socialist Revolution is fascinating. After nationalization, at times, almost the entire Cuban population became involved in the sugar harvest. With its entrance into the Soviet Trading Bloc in 1972, Cuba became the sole-source provider to Communist regimes throughout the world. After the fall of the USSR, in the early 1990s, the Cuban economy fell in shambles, and it has never quite recovered.
Chapter 4, entitled “Heritage,” explores “using the past as an economic resource for the present.” Cuba offers a wide variety of tourist venues from the old world charm of Trinidad in the east to the capital city’s Old Havana, intensively rehabilitated in recent decades by European investors. There are nine UNESCO world heritage sites in Cuba (a high number for a small island nation) from historic buildings to natural wonders such as Alejandro de Humboldt National Park. There are the first coffee plantations and various fortifications built by the Spanish, and slave quarters.
Continuing the theme of “Tourism,” Chapter 5 ties together earlier aspects showing how the physical landscape, the cultural heritage, and the schism with the United States combined to create a unique destination for non-U.S. tourists, and a major source of revenue for Cuba. Immediately following Castro’s rise to power anything American was completely disavowed. This included memorabilia about the writer Ernest Hemingway, who lived on the island for many years and produced some of his most famous literary works there. Cuban citizens were also forbidden from interacting with foreigners by law, unless involved in tourism or the hospitality industry. More recently, those restrictions have been relaxed, and Hemingway’s old haunts—hotels, bars, and homes—are prime attractions. A booming prostitution trade also arose as part of the tourism expansion.
Chapter 6 focuses mostly upon the way in which political ideologies and the rhetoric of socialism has percolated throughout the collective consciousness of Cuba. Billboards display political messages denouncing leaders of other countries and deify Cuban patriotic heroes such as Che’ Guevara, Fidel Castro, and other modern Cuban statesmen. Perhaps the book’s most captivating chapter, it emphasizes how the information landscape pervasively reinforces the social justice tenets of the Castro regime.
The final chapter, “Conclusions” relates the interrelationships of the various landscapes explored in earlier chapters but also focuses on architectural landscapes, such as the extensive Soviet-style public housing. The authors fail to emphasize that this Soviet-style housing is largely disliked by Cubans. In many cases they are isolated from the cities, making them unsustainable.
While the authors cover familiar ground, they fail to address the invisible landscapes that trample on personal freedoms. What is missing here is what makes Cuba so jarring, different, odd, and oppressive. It is a place that is much different than modern twenty-first Century cities. There are no gay bars. There is limited tolerance for Cubans associating with Americans. Cuba is a police state with all eyes on everyone with overzealous neighborhood watch groups. Cuba has no international fast-food chains, terrible cuisine for the citizens, undeveloped farmland, no access to competing news and political perspectives, no cable TV, and no Internet access for most citizens. Social networks, such as Facebook which played a critical role in the recent uprisings in the Middle East, are essentially unavailable to Cubans. It is a place where citizens in certain isolated areas have only a bare subsistence diet (one pound of meat a month, with rice and beans the normal diet), clothing is shockingly limited to a few items, and health care lacks the quality of American medical centers. Denial of basic freedoms, of speech, assembly, and freedom of movement of citizens, is outrageous.
This is an important part of the landscape that the authors minimize and ignore. I have taken hundreds of Americans and Europeans on architecture and planning tours, wowing them with the largest collection of intact colonial Spanish architecture, beautiful beaches, warm and friendly people. But no one I have known has ever expressed a desire to go back and live there.
While I would have appreciated a more critical view of Cuba, the book provides a sympathetic view of the island country. It is one of the better scholarly books on Cuba. I would certainly use it in my graduate class in urban and public affairs.