BOOK REVIEW: A Castle Under Siege: Voices from the Other Side, An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba

By Alexander Nixon, MA

Beyond the importance of telling a story that is mostly unknown in the United States but certainly needs telling, Keith Bolender's Voices from the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba, offers a refreshing counter-narrative for the Miami-driven discourse about Cuba being an island of oppression. According to Bolender's central thesis, the very same people who criticize the oppression of the Cuban government are, in fact, responsible for it. 



In Voices Bolender cites the following quote by St. Ingatius Loyola: “in a besieged castle, all dissent is treason” (p. 17). As a New Yorker, who lived through the September 11th attacks, this quote describes the irrational hysteria occurring in the wake of that cataclysmic day.  Since that terrible time, even the most progressive people among us accept the random backpack searches in the MTA by police or the unsolicited pat-downs at airports.  Most agree that some freedom can be sacrificed for security.  


According to testimonials recorded by Bolender, after 1959 and the events that followed,  Cubans similarly, have sacrificed liberty for security.  An interview with Emilio Comas, for example, argues that the problematic relationship between security and freedom explains precisely the absence of opposition parties in Cuba.



"Once the terrorism and the blockade [U.S. Embargo] ends, then we can breathe and find out what we want from our society. Americans and the dissidents confuse the concepts of liberty and concepts of democracy regarding human rights. What government would allow a demonstration that has been supported by a foreign government, one that publicy says it wants to overthrow our system? Would the United States allow an opposition movement inside the US that was financed and supported by Al Qaeda?" (pp. 205-6). 



Some might ask if the successive post-1959 acts of terrorism against Cuba by CIA-trained Miami exile groups might be regarded as comparable to Al Qaeda acts of terrorism on the United States.  The firsthand testimonials about the ominous threats of terror from the neighbor to the North suggest that Cubans, indeed, were and have remained fearful of terrorist attacks.



Mr. Bolender provides many accounts about CIA-trained Cuban exiles who injured or killed hundreds of Cubans over the fifty years following the Revolution.  His Cuban interviewees, none of whom were associated or connected with the government, discuss bombings, biological attacks, sabotage of a Cubana airline, and psychological warfare.  According to these accounts, all of the attacks are traced back to the CIA's Operation Mongoose and to exile groups such as Alpha 66.  In addition, the testimonials support claims of terrorist acts organized  by Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch against ordinary Cubans because of citizen submission to communist rule. 



Noam Chomsky notes in his Introduction to Bolender’s book that the siege of the Cuban castle had begun long before Castro’s Cuban Revolution.  Beginning with the Spanish-American War, US foreign policy is as much to blame for Cuba's "siege mentality" as are the CIA-trained exile groups,. In effect, the Monroe Doctrine opened the door for US imperialistic designs that would culminate in the Spanish-American War of 1898.  

From that point on, Cuba's sovereignty and independence depended  on US hegemony.  Cuba might have gained independence from Spain but under the Platt Amendment in 1901, that independence was translated into  US- protectorate status. Since then, Cuban sovereignty and national self-determination have been subjected to US foreign policy and our economic interests.



This lopsided relationship was exacerbated by the Cold War and the prevailing Domino Theory about political stabilization in the western hemisphere. According to Bolender, Kissinger and other policy-makers did not want Cuba's revolution to be an example for Latin American countries  to follow.



Therefore, after inheriting Eisenhower's enmity for Cuba's defiance of US hegemony, Kennedy made ousting Castro central to his policy towards Cuba. Consequently, the CIA trained and funded Cuban exile groups that continued their terrorism long after the US government's zeal for killing Cuba gave way to lassitude. 

As Voices demonstrates, this reign of terror continued well into the 90s. 

Bolender argues that the "castle under seige" notion by the US since 1901 and  after 1959  serves to explain the lack of transparency and lack of opposition parties’ criticism leveled by Miami exile groups in their unending statements of condemnation. 

"The resultant siege mentality and unconditional demand for patria (unity) has driven the government into implementing security policies that have curtailed certain civil rights, nurtured and individual culture of suspicion complete with a language of political code, and has cultuvated a sense of fatalism and black humor that marks much of the modern [Cuba] identity" (p. 203).

Recently, Mr. Bolender visited the Center for Cuban Studies to discuss his book with author Michael Smith and Sandra Levinson, the Center’s Director. Note that video from the discussion can be seen below. 



Much of their discussion revolved around the sabotage of the Cubana airline flight, the acts of terrorism directed against civilian targets, and the Cuban Five.  Because few Americans are familiar with the acts of terrorism described by Bolender and his interviewed Cubans, Voices from the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba provides an important and valuable record.

It also illuminates the effects of violence on a country's sense of psychological security and how, when a country is threatened, the relationship between freedom and security becomes distorted. On this point, I doubt few Americans who were around during and after September 11th would disagree.
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Alexander Nixon is the Organization Development Coordinator for the Center for Cuban Studies / Cuban Art Space. He has a BA from Stanford University in Latin American Studies and Fine Arts and an MA from NYU in Latin American Studies.

Still Trading Punches

By Alexander Nixon

In a few days the Art of Mella show at the Center for Cuban Studies comes down. My favorite painting from the exhibition is the one by the famous painter El Estudiante (The Student) called US-Cuba that depicts a Cuban and an American boxer in caricatured forms in front of an anxious crowd.

It is a perfect metaphor for US-Cuba relations.

The Cuban Revolution began like a boxing match between the United States and Cuba. But even though the bell rang a long time ago, we are still trading punches.

It started after Fidel’s triumphant march into Havana with his army of guerillas in 1959 when the task of governing cast light on the inequities inherent to the system of land and property ownership in Cuba.

Fidel burst out of his corner by enacting land reform and seizing property owned by US sugar companies. POW!

Then the Eisenhower Administration retaliated by refusing to process crude oil in Cuba from the Soviet Union at refineries owned by the United States. WHAM!

But Castro responded with an uppercut and nationalized all U.S. properties. WHOOMP!

Then the United States pounded Cuba with an economic embargo. The crowd wonders, is it a TKO??? Nope. Not by a long shot. Even today, during the Obama Administration, we're trading punches with Cuba. USAID worker Alan Gross was recently arrested for bringing  electronic equipment to Cuba in violation of Cuban law.

He got caught, and now the US expects the Cuban government to release him. If they don't, the US will retaliate by not easing travel restrictions for Americans. At least, that appears to be the case as of this March, 2011.

Nearly two months after the announcement by the Obama Administration that travel restrictions were being eased, the Treasury Department still has not followed through. Meanwhile, we Cuba travelers are anxious for the fight to finish.

Of course, the tragedy of this boxing match caricature is that, with the Cold War over and everything, Cuba and the United States don’t have anything to fight about. The generation that lost all their stuff is gone and the new generation is ready to let bygones be bygones.

Hang up your gloves fellas. The fight is over! Fellas? POW! WHOOMP!

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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator of the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space in New York City.

Live recording of El Cimarrón from CBGBs, New York City in 2005.

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Castro’s Cuba

By Alexander Nixon

The entire world is familiar with the photograph of Fidel Castro as the guerilla warrior in military fatigues. What was to become his iconographic and never-changing image was established at the inception of the cataclysmic Cuban social experiment when Lee Lockwood’s lens captured the sweating rebel leader in signature fatigues while overseeing his soldiers, greeting his public, and wielding a machete during the annual sugar cane harvest (zafra) in the 1960s. Then and now, this same guerilla warrior image suggests an on-going war in defense of his Cuban socialist revolution.

Although vaguely familiar with the image, I began to reflect on it more intensely as a topic for study while an undergraduate at Stanford. I wrote a paper about Lee Lockwood’s famous photographs of Castro snapped when he was fighting against Batista in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Eastern Cuba --Lockwood died in 2010. Castro, who was savvy about the power of the press, did not miss an opportunity for forging positive public opinion!

Recently I began working at the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City and was surprised to learn that Lee Lockwood was the Center’s founder.

At the Center I find myself surrounded by the same early, and still mesmerizing, photographs of the young freedom fighter taken by Lockwood. Now framed and behind glass, they seem like time capsules, small windows into the past. Those and the photo portraits collected in Lockwood’s book, Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel inspire thoughts about how much public opinion of Castro has changed--and how little Fidel Castro himself has changed.

My own attitude about Castro has shifted as well--from early fascination to ambivalence. He was, I recall, uncompromising in his defense of the Revolution: “Within the Revolution everything, outside of it, nothing.” That pure and selfless battle cry now seems naïve and dated in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. At the Center for Cuban Studies I have opportunities to engage Cuban artists and thinkers who share my evolved opinion and my ambivalence. They are proud of the revolution, but confess to feelings of exhaustion!

What, we wonder, will happen to the now tedious image of Castro when relations are normalized between the U.S. and Cuba? As the current wildfire of revolution spreads across the Middle East and anachronistic dictatorships fall, visitors to the Center frequently wonder out loud if Cuba will have the same experiences.

Probably not. Ironically, the long standing U.S. Embargo serves as a nationalistic rallying cry that keeps Cubans unified and wary of the United States.

We know, of course, that Castro will die and that changes are inevitable. As I think about that future event and read about the dirty financial and personal secrets of ousted strongmen like Mubarak, I wonder if any skeletons are stored in Castro’s closet and whether or not my ambivalence towards Castro will ever be allayed?

A few years ago Forbes Magazine declared that Fidel Castro is worth $900 million, a claim based on the fact that, as the former head of the Cuban government, he has the entire wealth of Cuba to spend at his discretion.

In response to the article by Forbes, Fidel Castro took the position of consummate revolutionary, saying that he has sacrificed normal family life for the sake of preserving the Cuban socialist system. According to him, his net worth is zero and that he earns a salary of 900 Cuban pesos a month. "If they can prove that I have a bank account abroad, with $900 million, with $1 million, $500,000, $100,000 or $1 in it, I will resign," he declared in a television appearance.

If Castro has money, unlike other leaders in the news, he doesn’t flaunt it. His garb remains the same and, compared to Khadhafi’s ostentatious ensemble, he is locked into a dated look. When the Cuban government enacted sweeping land reform, thereby infuriating former citizens living in the U.S., Castro’s family’s estates were among those confiscated. Because Castro is so secretive about his personal life, it is hard to make any determination about his wealth. We do not know if a treasure trove will be found after his death.

We remain uncertain about this historic figure. If it were to be revealed that he has money, mansions, and mistresses hidden away, he knows that his reputation and all that he has achieved as a revolutionary will be tainted and re-evaluated accordingly. I think it’s more likely to be the case that, when Castro dies, there will be no surprise revelations about his financial worth. Instead, we will discover that, all along, he was steadfast in his fight to defend Cuban dignity and sovereignty.

Given Castro’s well-documented obsession with Cuban history and his emulation of Cuban martyrs such as José Martí, I suspect that Castro is much more interested in preserving his socio-political currency than any hard currency. It’s not the money, Lebowski. It’s the power, the power to preserve the Cuban socialist system.

In the end, Castro’s iconic stature may strengthen after he dies when Cuba joins the rest of the world. At that point, his enemies in the United States who were so quick to criticize him for profiting off the poor Cuban people will swoop in like carpet-baggers in search of financial gain.

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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator of the Center for Cuban Studies/Cuban Art Space in New York City.

Cuba's Artistic Revolution

By Alexander Nixon

My favorite piece in the  collection of the Center for Cuban Studies is a sculpture by Cuban artist William Pérez. It is a wooden mannequin made up of tiny carved pieces that resembles a kind of human-scale 3D puzzle. When I look at it, I am reminded of how we are the sum so many random and often contradictory thoughts, desires, expectations, and impulses. It is only by a miracle of the mind that we can make coherent sense out of all the parts and keep ourselves from falling to pieces.

Such a Herculean effort is required to make sense out of the incendiary rhetoric in America about Cuba. But if you aren't up to the task, the Center for Cuban Studies is here to help.

In June 2010, the Director of the Center for Cuban Studies, Sandra Levinson, as well as videographer Jenny Hellman, sat down with Mr. Pérez to do an interview (see interview below) about his art and the vicissitudes of the art scene in Cuba.

Halfway through the interview he is asked about how he manages to work in such a small studio. He looks around his tiny work space and states that "a fish grows according to the aquarium in which it lives."

This struck me as an apropos metaphor for how the Cuban government has allowed the arts to flourish in Cuba.

Unfortunately, most Americans only hear the hackneyed, Cuban exile-driven discourse about the lack of political freedom in Cuba. But artists like William Pérez and the numerous other artists interviewed in the Cuban Art Space’s interview series offer a refreshing counter-narrative to this viewpoint.

Indeed, the Cuban aquarium has provided Cuban artists plenty of space in which to swim.

To be sure, early in the revolution Cuban government had a more ambivalent attitude towards the arts than it does now. The Beatles were famously outlawed, we recall. But that was before John Lennon wrote You Say You Want a Revolution. ;)

If we were over-cynical, we might claim that Cuban artists and the Cuban government supporting them are just capitalizing on the temporary buzz about Cuba in an ever capricious international art market.

That may be true, to some degree. But watching Mr. Pérez’ interview and the other Cuban Art Space interviews, --> click here for more Cuban artist interviews <-- we learn that the Cuban government’s support for free arts education goes back decades.

Behind the wonderful, imaginative, and sui generis art coming out of Cuba is the free education, scholarships, and institutional support of the Cuban government.

Furthermore, as Mr. Pérez explains in his interview, Cuba is rapidly expanding the dimensions of its creative aquarium, giving more space to artists for workshops, galleries, and allowing the arts to blossom in neglected and overlooked spaces that the government does not have the funds to restore.

Just as much as Cuba’s well-documented success in the fields of education and public health, the success of Cuban artists like Mr. Pérez serves as an excellent advertisement for the overlooked positive narrative of the Cuban Revolution.

The Center for Cuban Studies won a landmark lawsuit against the US Treasury Department in 1991 (Dore Ashton v. Newcomb) that granted the Center the right to import Cuban artwork. Ever since, the Center has been an epicenter of access to the contemporary world of Cuban art for curious Americans.

Please check out Mr. Pérez’ interview below as well as the others in the Cuban Art Space Interview Series. Cuban artists are not, in fact, asphyxiating in a tiny communist aquarium. On the contrary, it is we Americans who are trapped inside the thick glass of a failed foreign policy that keeps the wonderful artistic renaissance of Cuba just beyond our view.

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William Pérez is one of Cuba's most celebrated sculptors and installation artists. Born in Cienfuegos, he moved to Havana a few years ago, thus fulfilling a dream of having his own small workspace in the capitol city. Mr. Pérez has shown in the Cuban Art Space before, in a one-man show (2000) and together with Adrian Rumbaut in an installation exhibit "Entre Nos/Between Us" (2002). In November 2003, William was invited to participate in the prestigious Havana Biennial. In October 2011 William  Pérez and his Cuban collaborator, Marlys Fuego (see blog post about her), will be exhibiting new works at The Cuban Art Space.

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 Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator for the Center for Cuban Studies / The Cuban Art Space.

Cuba In Transition

By Alexander Nixon

When I read a new blog, article, report, or testimonial by an American academic, scholar or anyone else about Cuba “in-transition” (from communism to capitalism, supposedly), I worry that too many of these writers are forgetting that our country’s violation of Cuban sovereignty was the primary cause of the Cuban Revolution.

As historians point out, the United States seized control of Cuba in 1898 after entering the Spanish American War. Prior to US intervention, Cubans had waged a decades-long war for independence against the Spanish Empire. At the point of victory by Cuban rebels, the efforts toward success and independence were thwarted by its powerful neighbor to the north.

If you don’t know the story behind the sinking of the Maine and the rallying battle cry, “Remember the Maine,” let’s revisit the circumstances. Publisher Randolph Hearst tricked the U.S. into going to war against Spain in 1898 by blaming the explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine which was anchored in Havana’s harbor on the Spanish. Eerily foreshadowing the Bush Administration’s machinations for invading Iraq under the pretense of finding WMDs, Hearst famously stated ‘you provide the photos and I’ll provide the war.’ His newspaper rallied Americans to war against the Spanish and transformed the United States from a fledgling nation to a global empire.

In 1901 Congress passed the Platt Amendment which granted the U.S. military the right to intervene in Cuba and establish a naval base in Guantánamo.  In effect, these amendments made Cuba a U.S. protectorate, a bitter pill for the tiny but proud island nation to swallow.  Sixty-one years later Fidel Castro framed the Cuban Revolution as a struggle against a US-sanctioned dictator and an independence movement from the United States.

In terms of an understandable wariness of U.S. intervention, the U.S. Embargo of Cuba still allows Castro to portray the current Cuban Government as the defender of Cuban sovereignty.

On March 24th author Keith Bolender will be signing copies of his book Voices from the Other Side, An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba at The Center for Cuban Studies in New York City. Bolender’s book chronicles how the CIA trained and financed Cuban exile terrorist groups who wanted to assassinate Castro and terrify the Cuban people. 

Scores of innocent Cubans died during numerous covert operations, including twenty-four Cuban citizens who were onboard a Cuban passenger airliner carrying the entire youth fencing team back to Cuba from Jamaica in the 70s. In total, seventy-three passengers died as collateral damage in this relatively unknown act of terrorism.
 

In retrospect, Cuba is stuck between the Scylla of the U.S. Embargo and the Charybidis of terrorism by CIA-trained exile groups, making Cuban very wary of the behemoth to the north. Many Americans are not aware of the historic context of the Spanish American War, the tragedy of the Maine, the imposition of dictatorship in Cuba, the reasons for Castro’s rebellion, or the continued intrusions into Cuban sovereignty.

Cubans want to live in peace and to participate in the world economy as a sovereign nation. The recent economic reforms by Raul Castro that favor privatization demonstrate that Cuba is, in fact, in-transition. We should hope for and expect that careers, money, and prize-winning scholarships will flourish during Cuba’s transition process from a state-controlled economy to a free market economy.

After a century of abusive intrusion we should hope that most of the people making the reputations, money, and scholarships are Cubans, not Americans.
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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator of the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space in New York City. Keith Bolender's book Voices is available for purchase at the Center for $17.

Comparing Cuba and Guatemala

By Alexander Nixon

I finished my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala a few months ago. When I got my assignment I secretly wished I was being sent to Cuba, a destination of long-standing interest.  I have a B.A. from Stanford in Cuban Studies and an M.A. from NYU in Cuban Studies. Growing up in Florida is to blame, I guess, where Cuba Cuba Cuba has been a non-stop conversation.

Prior to graduation and during the Clinton administration, I traveled to Havana three times armed with a license from the U.S. Treasury Department and an undergraduate research grant to conduct an honor’s thesis research about the country’s food security and the economic crisis.

At the time, Cuba was isolated economically because of the combined effects of the U.S. Embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Block. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was like a game of musical chairs and Cuba was last one standing. The island nation responded by investing heavily in tourism and sustainable development.

Anti-Castro forces in the in the U.S. weren’t pleased with the Cuban government’s recalcitrance and did whatever it could to tighten the imposed economic and political noose. Still, the Cuban government stayed in power. After September 11th it became almost impossible to go back to Cuba.  I remember watching on television the vigorous and false claim by anti-Castro Congresspeople that Cuba’s innovative bioengineering research was a façade for a chemical warfare.  Fortunately, better minds prevailed on that one.

In spite of this aggressive diplomacy and effort to restrict travel, I managed to go back to Cuba with an NYU research grant in 2007. The Herculean paperwork challenges required for authorization from the Treasury Department were analogous to cleaning the Augean stables.

When political currents changed in 2008, I became more optimistic about changes in our relationship with Cuba. It had been ten years since my first trip to Cuba in 1996 and no improvements had occurred between the US and Cuba! After a decade of working in New York City and waiting for an elusive Cuban glasnost, I decided to apply to the Peace Corps.

I was assigned to the Agricultural Marketing Program in in urban Guatemala. Although I had secretly wished for an assignment to Cuba, my experience in Guatemala led to unexpected discoveries about Cuba.

In terms of geography and population, Cuba and Guatemala are very similar. Cuba is 42,803 square miles in size and Guatemala is 42,042 square miles. The same holds true for population. According to Un estimates Cuba’s population is about 11 million people and Guatemala has about 12.5 million people.

Cuba and Guatemala also share a similar economic history: economies based on agricultural exports like sugar and coffee (as well as tobacco, in Cuba’s case). Up until the mid-twentieth century, a wealthy minority--both foreign and native—dominated in both countries and controlled all the good land. For example, The United Fruit Company produced bananas in Guatemala and U.S. Sugar controlled much of the Cuban sugar industry. The vast majority of the population in both countries lived in squalor, remained  illiterate, and worked as cheap labor for the rich landowners.

Population growth in the mid-twentieth century exacerbated this inequality and land reform became a rallying cry for populists and leftists. Unfortunately, the Cold War gave opponents of land reform on the Right cause to condemn such efforts as part of a communist plot to socialize everything.

This reactionary attitude towards land reform caused Guatemalan and Cuban history to diverge.

In Guatemala in 1953 the CIA intervened to topple the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, a leader who had waged a campaign for land reform. The result of this intervention was a protracted forty-year civil war that left two hundred thousand Guatemalans dead.

Compared to such genocide, Cuba’s record of human rights abuses seems over-exaggerated, but more on that later on.

Ever since the CIA invasion, Guatemala remains structured for the benefit the wealthiest members of society. About a dozen families in Guatemala control the sugar, beer, coffee, chicken, and other industries that comprise the lion’s share of Guatemala’s economic output. These powerful families pay very little taxes and, without a tax base, Guatemalan infrastructure, civil society, and education stagnate.

In many ways, post-Revolutionary Cuba is the inverse image of Guatemala.

In 1959 the Cuban Revolution recalibrated the government so that it benefited the weakest, not the strongest. Cubans live much longer than Guatemalans, Cuba’s literacy rate is 99.8%, and the life expectancy is 78 years.  By comparison, Guatemala’s literacy rate is 70% and the life expectancy is 70 years.  After the Revolution, illiteracy was one of the first targets of the Cuban government and the almost overnight “War Against Illiteracy” was immediately effective.

In Guatemala, domestic violence against women is rampant. According to Giovanna Lemus of Guatemala's Network to Oppose Violence Against Women (Red de la No Violencia Contra la Mujer), as reported in El País, Guatemalan society is an environment in which aggression towards women is perceived as "natural.” In Cuba, by contrast, The Family Code of 1975 decrees that men must contribute equally in household responsibilities. Thus, we see a different set of priorities between Guatemala and Cuba.

For further proof of this contrast in priorities, a focus on the amazing art produced by Cuban artists, and supported by the Cuban government, reveals the government’s interest in creating a society that values human resources. At the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City there is an enormous collection of extremely rare Cuban poster art and numerous works by Cuban artists that testify to the way the Cuban Revolution has inculcated Cuban society with a sense of solidarity and humanism.  In Guatemala this kind of expression is difficult to find.  

The following joke illustrates the situation in Guatemala: a fisherman is carrying two buckets of crabs, one with a lid and one without. A passerby asks the fisherman why one bucket doesn’t have a lid. The fisherman replies that the bucket without the lid contains Guatemalan crabs, whereas the sealed bucket contains Japanese crabs. The fisherman explains that the Japanese crabs must be covered-up because they will work together and form a chain and climb out one-by-one. The Guatemalan crabs, on the other hand, don’t need to be sealed-up because, as soon as one of the crabs tries to climb out of the bucket, the other crabs reach up and pull the crab back down. The point of this story is that Guatemalans do not work together.  In large part this relates to the failure of the government to engender civil society and high expectations of its population.

During my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer I saw first-hand how small coffee farmers pool their resources and efforts in order to be competitive with large landowners. There has been some success, but everything insurmountable challenges are associated with getting export licenses, for example, and fair trade certification.

 

The 2009 report about the Cuban economy by the Center for Democracy in the Americas is blunt about Cuba current situation: Cuba is crumbling under the weight of over-centralization and bureaucracy. After two hurricanes and the global financial crisis, Cuba is in dire straits.  As much as Fidel Castro would have us think otherwise, most of Cuba’s problems stem from inherent flaws of communism. Cuba is coming to terms with these flaws under Raúl Castro’s leadership and has embarked upon a course of unprecedented economic reform. It is a tropical perestroika (economic reform) without glasnost (political reforms). 

In spite of the challenges ahead, it is a testament to the Cuban government that everyone, both Cubans and foreigners, have such high standards for Cuba. This seems to relate in part to the dignity and sense of national determinism created by the Cuban Revolution and is expressed vividly in the arts the citizens have produced. 

After completing my Peace Corps service I have joined the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space in New York City. Our mission is to work toward normalization of relations between Cuba and the United State through people-to-people travel, artist residencies, and cultural exchanges.  Based on my own observations about Cuba and Guatemala, the value and importance of visual record keepers and storytellers can illuminate powerfully the circumstances of power and justice. 

                                              For there will be the arts

                                              and some will call them soft data

                                              whereas in fact

                                              they are the hard data

                                              by which our lives are lived. 

                                                                                 - John Stone

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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator of the Center for Cuban Studies/Cuban Art Space in New York City. This article does not represent the viewpoints of the Center for Cuban Studies.