Democracy and Time in Cuban Thought

How the temporalities of past, future, and
present have been used in Cuban political rhetoric and expressed in Cuban culture



In this fascinating
analysis of political discourse in Cuban culture, María de los Ángeles Torres
focuses on how the concept of time has been employed by different political
projects. While the past and future are often evoked in rhetoric associated
with authoritarianism, Torres argues, an emphasis on human actions in the
present is important for a more democratic political culture, and she searches
over a century of Cuban thought for this perspective.

            Delving into political texts and
essays, literature, and art, Torres puts theories of temporalities in
conversation with the Cuban experience. Torres closely examines the use of time
and its political implications in Fidel Castro’s
“History Will Absolve Me” speech, the writings of Jose Martí and Che Guevara,
the poetry of Eliseo Diego and the Orígenes group, and paintings and
performance art by Cuban exiles Nereida García Ferraz, María Martínez-Cañas,
and Tania Bruguera.

            Recent events in Cuba
have placed the search for democracy and social justice center stage, and
Torres also studies the temporalities underpinning these
movements, asking whether these projects are providing alternatives to overused
past and future tropes. She suggests ways of thinking for today’s activists,
encouraging them to remember history and imagine new possibilities while
cultivating space for human agency now.



Publication
of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American
Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.