In Archival malaise, a Freudian impression (1997), the philosopher Jacques Derrida reflects on the political implications of the archive as testimony and limit, memory and absence, exclusion and narrative of history. These are issues of great current relevance, especially in the context of totalitarian regimes such as state socialism. Access to some of the documentary repositories produced by these state bureaucracies after the collapse of the so-called Iron Curtain, for example, has made it possible to document systematic violations of human rights and crimes against humanityin addition to mechanisms that are less frontal, but no less perverse, for regulation, control and espionage of daily life, consumption, taste and even pleasure, relevant to understanding not only the recent past, but also the legacy of this in the present.
However, many of the records produced by Soviet-type state socialist regimes are closed to public scrutiny. Among them, those of Cuba, where the political regime continues to be the same as that which took power on January 1, 1959. One way to overcome the lack of access to state archives has been, both in Eastern Europe and in Cuba, the compilation of testimonies and the writing of memories and life stories that account for the characteristics of daily life and its impact on subjectivity.
The literary work of the Belarusian (formerly Soviet) writer, deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Svetlana Alexievich (War does not have a woman’s face2015; Voices from Chernobyl. chronicle of the future2015; The zinc boys. Soviet Voices from the Afghan War, 2016), which as a whole can be defined as an exploration of totalitarian subjectivity through the voices of neglected actors in Soviet society. Also dealing with this matter, to a lesser extent, is the book recently published by Casa Vacía When I left Cuba: The untold story of the exodus of Cuban children to Spain and the work of Father Camiñas (2023), signed by the brothers Remberto and María Pérez, with the historian Ricardo Quiza as a collaborator.
Its authors, two Cuban exiles linked to the business world, one of them the protagonist of said exodus, document with the means and methodology at their disposal, and through the first-person testimony of various participants, the extraction from Cuba to the US via Spain of minors without family accompaniment, between 1966 and the early years of the 1970s. The effort of the Pérez brothers is all the more laudable because of the history revealed —that of the mediation of the Catholic Church, in particular of the Franciscan priest of Cuban origin Antonio Camiñas López, executive director of the Hispano-Cuban Exchange Foundation, which was in charge of managing the departure from Cuba, stay in Spain and transfer to the United States of minors— rIt was practically unknown.
Seen like this, When I left Cuba would be the last of the remedies for the “archive malady” that afflicts the writing of Cuban history in recent decades, which suffers from the suppression of the voice of many of its victims. In this way, the book adds to the relatively extensive testimonial literature written outside and, to a lesser extent, also within the Island, which has brought to the fore issues of great relevance for the advancement of the understanding of the political-social framework of the Cuban Revolution. From the confessions of insiders such as the government official José L. Llovio-Menéndez (Insider: My Hidden Life as a Revolutionary in Cuba1988), the writer Norberto Fuentes (sweet cuban warriors1999) or the ex-lover of Fidel Castro Marita Lorenz (I was the spy who loved the Commander: A movie life: from the Nazi camps to Fidel Castro, the CIA and Kennedy’s assassin2015) to complaint allegations written by marginalized or repressed subjects, such as the member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect Joaquín Rafael Martínez (From the green of palms to the red of betrayal2013), going through more or less intimate but equally revealing confessions such as that of the psychologist Carolina de la Torre, victim of a family drama as a result of the internment in the Military Production Assistance Units (UMAP) of one of her brothers , due to suspicions of homosexuality (Benjamin, when dying is more sensible than waiting2018).
In his bid to beat oblivion, When I left Cuba illustrates the causal relationship that, as Derrida points out, unites the construction of the archive and mourning. The latter is the leitmotif of the 48 testimonies compiled in the book, 31 of which correspond to those who, between the ages of 11 and 14, were uprooted from their country and family and sent into exile, first in Spain and later in the US, to avoid being recruited into the Army upon reaching the so-called “military age” (established at 15 years) and, with it, the cancellation of the possibility of leaving the country in the immediate future. These voices are complemented by those of those who stayed in Cuba, albeit for a short time, and saw their loved ones leave for the unknown, as well as those who received the latter at their final destination, the United States, and watched over their material well-being of children during their Spanish stay.
The stay in Spain, although the book manages to draw it as regretful, is presented above all dotted with joys and discoveries. This was so thanks to Father Camiñas, who was in charge of raising funds in the US, picking up many of the children who arrived from Cuba at the Madrid airport with no other company than a yagua suitcase and an old overcoat, and transferring them to the shelters. where they would reside (without much supervision), to provide appropriate clothing and footwear to those who needed them, to impose discipline when required, to comfort the nostalgic and melancholic, and in certain cases to facilitate communication with relatives in Cuba.
The cacophony of anxieties and hopes that accompanied those taken on behalf of or for the benefit of third parties, and that decades later still surface in his account, populates the pages of this book. The testimonies are all the more valuable when they appear accompanied by visual documents and abundant referential sources that will undoubtedly be of great help to scholars of Cuban exile and dissidence, as well as to those who are interested in topics such as migration, childhood and the Church-society relationship. It is appreciated, for example, for its analytical value, respect for the language of the protagonistswhose frequent recurrence to terms such as “cubanitos” instead of “Cuban children” allows us to appreciate the affective resonance of the events exposed.
It is almost a commonplace, no less true, to think of the exodus documented in this book as an expression of citizen agency, thanks to which thousands of middle and lower-middle class families, mostly from the interior of the country and with Close ties to the Church (many of the children who went into exile served as altar boys or had attended religious schools), they managed to avoid a political destiny that they repudiated. However, as the historian Rafael Rojas argues on the back cover of this book, it must also be seen as a mechanism of social exclusion and, one might add, of governance, which allowed the Cuban political regime to manage internal discontent.
Unfortunately, no doubt due to mortality issues, the authors They were only able to gather the testimony of one of the mothers who saw her adolescent sons go into exile. The drama of these women and men (because the parents suffered no less), all also protagonists of the documented exodus, will have to be reconstructed, if possible, through the correspondence that can be recovered, as well as other notes or testimonies. Also missing are the voices of those who, among the more than 1,000 children who left for Spain under the supervision of Father Camiñas, ran with less personal fortune than those gathered in the pages of When I left Cuba.
But, above all, we miss a more careful edition by the Casa Vacía publishing house that would have avoided many of the typos and typing errors, the inconsistency of the first person singular in the captions of photos and comments that precede each testimonial (grammatical voice that sometimes confuses in the case of a book of collective authorship) and the lack of space between the margins and footnotes. Lastly, the absence of the questionnaire sent to the testimonials is a detail to point out, which could be solved if the authors decided to create a website to accommodate the documentary evidence collected, which could thus be appreciated with much better quality and in color. . This would also allow them to continue collecting data and life stories related to the subject.
None of this detracts When I left Cuba, a valuable compilation of testimonies and documentary sources on a subject for a long time ignored. History —someone has said— is a chorus of voices, and the voices collected in this book not only complement an official story that has hidden or minimized the enormous individual and family cost of the Cuban Revolution; they also reveal with crystal clarity the trauma that every exile entails. The book would then have to be seen as a vocal symphony whose most valuable contribution is the polyphony it brings to the history of the second half of the Cuban 20th century.
Remberto Pérez and María Pérez (with the collaboration of Ricardo Quiza), When I left Cuba. The untold story of the exodus of Cuban children to Spain and the work of Father Camiñas (Empty House Publishing, Richmond, Virginia, 2023)
2023-04-29 15:58:00
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