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Volume Three, Number Four - Summer 2003
The Exile and History
Last issue, we shared with you some of the views of a Havana insider (Ambrosio Fornet) on relations - past, present, and future - between the U.S. and Cuba and between Cubans, Americans, and Cuban - Americans. In this issue, we offer a different point of view on the same set of issues.
Ana Menéndez is a journalist and fiction writer whose most recent work explores various aspects of the Cuban identity in different generations of Cuban "exiles." Her own experience differs from that of Ambrosio Fornet, in that her Cuban identity is not that of a resident "insider." But it also differs from that of many of the exiles that populate her stories, for Ana Menéndez is from the "next generation" of exiles, born in the U.S., whose notion of "Cubanness" comes to her through the oral tradition of an earlier generation. In the essay that follows, she offers her thoughts on the complex nature of the exile identity, and the role of José Martí in crafting that identity.
While space does not allow us to publish in full, the other essays from the symposium, we offer, in the small space remaining, some excerpts from the delightful presentations of Gustavo Pérez-Firmat and Louis Pérez. While the excerpts cannot do justice to the subtle and complex arguments presented by these two noted scholars, they will at least give you more of the flavor of the symposium.
Jeffrey Brautigam
Jeffrey Brautigam is the Director of the Center for Free Inquiry at Hanover College, where he also teaches modern European history and the history of science.