A sua pesquisa

La guaracha, como otras manifestaciones de la cultura oral americana, no ha recibido una justa atención crítica, a pesar de ser un género destacadísimo en la producción popular de Cuba y el Caribe, carencia que este trabajo pretende paliar. Enraizada en el cruce de las tradiciones culturales indígena, hispana y africana, y ligada al proverbial choteo cubano, la guaracha ha recorrido un largo trayecto desde sus inicios en el teatro bufo hasta hoy, fundiéndose con otras modalidades lírico-musicales como muestra de su versatilidad y capacidad de adaptación a los tiempos. Se ilustran las características poéticas de este género a través del análisis de algunas letras de Faustino Oramas "El guayabero", quien alcanzó una notable popularidad en toda Cuba a finales del siglo XX. Similar to other manifestations of oral tradition in American culture, the guaracha has not received its deserved attention from critics, despite being an incredibly prominent genre of popular production in Cuba and the Caribbean. It is this lack of attention that this article intends to remedy. Rooted in the intersection of Indigenous, Hispanic, and African cultures and bound to the proverbial Cuban banter, the guaracha has journeyed from its beginnings in the bufo theatre to its current merging with other lyrical-musical forms, demonstrating its versatility and ability to adapt with the times. Through analyses of lyrics by Faustino Oramas – also known as "The guayabero" – who reached noteworthy popularity throughout Cuba at the end of the 20th century, the poetic characteristics of the genre shine through.

Introduction The experiences of democratization in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and early 1990s brought attention to the forces of civil society as key actors in the demise of authoritarian rule (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Cohen and Arato 1992; Bernhard 1993; Linz and Stepan 1996). More recent literature questions the inherently pro-democratic character of civil society activism (Warren 2000; Armony 2004; Jamal 2007). In both lines of argument, societal associations or social movements are at the core of the inquiry. However, Hirschman’s category of “voice,” which encompasses as much articulation of discontent as it does actions of protest (Hirschman 1970), reminds us that for civil society activism to evolve, something fundamental is necessary: an arena in which voices can be raised and heard and in which government and society interact. The question of civil society, thus, is intrinsically linked to the conditions, contours, limitations and possibilities of communication, media and the public sphere. Ever since the term “Facebook revolution” (Smith 2011) was coined for the social mobilizations that led to the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, this link between communication, civil society activism and democratization has received great media attention. However, most of this attention focused on the mobilizing potential of the digital media at the moment of rupture. This chapter takes a contemporary perspective as it seeks to contribute to our understanding of the Internet’s impact on civil society dynamics in a non-pluralist context through a diachronic comparison. Based on an empirical study of the Cuban case, the argument is as follows. Prior to the entry of the Internet, the civil society debate centered around the quest for higher degrees of autonomy for associations and institutions within the framework of the state-socialist regime. In contrast, the new media enabled the emergence of a new, less state-dependent type of public sphere; as a consequence, the civil society debate has become increasingly centered on the assertion of individual citizenship rights within andvis-à-vis the state. The reformist civil society quest of the pre-Internet period failed in part because of its character as behind-the-scenes-struggle, shielded from public view, which impeded a broader mobilization of protest when the state decided to rein in the incipient push for civil society. In contrast, the current drive for civil society indeed finds strong public repercussion; for its democratizing potential to come to fruition, the crucial fault-line is to connect web-based voice to public debate and social action in the country’s physical off-line environment. By taking Cuba as object of empirical analysis, this study selects a case with a particularly thorough form of authoritarian hold over the public sphere: a formal monopoly of the Cuban state on mass media, established in the historic experience of twentieth-century state-socialism and upheld even two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the same time, Cuba is strongly exposed to transnational influences and a transnational articulation of voice, due to a large number of emigrant and diaspora communities that remain highly attached to their country of origin (Fernández 2005). The approach chosen to analyze the impact of the Internet on state-society relations is through a diachronic comparison of the Cuban development in two distinct periods: the pre-Internet period, i.e., Cuba in the early to mid 1990s, when the Cold War alignment had already become history but web-based technologies did not yet have a major presence on the island; and more than a decade later, since the mid to late 2000s, when web-based media had made their entry on the island. Formal data on Internet access and use are scarce and unreliable. For 2009, the Cuban Ministry of Informatics and Communications gives the figure of 1,450,000 Cubans, or 12.7 percent, as “Internet users” (ONE 2009)1 without specifying the precise uses this number includes. The figure certainly should not be mistaken for access to the World Wide Web, which remains severely restricted. Instead, the figure most probably includes all Cubans with some kind of (even if only sporadic) access to closed domestic networks or with access to e-mail services. At the same time accounts are shared and, as for other goods and services, also Internet access has a black market side that escapes official statistics. Moreover, Internet content “travels” by USB stick also to many who do not have access themselves. For both these periods, the study relies on the analysis of numerous primary documents, as well as newspapers and secondary literature. In the case of the post-Internet phase, in addition to the above, documents published on the web have been a primary source of analysis. While some authors link issues of civil society and Internet voice merely to the political opposition, this chapter does not limit its focus to this divide but analyzes as much societal actors working within the established institutions of the socialist state as well as those outside of it. In both periods under scrutiny field trips to the island were undertaken in which actors from a broad range of positions were interviewed. While these interviews are not cited directly due to political sensitivities, they provide an invaluable background for the trends described.

A medio camino entre el centro barroco de La Habana y las playas situadas al este de la ciudad que anteceden al esplendor de Varadero, la barriada de Alamar forma parte del municipio de La Habana del Este: una ciudad dentro de la ciudad, separada de La Habana Vieja por un túnel tras el cual empieza un mundo que el yuma (término despectivo del argot callejero que designa al turista o al extranjero) tiene pocas posibilidades de contemplar como no sea por la ventanilla de uno de esos taxis que recorren sin paradas el espacio comprendido entre el centro y la costa. Cien mil habitantes divididos en veinticinco barrios construidos entre los años setenta y la mitad de la década de los ochenta. Alamar es la antítesis de esa Habana Vieja disneyficada, con sus calles coloniales y su flujo ininterrumpido de turistas: un tiempo y un espacio dilata-dos, edificios racionalistas separados por unas fluidas arterias que conectan los diferentes barrios, espacios agrícolas, un río, vastas áreas militares en desuso, una decrépita y decadente fachada litoral cubierta de hormigón desde la que se vislum-bran las diferentes áreas y etapas de la zona. Una zona que es la plasmación física del diseño y del fracaso de la Utopía, una vasta Unité d'habitation reproducida a gran escala y en la actualidad deshaciéndose poco a poco por la falta de mantenimiento, infraestructuras, servicios comunitarios, comunicaciones y transporte. Una metáfora perfecta de las paradojas y singularidades de Cuba: la instalación abstracta del modelo socialista (y de su fracaso) en una realidad caribeña hecha de lentitud, relaciones y mestizaje. La expansión urbana de la capital cubana llegó a su culmen y al máximo de su decadencia en esta zona, construida por las Microbrigadas, unos grupos de hombres traídos por el gobierno para edificar uno de los proyectos de urbanización de viviendas sociales más imponentes del país. Un periodo constructivo que quedó interrumpido por la crisis econó-mica que siguió a la caída del Muro de Berlín y a la disolución de la URSS (Periodo especial').

During the twentieth century, two movements in Cuban art played a critical role in creating an expanded space for societal debate and cultural expression: the artistic avant-garde and the Afro-Cuban movement. Initially flourishing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these collective efforts took on new forms in the changed environment after 1959. After the Revolution, conditions for cultural production changed with the official position that art should serve ideological functions, but both avant-garde and Afro-Cuban production continued, at the risk of conflict with the state. In the face of a restrictive state that sought to control such expressions, the Afro-Cuban movement and avant-garde art collectives developed along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, lines.

Uno de los rasgos que signan la identidad caribeña se corresponde, sin lugar a dudas, con un área expresiva tan intensa y extensa como la de la música popular bailable. Durante mucho tiempo relegada a planos secundarios por los estudios culturológicos, su investigación ha ido ganando terreno e importancia, ya que adentrarse en su conocimiento presupone el hacerlo en la cultura de los hombres que viven en esta área geográfica y su interacción con el mundo.

El doble sentido y la picardía, la utilización de términos eminentemente populares son inherentes a esta música desde sus orígenes, aunque es indudable que existen diferentes formas de abordarlos. Entonces, hay que buscar el cambio en el necesario reflejo de nuevas realidades, de lo cual la música ―como hecho estético― no puede escapar.