Brilliantly combining rural performance case studies, teatrista testimonies, and vivid personal anecdotes, Trumpets in the Mountains is an interdisciplinary ethnographic examination of the interpretation and reinterpretation of Cuban national identity. After an assortment of national characters—from “the colonized victim, to Creole nationalist, to bearded revolutionary fighter, to khaki-clad socialist Hombre Nuevo”—the rural campesino takes center stage in the performance of Cuban identity (13). Laurie Frederik takes the reader behind the scenes with her as she searches for the voice of this Hombre Novísimo (even newer man) in cubanía. Does the campesino have a voice? Or is the campesino a subaltern figure merely “thrust onto the main stage…without a microphone”? (20). Frederik explores the answer to this question as she analyzes the relationships between professional artists, el campo residents, and state officials along with their roles in shifting notions of cubanía during the Special Period.
In the first chapter, Frederik describes how the Cuban Revolution created a “consciousness” that was disseminated through arts such as theater (33). She begins in the mid-1800s with Teatro Bufo (Theater of the Buffoon), the first national theater of the independent Cuban Republic, and the three recurring characters during this period: el negrito (negro male), la mulata (female mulatto), and el gallego (white male Spaniard). These three characters, representing the three prominent ethnic groups in Cuba, provided comic relief to the people’s struggles while also establishing each group’s inclusion in cubanía. With Fidel Castro’s Revolution in 1959 came Teatro Escambray (the first example of Teatro Nuevo) and the introduction of Hombre Nuevo to the stage. The Hombre Nuevo, without race or class, replaced the three characters of Teatro Bufo as the homogenous Cuban national character and was used to educate the Cuban people in the proper “revolutionary” attitude signified by “sacrifice, hard work, national loyalty, and the proper moral attitude toward the continued development of Cuban socialism” (49).
In the second chapter, Frederik explores how the economic crisis of the Special Period in the 1990s begat a change in notions of cubanía. A new theater emerged, Teatro Comunitario (Communitarian Theater), that resembled Teatro Nuevo in that it brought theater to the community—even in marginal areas—and used the experiences and testimonies of local people in its creation. The campesino image served to “combat the contamination of capitalism, materialism, and individualism, and to serve as a rallying point around which twenty-first century Cuban identity could be focused” (108).
The third and fourth chapters provide detail and analysis of Cuban theatrical performance from idea to reception. Using her observations of and participation in the creative process with Teatro de los Elementos on the road to producing a new play, Frederik identifies the following phases: (1) preparation, in which the artists would gather information about the concerns of the local community; (2) incubation, in which the artists process the information gathered to identify a broad theme; (3) illumination, in which the play’s central conflict and characters come together; and (4) verification, in which the play receives official approval to be performed on the basis of its usefulness and concern for the good of the nation. Through this process emerges a play that synthesizes political context, local history, social ideology, and creative imagination to present the campesino and his place in cubanía.
Chapter 5 focuses on teatristas in Guantánamo and the perception of the campesino de verdad or “real campesino” said to exist más allá or “more isolated, deeper into the mountains, farther away from wherever you were, and by definition, in places that were difficult to access” (175-6). During the Massification of Culture campaign proposed in 1999, urban artists were “encouraged” to embark on state-sponsored tours to perform in el campo. Frederik brings the reader along with her as she travels with the Teatro Comunitario group La Cruzada Teatral Guantánamo-Baracoa through the mountains of rural Guantánamo. This journey reveals the teatrista’s position in “the national cultural bureaucracy” between obtaining resources from the Cuban state and establishing cultural authority más allá.
Chapter 6 scrutinizes how the campesino’s voice is mediated rather than heard directly in Cuba’s national narrative. Using El Laboratorio de Teatro Comunitario as a case study in which a group of professional artists “attempted to break down the system of discursive intervention” and hand the microphone to the campesinos to speak for themselves (218), Frederik argues that campesinos will “ultimately take control of their own historical representation” but in so doing will also disturb the campesino image from which the Hombre Novísimo developed (258).
Frederik concludes her study by exposing the “dramatic irony of Cuba’s two faces”—the “pseudo-culture” face shown to foreign tourists and the “real” Cuban face presented to Cuban citizens (260). El negrito and el gallego return to the stage to perform as the battle to establish cubanía de verdad continues.
Frederik’s interdisciplinary analysis of shifting Cuban identity is an essential text for advanced students and scholars of Latin American socio-political history. With this ethnography Frederik succeeds in her attempt to tear down disciplinary divides. The contribution of Trumpets in the Mountains is not limited to the disciplines of anthropology, theater, and performance studies; but rather it is relevant to all disciplines concerned with the construction of collective identity and the delicate relationships between art, power, and cultural authority.
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[Review length: 871 words • Review posted on March 12, 2014]