Arquitectura Cuba and the Early Revolutionary Project

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.2.0235
• Pages: 235-259
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Author: Patrick Calmon de Carvalho Braga
• Subject Matter: Cuban Revolution,history of architecture,urban planning,modernism,socialism

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STUDENT ARTICLE

ARQUITECTURA CUBA AND THE EARLY

REVOLUTIONARY PROJECT

Patrick Calmon de Carvalho Braga

Cornell University, USA

Abstract

No prior scholarly work on Cuban architectural and intellectual history has yet focused

on Arquitectura Cuba, a periodical published by the Colegio Nacional de Arquitectos,

as an archive. However, issues of the publication from the early years of the Cuban

Revolution (especially 1959 and 1960) provide an indication of state-sponsored

views on architecture, urbanism and the interplay between these and the socialist

project in Cuba. Using articles and editorials from Arquitectura Cuba alongside other

contemporary sources, this article focuses on and critiques three themes that recur

throughout these issues: the idea of architecture as a socially minded profession, the

need for urbanisation of the countryside as a core goal of the new Cuban state and

the interplay between global modernism and localised practices. Ultimately, this

investigation illustrates potential methodological directions and archival sources for

Cuban architectural and social historiography, revealing another lens to read the Cuban

Revolution and its legacies today.

Keywords: Cuban Revolution, history of architecture, urban planning, modernism,

socialism

‘¡Primero de Enero de 1959!

¡Día glorioso!’

The editorial opening the January 1959 issue of Arquitectura Cuba, the official

periodical of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Cuba, started with a page-long paean

to the revolution. Its nationalist language, typically foreign to architecture

236 STUDENT ARTICLE – PATRICK CALMON DE CARVALHO BRAGA

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 9.2 WInter 2017

journals, had the usual propagandist overtones, calling that New Year’s Day

‘this glorious date’ (3). Immediately, architecture and revolution are brought

together; the authors of the editorial hoped that ‘seeds of death [and] pain’,

which enabled the revolution and were ‘taking root in the fatherland’, would

bring about ‘united ideals of national reconstruction’ (ibid.) Stone and cement

first appear as metaphors and, ultimately, possible physical realities for the revo-

lution’s own eager process of moulding and constructing a ‘New Cuba’.

Proclaiming the revolution as a reality and condition took on a distinctly spatial

approach, uniting the various physical and human geographic imageries of the

lived Cuban experience: ‘Cuba [is] born New in the peaks of the Sierras, in the

hills, in the rivers,’ – that is, the so-conceived ‘natural’ spaces of the island,

where humans are subordinate to nature in the rural lived experiences of culti-

vating and engaging with the land – and ‘in the streets of all the towns, of all the

cities’. Yet the list of ‘all the cities’ suggests how architects in 1959 mentally

constructed their definition of where Cuban urbanism lies: the six capitals

(Santiago, Camagüey, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Pinar del Río and La Habana) of

what then were the island’s six provinces before a December 1975 law divided

the island into twelve provinces with capitals offering social services (Landstreet

and Mundingo 1982: 5; Edward 1998: 16).

But what exactly is this publication? Who wrote Arquitectura Cuba and what

did they have to say about where their society was headed? In this article, I argue

that issues of Arquitectura Cuba published in the early years of the Cuban

Revolution (especially in 1959 and 1960) provide an indication of early state-

sponsored views on architecture, urbanism and the interplay between these and

the socialist project in Cuba. To illustrate this, I will focus on three themes that

recur throughout these issues and offer critical examinations: the idea of archi-

tecture as a socially minded profession, the need for urbanisation of the country-

side and the interplay between global modernism and localised practices.

The periodical and its context

No other scholars have studied the contents of Arquitectura Cuba as a freestand-

ing archive. This is not to say, however, that Arquitectura Cuba has been ignored

in scholarly work. Roberto Segre, for instance, who served as the journal’s edi-

tor-in-chief, often cited articles from Arquitectura Cuba in his numerous writ-

ings on modernism in Cuban and Latin American architecture and city planning.

Patrícia Méndez (2011: 2; 2014: 33) of the Centro de Documentación de

Arquitectura Latinoamericana [CEDODAL; Centre for Documentation of Latin

American Architecture] also touches on Arquitectura Cuba in her reviews of

Latin American architectural publications, mentioning that it has been published