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Accepted Paper:
Cuban museums and Afro-Cuban heritage production in socialist Cuba
Michelle Flikke
(University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I examine how Cuba's socialist state redefined Afro-Cuban religions as national heritage through heritage and museum policies in the 1970s and 1980s. In Cuba's Republican era, politicians and social scientists perceived Afro-Cuban religions as obstacles to Cuban social development.
Paper long abstract:
In 1959 there were six museums in Cuban, but today there are nearly 300 state museums. Since the 1960s, the state has created new museums, collections and heritage narratives that reflect its socialist values. Museums have became official theatres of Cuban heritage and contributed to public discourses on national identity.
In this paper I examine how Cuba's socialist state redefined Afro-Cuban religions as national heritage through heritage and museum policies in the 1970s and 1980s. In Cuba's Republican era, politicians and social scientists perceived Afro-Cuban religions as obstacles to Cuban social development. For most people Afro-Cuban religions represented a primitive, criminal underworld left over from slavery and the colonial society.
Furthermore, I argue that by defining these practices as national heritage and exhibiting them in public museums, the state also created discursive space for creative interpretation by religious practitioners. A growing number of Afro-Cuban practitioners are using their homes as exhibition spaces, opening their private collections of religious objects to the gaze of public and international tourists.
Palace of the Orishas is one example of private Afro-Cuban religious exhibitions, which illustrate how individuals take advantage of the government's appropriation and display of their practices in state museums. The proprietors of these private exhibition spaces reassert ownership of their personal heritage by maintaining autonomy from the state museum system. Furthermore they emphasise their entitlement to participate in the state-dominated heritage industry, which has nationalised intimate aspects of their personal and family history.
This paper illustrates how Cuban museums have produced Afro-Cuban heritage and how private museum proprietors challenge the state's monopoly over the production of Afro-Cuban heritage.
Focal points and talking points: objects of desire in tourism
Session 1