Dismantling Political Mythologies: Cabrera Infante’s Essays of Mea Cuba

In light of the approaching fifty years of the Cuban Revolution and the ongoing interest in revolutionary images (Che Guevara exhibition at the RA summer 06), and in light of the recent death of Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante, this article analyses Cabrera Infante’s essays of the collection Mea Cuba. The article argues essentially that many historical events and figures of the Cuban Revolution (up to today) have been recorded and understood in a manner akin to Roland Barthes ‘mythologisation process’. As a result, Cabrera Infante, as author, operates as a ‘demythologiser’ of such perspectives, exposing the distance between the reality of a historical event and its contemporary recording. But can Cabrera Infante’s text be deemed to be free of the rhetorical devices that he ascribes to propaganda texts? The possible dichotomy between heroism and suicide in relation to Che Guevara’s death, for example, is accordingly analysed from a position objectively removed from the politically-polarized perspectives of either official history or Cabrera Infante’s subversive revisionism. The article highlights issues of interpretation outside of Cuba of historical accounts, and draws attention to the mythologising process at work in the recording of such a socially and politically emotive era.