Today’s Leftist Intellectuals in Cuba and Latin America

caught between the Paris Syndrome and the Stockholm Syndrome

By Angry GenXer

HAVANA TIMES – Why are there intellectuals in Cuba who seem unaware of the national establishment’s responsibility for what’s happening in the country? How can one support censorship and still be an intellectual? Why do these same attitudes infect so many intelligent left-wing Latin Americans? People who in their own countries have taken part in all kinds of struggles against oppression, domination, exploitation, repression, and inhuman abuses of power seem not to notice that such realities also exist in Cuba. Or they notice, but only partially, or too late, or they remain silent in public. And those who practice critical thought from within Cuba sometimes sound like they’re speaking about a Cuba located in a parallel world.

Reducing the Disaster to the Aesthetic, or the Paris Syndrome in the Caribbean

The Paris Syndrome is the name of a transient psychological disorder that has affected tourists visiting the French capital, brought on by the disappointment of discovering that the City of Light is not as they expected. It mostly affects Japanese travelers and was described by Dr. Hiroaki Ota in 1986; it can provoke anxiety, hallucinations, and even feelings of persecution. According to specialists, the condition is caused by an intense aesthetic disillusionment: Paris is not as beautiful as imagined; its women, not as elegant as the tourist magazines promised; its streets, not so clean.

In Cuba, when one studies its recent history or closely examines today’s reality, it becomes clear that the Revolution is not as beautiful as one might have expected, or as we thought it was in our youth. We read about artists who have been or are victims of repression or censorship; we notice the silence surrounding the great Cuban singer Celia Cruz, exiled and never allowed to return; we learn there are Cuban and Latin American books that are not published in Cuba (by authors like Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Teté Casuso; Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, and many more); we feel depressed by the decayed and destroyed urban environment and weep for artistic and architectural treasures lost forever.

When a leftist intellectual looks at and reflects on Cuba (regardless of whether they were born here or not), they often, beyond all logic and contrary to any methodological doubt, interpret the profound and essential problems inherent in the “Revolution” primarily as an aesthetic matter. The word “aesthetic” comes from the Greek for “to feel.” Its opposite is “anesthesia,” and I’ve seen people on the left from other countries cry out of frustration when they are pulled from the pro-government “revolutionary” anesthesia and shown Cuba’s current reality.

Alfredo Guevara, who during Fidel Castro’s university years was literally his squire (it’s said he carried Fidel’s revolver hidden in a hollowed-out book so no one would catch the young leader armed), later became head of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC)—a key post from which he opened and closed doors. He once said that the revolutionary agenda necessarily included the right to all beauty.

In Cuba, children are taught to distinguish between “beautiful” and “ugly” as a universal pattern for all other values. Ugly is bad, and bad is ugly. When a leftist intellectual sees problems with the Revolution, they interpret them also as failures of beauty. That is the Paris Syndrome: the “process” is not as beautiful as expected.

However, this perception also acts as a balm against greater disappointments, which would call loyalty into question. “Yes,” they say, “some artists were repressed, there were labor camps (UMAP) in the ’60s for homosexuals, rockers, hippies, and Christians; there was a “gray” (or ‘black’) five-year period in the ’70s (which actually lasted fifteen years) for LGBTQ people and alternative intellectuals; valuable people and cultural opportunities were lost—but the Revolution stood firm, and its “errors” were corrected later on.

Being Part of the Whole

The same Alfredo Guevara, through the censorship of the Cuban documentary PM (which many filmmakers now consider a classic) about Havana’s nightlife in 1961, triggered the debate that Fidel Castro shut down with his now-famous definition of official cultural policy: “Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, no rights.”

We should ask ourselves what role the “vanguard” intellectuals played in establishing these rules—rules that were, in essence, totalitarian when it came to creative content. (Recall Mussolini’s phrase: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State.”) They weren’t ignorant. Some who initially held radical positions in favor of the process—and opposed their supposed or real intellectual adversaries—like writers Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Jesus Diaz, later found themselves excluded by the very system they had supported.

Romanticizing Erosion

A “therapy” for the supposed Paris Syndrome in Cuba may be to assign beauty to the ruins and try to see some vitality in them.

This attitude—ranging from grotesque to hypocritical or even borderline necrophilic—is visible in many leftist intellectuals both inside and outside Cuba.

Faced with the erosion of everything visible and invisible (buildings, streets, services, values), they imagine “resilience” where there is desperation, “spontaneity” where there is deceit, and “loyalty” where there is omertà and the shameless use of past symbols to prop up entrenched interests and privileges—among those who live off the scam, both “above” and “below.”

It’s a fundamentally false stance that at best displays blindness, pretending to make a virtue of necessity, and at worst expresses implicit contempt for those who live in our archipelago and are enduring a material and moral crisis with no visible way out.

Exoticizing Tragedy

Another “therapy” may be to assume that Cubans somehow enjoy their situation, that they’re different from the rest of the world’s peoples. That they have an innate ability to endure and even have fun with their suffering.

Or that they’ve “chosen” to continue living in this situation by staying in the country and not protesting against the leaders who remain in power.

Or simply that the current system is supposedly the best fit for a people like the Cubans.

But that last one is a racist argument.

The previous one (that they “chose to live like this”) is akin to saying “poor people are poor because they want to be,” and it’s also false—it ignores the hundreds of protests in recent years, the hundreds of thousands of Cubans in the process of emigrating or wishing to, and the hundreds of thousands who abstain, don’t attend, spoil ballots, or vote “no to all” in elections or referenda. In fact, Cuba hasn’t held accountability meetings between municipal delegates and their voters for years—a constitutional violation, since no state of emergency has been officially declared. There’s a reason for that.

And the argument that Cubans have a special “ability to enjoy the crisis” is like that of bullfighting defenders who claim the animal doesn’t suffer and that bullfighting is art .

Love Your Captors, or the Stockholm Syndrome in the Largest Island of the Antilles

The Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological reaction in which a hostage develops a bond of complicity and affection with their captors. Those afflicted even show fear and anger toward the police or anyone opposing their captors. It was described in the wake of a 1973 bank robbery and hostage crisis in Stockholm.

This syndrome more closely resembles the left’s relationship to Cuba than the Paris Syndrome. “You censor me, but I love and defend you.”

Psychologically, it’s very uncomfortable and shameful to realize you’re under the sway of Stockholm Syndrome.

The Paris Syndrome is a psychological escape route to avoid realizing one is actually experiencing the Stockholm Syndrome. The confusion between the Paris and Stockholm syndromes in regard to Cuba is an ethical, strategic, and structural problem within radical Latin American leftism. Focusing criticism on aesthetics avoids questioning political (especially top-level) power.

But some people do come to their senses—and heal.

I remember how the Cuban establishment disastrously lost the support of major intellectuals and artists from abroad after the Padilla affair in 1971 (the Cuban poet was imprisoned for alleged “counterrevolutionary” activities) and, in the new century, after the execution of young men who attempted to hijack a passenger boat in Havana Bay. Today, the regime has lost the support of most local intellectuals, even among those on the left.

So why do so many remain confused?Fear may be the most obvious answer. But many of these people have shown courage in other contexts—and fear doesn’t apply to those living outside Cuba.

Let’s explore other possible reasons.

Reasons to Love

• Assuming the Cuban establishment has the capacity to improve and self-correct
• Presuming that the establishment is anti-capitalist and/or anti-imperialist
• Prioritizing geopolitical interests (e.g., against the US) while ignoring people’s actual conditions
• Believing that supporting official Cuba brings one closer to real—albeit imperfect—socio-political change
• Proximity to power and the enjoyment of its privileges
• Seeking support for personal interests in conflicts with rival political or intellectual forces
• Aestheticizing Cuban history and politics
• Psychological comfort in having a paradigm
• Justifying years of having supported Cuba
• Loyalty in the face of supposed betrayal
• Willful ignorance or intellectual laziness
• Intellectual arrogance

The John Lennon Statue, or the Lima Syndrome in Havana

There’s a third psychological syndrome named after a city: the Lima Syndrome, proposed following the 1996 hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, where guerrillas from the MRTA took over. This syndrome involves captors developing affection for their hostages—the reverse of Stockholm Syndrome.

In Cuba, since 1985 the establishment has carried out damage control over previous “extremisms,” “mistakes,” and “excesses.”

Perhaps the most well-known local testimony to this syndrome is the statue of John Lennon in El Vedado,  Havana, unveiled by Fidel Castro on the 20th anniversary of the ex-Beatle’s assassination. Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela has a song referencing his childhood “when Beatles records couldn’t be owned” (a fact some dispute, but it’s true that in the ’60s and ’70s, their music wasn’t played publicly, and “Elvis fans,” “hippies,” and “rockers” were repressed or marginalized). In 2016, the recently deceased metal legend Ozzy Osbourne visited the Havana monument to his greatest inspiration.

From 1985 onward, there were high-level meetings between government officials and previously excluded, censored, and even repressed intellectuals and religious leaders—many of whom were later honored with official awards.

Goebbels Also Loved His Dog

In his novel The Man Who Loved Dogs, Cuban writer and investigator Leonardo Padura explores the psychology of a man completely committed to the establishment—Spanish-born Ramon Mercader, the assassin of exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, who spent his final years also exiled in Cuba. Padura portrays Mercader as somewhat remorseful for his total submission. He also touches on the 1930s Moscow Trials, in which former Bolshevik leaders and Lenin’s comrades displayed classic signs of Stockholm Syndrome: first confessing to horrendous crimes they never committed, then showing extreme loyalty to Stalin—who had ordered their execution.

One can think what they wish about Cuban intellectuals who were repressed and censored, then later—recanting or not—were rehabilitated by the regime. I don’t know if any of them who are still alive understand whether they’ve suffered from the Paris Syndrome or Stockholm Syndrome. After all, many are no longer in Cuba, and decades ago their counterparts in the USSR, China, and Yugoslavia had it far worse.

What does infuriate me deeply is the reemergence within the left of a certain bad-faith Stalinism that knows perfectly well—and even longs for—what the Gulag was. I’ve noticed this trend resurfacing globally in recent years, enjoying good health, just like fascism. Maybe books like Padura’s can serve as an antidote to both—at least for young people, if they still read books.

Why Should I Care About What People Think When They Can’t Fully See What Happened in Cuba?

Because I love those people who are wrong, whether deliberately or not. I owe them a lot. I am who I am also thanks to them. After all, my parents were among them, like many of their generation. And some psychological syndromes are addictive.

And I love Cuba. I dream of her while awake.

May she wake up some morning, free from syndromes of any kind—and of any city.

Read more from Cuba here in Havana Times.