In Word and Deed: Cuban Exile Cultural Landscapes and the Haunting of Little Havana

FAIN: FT-58698-11

Patricia Lynn Price
Florida International University Board of Trustees (Miami, FL 33199-2516)

When Cuban exiles talk about Miami they often do so in terms that make strong claims to place. Yet these narratives often also tie Miami of today to Cuba of the past, so much so that scholarship about and by Cuban exiles understands Miami as derivative, temporary, or even moribund. In this project I will use interviews and archival research to ask, "What does this narrative connection backward in time and space mean for the actual urban landscapes created by Cuban exiles in Miami?" I propose that Cuban exile Miami landscapes exist in productive tension between mobile geographies that are literally as well as figuratively haunted by pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and desires for rootedness and dwelling. This research will contribute to literatures on Hispanic place-making, memories and urban landscapes, geographies of emotion and narrative, and the interplay between homeland and exile. Theoretical and empirical insights of value to the study of diverse exile experiences will be developed.

Associated Products

Mapping Memories: Cuban Exiles Navigate Home (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Mapping Memories: Cuban Exiles Navigate Home
Author: Patricia L. Price
Abstract: For the past 50 years, Miami has been home for the majority of Cuba's exile population. A common dimension of the exile experience is the refusal to relinquish affective ties to the place of origin. Because of the need to remain connected to a distant place that does not exist anymore, spatial devices - orientation, proximity and distance, directionality, mapping, and navigation – figure prominently in Cuban exile narratives. Though political exiles such as Miami's Cuban diaspora cannot literally return to Cuba, they preserve detailed maps of home in their hearts and minds which allow them to visit often. Interviews and video from the 2011 Cuba Nostalgia Festival are used to explore how enormous floor maps of Havana, Cardenas, and the country of Cuba are utilized by exiles. The maps prompt exiles to look back in time and space to the Cuba of their childhood, as well as to establish new connections in the present among those whose memories center on the same places. This project illustrates how Cuban exiles fold time and space in ways that encourage a rethinking of placemaking.
Date: 02/25/2012
Conference Name: Association of American Geographers 2012 Annual Meeting

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