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Ada Ferrer, "Cuba: An American History" (Scribner, 2021)
00:53:27
An interview with Ada Ferrer
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- [00:02]
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Ada Ferrer
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Steven Rodriguez
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Ada Ferrer
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- [01:30]
Ada Ferrer
That's why you rack welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
Steven Rodriguez
You're listening to the New Books Network. I'm Steven Rodriguez, a PhD candidate in history at Vanderbilt University and a host on the network.
- [01:44]
Ada Ferrer
Today.
- [01:45]
Steven Rodriguez
I'm joined by Professor Otto Ferrer, the Julia Silver professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. We'll talk about her new book, Cuba and American History, which was published in 2021 by Simon & Schuster's book is a history of the island from the era of European conquest to present day. Her approach to narrating five centuries of history, however, doesn't just focus on familiar political figures or abstract historical forces. Instead, Ferrer positions the experiences of the enslaved women, schoolteachers and her own family at the center of the book. And and as much as this is a history of Cuba, it is also a history of the United States. The rare surprises the reader with fascinating moments of convergence between the history of the two countries throughout going beyond just familiar geopolitical flashpoints. The result is a finely crafted and deeply personal book that encourages readers to recognize Cuba's contested history and its multiple identities. Ada, welcome to the show.
- [02:45]
Ada Ferrer
Thanks, Steven. Thanks for having me.
- [02:48]
Steven Rodriguez
My pleasure. I wanted to begin on the personal note, because it is such a prominent part of the introduction and obviously something you kind of weave throughout. Your previous two books were written for university presses and kind of followed those conventions. This book, you're trying to speak to a more general audience, and you weave in your family's own personal experiences throughout. I just wanted to ask what it was like to write such a personal book, especially in light of, you know, having the experience of mostly writing things that were more academic monographs.
- [03:23]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, well, I mean, on one level, it wasn't that different. It was still, you know, me doing research and doing a lot of reading and focusing on the writing and how to tell a story. Right. So, you know, definitely overlapped thematically, methodologically, empirically with work I'd done before. But I also feel like so much of what brought me to Cuban history to begin with is personal. And I felt like that was something that in my earlier books was there, but so. So buried under. Under, you know, under archives and historiography, that I didn't call attention to it. The most personal I got in those books was really in the acknowledgments, and so I felt like it was there all along and that this was just a chance to bring it out. Also, in part because of the focus of the book, in a sense, about writing Cuban history for an American audience, it's kind of a work of translation, of moving back and forth between the two countries. And that whole experience, just for me, is so inextricably linked to the way I grew up and the way I've lived my life, life always between these two countries, and translating for my parents and for people in Cuba and for the US and so it just felt like the book was deeply linked to who I am as a historian and as a person.
- [04:50]
Steven Rodriguez
So would you say that the experience of writing this book, with its very sweeping book and also a more personal one, did it change the way you kind of view Cuban history more generally? Are there things that surprised you in the process of writing it that you hadn't really, perhaps, thought about as much in your earlier work?
- [05:09]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, a lot surprised me. I. You know, I thought I knew Cuban history really well going into the project, which is part of what made me think I could do it. But I learned so much doing it and researching, reading for it. Also writing in terms of what surprised me, the depth of the longevity, you know, the. The how far back the US Role in Cuba's. Not that it surprised me. I knew that I kind of knew it, but, but to find it and have it confirmed sometimes with such arresting kinds of stories, right? Like the, you know, the inauguration of a US Vice president on Cuban soil, for example, things like that, that, you know, it just, it confirmed what I knew and made it that much richer and more and more urgent. Another thing that surprised me sometimes were the ways in which histories and people became connected in unexpected ways. Right. So I began the chapter on early 20th century Havana with the story of a young girl, her name Indescapote. And you know, I was just reading her writing and all of a sudden I realized that the man who built her house was the leader of the race war of the Independent Party of Color and a leader in the so called race war of 1912. So just seeing the connections kind of just come alive. And my research was, was exciting. And then also I kept thinking as I was writing more, as I was doing the. Well, both the research and the writing just, I felt like my personal connection to the history deepened. So, for example, when I was working on the 1950s, you know, my mother and my mother and I left in 1963, as I was working on that, the 50s and the early 60s, just my sense of the extent to which, you know, I became convinced that this history made me, you know, that it made my parents, it determined so much in their lives and then by extension, my life. I think that sense became a lot stronger as a result of, of writing the book. And so my sense of wanting to write it in a way that my parents, they're never going to. They won't read it, but, you know, that my parents or people like my parents might recognize themselves in it. That became much more of a goal as I wrote.
- [07:38]
Steven Rodriguez
I think that it partially comes across with you. You play a lot, a lot with chronology and kind of historical narrative, and you draw on Michel Rolf Trouillot's idea of kind of history as narrative versus history as it happens. And you explicitly talk about this idea, but then you kind of demonstrate it throughout the book with these anecdotes that you incorporate, which I find really, really engaging. But I wanted to kind of ask you about the ways in which understandings of Cuban history have shifted over time. We could think about maybe in the US amongst Cubans in the United States, and perhaps also US politicians. How do you see that dynamic play out as history's narrative and history as it happened within the kind of way in which we think about Cuba in the United States?
- [08:29]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, well, I think it all depends on what moment you're looking at right. So I think Cuba's been kind of, you know, Americans in general are familiar, have some familiarity with Cuban, and they have for a really long time, for generations and even centuries. But their conception of what Cuban history is is definitely. It's different at different moments. So, for example, you know, the history of Cuban independence and of the Spanish American War and of US Involvement in that process created a really strong sense for many Americans that the US Helped Cuba achieve its independence and therefore that, you know, Cuba owed the US a debt of gratitude. And that was a powerful sentiment in the, you know, early in the 20th century. But we see it affect, for example, the way the Cuban Revolution is understood. Cuban Revolution of 1959 is understood in the US so when. When tensions begin to rise between the two governments after 1959, you have US politicians or even President Eisenhower saying, we freed them, we helped them. We didn't do that so they could become communists. So this sense of US Magnanimity in relation to Cuba has really shaped American conceptions of Cuban history for a lot of the 20th century. I think more recently, the most dominant, I think American view of Cuba has, you know, in some sense erases all that early history. And in popular American culture, Cuba becomes Fidel Castro in 1959 without that much attention to the ways in which the earlier relationship and the earlier history shaped 59 and everything that came, that came after.
- [10:27]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, I would like to kind of focus in on that aspect because you do obviously cover the Cuban Revolution in a really 59 revolution and really engaging way. But in doing so, you try to decenter Fidel Castro. You have at one point in the chapter 23, you say, quote, people interested in Cuba often make the mistake of thinking too much about Fidel Castro. And you go on to say, this is perfectly a reasonable thing to do and understandable. And you kind of decenter Castro and show the longer genealogy of a lot of the ideas that came to be the foundation of the 1959 revolution, like agrarian reform, anti corruption measures, expansion of education, all these factors that. That became iconic and associated with the revolution. Can we talk a little. Can you do a little bit of work here to place some of the 59 revolution in this longer genealogy? What were the main kind of antecedents in the earlier period? Not just the immediate ones, but that kind of led up to it that a lot of listeners and perhaps your readers who just kind of think of Fidel Castro in the Cold War context might not be familiar with.
- [11:44]
Ada Ferrer
I think this is true for Americans, but also even for sometimes for Cuban Americans who, you know, younger Cuban Americans say, who don't know that earlier history, the way it's narrated, sometimes it seems like Fidel Castro just came out of the blue, right, and then determined everything. And part of what I try to show is that the ideas that he invoked, some of the practices that he used in opposing Batista and then, you know, consolidating his power, these are all things that had a long history in Cuban politics. So there's a long history of struggle for social rights. So for things like agrarian reform or workers rights or literacy. And those things, they were present, for example, in the 1933 Revolution. They were present in the 1940 Constitution. So he didn't invent those demands. And many, many Cubans expressed them and shared them and pushed and fought for them for generations before the revolution of 59. So that's one thing I wanted to stress. And then the other thing is that even in the revolution itself, even in the struggle against Batista, Fidel was really one revolutionary among many. He would come to dominate by the end of that struggle. But that was not at all clear in the beginning of the struggle. And if you look at who was fighting and mobilizing and writing and organizing from 1952 on, there were many people in cities. There were students, there were workers, there were housewives, Catholic students, and all kinds of other people who were. Who were, you know, who did their best to fight against Batista. And in the beginning, really, you know, through the. Through late, you know, mid to late 1950s through mid to late 1957 or late summer 57, Fidel wasn't the most prominent or even the one that was, you know, guaranteed to. It wasn't clear that he was going to be the last one standing, right? So it worked out that way, but it wasn't predestined to happen that way, just as it wasn't predestined to end up being a communist revolution, that's really helpful.
- [14:21]
Steven Rodriguez
And I think it speaks to something else the book does really well, which is to critically approach national myth making both on the US Side and on the Cuban side. So certainly with the Cuban revolution of 59, there's a lot of mythology associated with that that perhaps influences both how Cubans themselves understand their history and people in the US and, of course, this myth making has been a constant process to a large extent, but I wanted to kind of focus in on one aspect of it, which is kind of the role of race in Cuban history and the idea of kind of racial harmony in Cuba. This idea that was promoted. Could you talk a little bit about where this idea comes from and how it's changed over time during the successive periods like the 33 Revolution, the Constitution, 1940, and the 59 Revolution?
- [15:17]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, it is a constant in Cuban history. And I think that the most influential idea about race and its relationship to nationality emerged in the very late 19th century out of the struggle for independence. And its main proponent was the famous Cuban writer and activist and organizer Jose Marti, who posited that the Cuban nationality somehow transcended race, that Cubans were more than black or white. They had fought for independence together, and in that process, they had become not only equal, but Cuban above all. And that idea was really powerful, as at the time in terms of defeating Spanish arguments against Cuban nationality. Right. For most of the 19th century, Spain and its allies, it said Cuba could not be independent because if it tried, there would be a slave rebellion, it would be another Haiti, et cetera, et cetera. And that idea of a nationality and of a nationalism and a patriotism that ended slavery and that welcomed and tried to forge racial equality was really powerful. Right. So, but having said that, what it described, what it aspired to was just that it was an aspiration. It never actually became reality. Right. There wasn't equality on the ground. There was still rampant discrimination in terms of employment, access to education, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the things that happens is throughout the 20th century, and you see it at the beginning of the republic, you see it in 1933, you see it in 1940, you see it with the revolution of 1959, and that is black intellectuals and activists arguing that they are not equal, but they are discriminated against. And you see them pressing for their rights by forming a party or introducing anti racist legislation, et cetera, et cetera. And when they do that, the mainstream response has traditionally been that that very call for rights is racist, that that very call for rights is divisive and dangerous. And you see that language, I mean, it comes up obviously in 1912 with Race War, 1912. You see it in the 1940 Constitution when the delegates are discussing an article against that prohibits racial discrimination. And you read the proceedings, you have all these white conservative delegates saying, this is dangerous to bring up. This is divisive. It's uncuman. Right? They're using the same language as had been used at the beginning of the 20th century. And then you see it again in 1959 when Fidel Castro comes to power. Black activists tell him, you have to, you won't you know, discrimination won't disappear just because there's been a revolution. You have to actively work on it. But, but the commitment to work on it really and seriously and deeply did not. Was not there. And so it, it didn't happen. And when black activists called attention to it again, the response was, that's divisive. No convene, it's inconvenient, it's dangerous. We're not doing that. Unity is more important. And in, after 1959, it became unity against, against US empire or external and internal enemies and so on. So always this idea that black Cubans have to wait for their rights has been, you know, it hasn't been exactly the same, but it's reappeared in these critical moments for the whole 20th century and even to the present. You know, I don't know if you want me to go there, but in the recent protests, for example, this summer, many of the protesters were black. And what supporters of the government ended up writing and tweeting and so on was how could they protest? The revolution gave them everything. It used that language, Right, which is the same language that people used at the end of the 19th century. How could black veterans press for their rights when. When independence had given them everything and independence had brought them into history? Right. So it's this expectation of black gratitude and, and black patience and black forbearance that. That's been a constant, more or less for. For over a hundred years. Well over 100 years.
- [19:50]
Steven Rodriguez
Well, thank you for taking us to the present day because it is really interesting to see how these are kind of recur. This rhetoric is very changes, obviously, but is present in many periods. I want to talk a little bit about this book with its chronological scope, these types of books, this genre of book. Older studies might have focused more on just the kind of political forces or the economic forces or perhaps the natural forces. You're doing all of that, but you're inserting these anecdotes, you're giving it a lot of texture. I wanted to just ask about when you were preparing to write this book, in the research process, were you rereading some of those kind of existing studies that try to tell the entire history of Cuba from either colonial or pre colonial period to present, and what was your, you know, what was it like to read those and then think about how you wanted to put together your narrative?
- [20:51]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, I did read in those books, you know, things like Rupert is or Hugh Thomas or on the Cuban side, get a Sanchez or Julio de Figuera and all you Know, but I tended not to read them. You know, I didn't read them and then begin. Right. I would read particular parts as I was working on a particular part, because with this kind of book, it's not, you know, it's over 500 years. It's not like you can research it all and then write. So. So I did it very. You know, I did it in little chunks or nuggets, and I always tried to vary what I read. So I would read things like general histories, but I would read memoirs or I would read. I would just. I just tried to read as intensely as I could in these really concentrated sports and just vary so that I was reading things that would give me different kinds of voices. And some of it was. Then somebody would mention something that I thought, oh, that's interesting. And I've never heard that before, say, like the inauguration of US Vice President on a Cuban sugar plantation. Right. So that was mentioned in passing in a book by Gerald Horne. And I knew, yes, it's an anecdote, but it's also a perfect anecdote because it just captures both the economic links between Cuba and the US in the age of slavery. It captures US Interest in annexing and US Expansionism towards Cuba. So it was a perfect anecdote for that. But then I just kind of would go in a rabbit hole and just find out everything that I could about that particular person and that event and the inauguration, and then I would build out from that. So it was very much like doing different kinds of research all at the same time. You know, big scope, big picture things, and then deep, deep diving into things that seem particularly rich and interesting.
- [22:46]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, well, it's done incredibly well throughout. And, yeah, it's made me kind of rethink about a lot of aspects of Cuban history. We've been kind of talking about how the United States, US History is kind of bound up in all of this history of Cuba and the United States. Obviously a central part of Cuban history. And of this book, something you try to highlight. I wanted to ask about whether you found it difficult at times to tell the story of Cuba and the United States without perhaps overemphasizing the role of the United States. And I'm thinking something in the instance where you're able to. You avoid this, obviously, is with the. The way you talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And of course, it's an event that is typically framed with the United States and the Soviet Union. Can you just speak a bit about how you approached writing about that from a more Cuban Perspective.
- [23:42]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah. I mean, in general, that was the issue of how to deal with the US Even though I knew that it's a central theme and a central player. But I knew that the book couldn't only be that. So it was more a question of kind of shifting our perspective. So in the case of the missile crisis and also with Bay of Pigs, I did this. Those are events that obviously the US Is a central key player. It's been written a lot about from a U.S. perspective. Most of the documentation is produced by the U.S. right? So you have all these State Department records, CIA records, all these, you know, declassified materials that are really. That are really rich and. And important for the study. But I also knew that I did not want to tell the story that way. So in the missile crisis, I knew I would nar. I knew I would narrate the 13 days, right, the Khrushchev, Kennedy, Castro. But I purposely made the decision to start that story in the little town in Cuba where the missiles were first found. And I started with the arrival of the missiles and the people in the town being awakened in the middle of the night by the trucks bringing the missiles and trying to figure out what is going on. So I have them, you know, peering, trying to peer out their windows with the police, telling them to step back and not look, right? To remind us that they're the ones who are on the front lines of all this. They're the ones who are experiencing it firsthand and that you can't tell the story of the missile crisis without having them. Having them be part of the story. So that's what I tried to do with the Bay of Pigs, too. I started in the swamp and just told kind of very quickly because there wasn't much space. Did a very like an introduction to the swamp, to its ecology, to its. To its people going back centuries, just to remind the reader that no matter what the Americans wanted, you know, they could never land on. On an empty beach. I mean, these places where American empire finds itself are places with deep, rich histories and that you can't explain what happens without. Without understanding that deep, rich history of a place. So that's what I tried to do. Yeah.
- [26:06]
Steven Rodriguez
And it seems to be a really difficult balancing act, but you do it incredibly well throughout. I want to shift a little bit to thinking about the writing process for this book. You have a very strong voice throughout that is personal, as I mentioned at the beginning, but also very scholarly. And you move between those two voices really elegantly. And the book is a pleasure. Pleasure to Read and very accessible, I think, to a general reader. And for someone like me who's studying Cuba, I also learned a lot. And reading about the chapters on my period. What was it like finding that voice? Was it difficult at first? Could you just talk a bit about adjusting from the kind of, you know, writing for a academic audience to it to a more general one?
- [27:00]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, I would say that even in my academic writing, I mean, I've always. I've always tried to write in a way that. That's accessible, that's not jargony. So I think it's always been a goal when writing this. It just. I just felt even a little freer. So, you know, all of a sudden I realized, oh, there's an I, I mean, meaning me. And I was like, well, that's okay, I'll leave it for now. Or a one sentence, a one word sentence, perhaps, you know, like that I. Perhaps period. I would. I probably wouldn't have done that in my earlier books. And this time it's like I would just. It was a little liberating just to write and let myself do it. And then I didn't always make the decision on the spot. I would just leave it. And then I said I would decide later. And sometimes when I brought it, not so much in the introduction where it is, where I do tell a personal story sometime in. In the other parts of the book, I bring in personal things. So, you know, my mother leaving, you know, at the airport, the security woman feeling the. The earrings I was wearing, the gold posts I was wearing in my Eater, or my mother being on her way to work when she saw Batista going into, you know, Columbia barracks when he staged the coup in 52. Right. You know, these stories like that, that I've heard all my life. And. And I would just. When they were. I felt like when they were relevant or they were part of what I was illustrating, I put them in. But then I wasn't, you know, I'd never done that before. So I put them in. In brackets and then. And they stayed in brackets for a long time. And then in the end I just said, yeah, I'm going to have them in there. And I just took the brackets out. So. So it was both. It was, you know, so on some level it was just what I had been doing before, but me. But with. Even. But with more freedom and it was more fun and. And sometimes I learned as I went and I wasn't sure, so I would bracket it and then. And then decide later.
- [29:05]
Steven Rodriguez
For you in the process of writing it. Obviously you study in. In your earlier books, you're concentrating on an earlier period. You don't concentrate on the 20th century and 21st century. What was the hardest portion of the book for you to write and did that kind of overlap with. Was it because you weren't as familiar with the time period, or was it because perhaps you were too familiar and wanted to, like, had too much information that you want to pack in?
- [29:35]
Ada Ferrer
Well, there were parts that were hard for different reasons. So the 20th century before the revolution, say, you know, not like 1902 to 1952. Parts of that were really hard. Not so much, you know, in part because it's not my period, but also because I feel like the way a lot is, maybe especially for the 1933-52 period, a lot of that history is political history. Since I didn't want the book to be straight political history, it was sometimes. I found that sometimes difficult. Also the fact that you have all these revolutions and coups and you have to narrate them because you can't leave them out, but you don't want the book to be only that. So I thought that was difficult. The revolution was also difficult, too, just because it's so contested and it's such a landmine and. Yeah, so. But. But at the same time, it was. It was kind of a fun. It was hard, but it was a fun. Well, no, well, yeah, it was. It was the tough. It was tough. Sometimes rewarding, I would say. Not always fun, but. But yeah, writing about the revolution just because it's. It's. It's so polarized and you can write something and imagine how someone's going to read it and how the opposite of that person is going to read it. Right? So there's a lot of that.
- [31:08]
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- [31:49]
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- [32:21]
Steven Rodriguez
I want to now kind of shift to thinking about some for listeners who might not be too familiar with Cuban history, one of the kind of defining pieces of aspects of the US Cuban relationship is the Platt Amendment. So maybe you could just speak a bit about what the Platt Amendment was. Why was it so important and just this idea of sovereignty and the importance of sovereignty for Cuba and how that has been an essential part of the rhetoric of the many Cuban revolutions, including the 59 revolution and to this day how it is still a huge theme in US Cuban relations.
- [33:00]
Ada Ferrer
Right? Well, yeah. I mean the Platt Amendment is something. Well, before we get to the Plat amendment is hugely important. You can't understand it at all without saying a tiny bit of something about Cuban independence. And that is to say that the struggle for Cuban independence took to Cuban independence from Spain, I should say, was a 30 year struggle from 1860 to 1898. Right. Three wars, deep concerted organizing and writing in favor of Cuban independence, a process that overlapped with the end of slavery and with the mobilization of slaves and formerly enslaved people. Okay, so that's 30 years. The US intervenes at the very end of that process in what is known as the Spanish American War, and then occupies Cuba militarily from 1899 to 1902. Now in that so the US is the ruler of Cuba and when the Spanish flag comes down, it's the American one that replaces it. What the Americans did, you know, over that time was, was change the goalpost for Cubans. So when they first intervened, the Americans said that they would leave Cuba once it was pacified after, you know, after the last war, then Cuba was pacified and the Americans and they said, we'll leave when Cubans prove themselves capable of self government. Then you had elections and a Constitutional convention and all went smoothly and still the Americans weren't leaving so the Americans changed the goalpost again and said basically that what would prove that the Cubans were capable of self government was their acceptance of something called the Platt Amendment. And the Americans wanted the Platt Amendment adopted into the Cuban Constitution. And it was as an appendix to that original charter. What the Platt Amendment did was give the US the right to intervene in Cuba militarily, uninvited by the Cuban government. It limited the Cuban government's ability to incur debt or to enter into a treaty with a third country. It set aside land for what became the Guantanamo Naval base. So basically it limited Cuban sovereignty, right, because it explicitly made the task of preserving life, liberty, et cetera. It put that in the hands of the US government rather than the ostensibly sovereign Cuban government. And Cuba's presented it deeply and it shaped a lot of what Cuban history was in the first decades of the republic. The US intervened multiple times as a result of the Platt Amendment. So it's something that, and the Americans said it themselves. The US Governor of Cuba said it at the time, and Cuban politicians said it at the time that under the Plat Amendment, Cuba basically didn't really have independence and or they had a fiction around of a republic. And so that's the history that's part that Fidel Castro has invoked or had invoked for decades and decades. The idea of the US coming in at the end of Cuban independence and frustrating the revolution for independence from Spain, of imposing the Platt Amendment and then intervening multiple times. And I think that is something that for the most part American statesmen and general American readers didn't deeply understand, either deeply or maybe at all. So that when the Cuban revolution came in 1959, when it happened, Americans rushed to understand it, especially as tensions heightened. They put it always within the frame of the Cold War and of the US struggle with the Soviet Union and the struggle between communism and capitalism. But the Cuban Revolution, to really understand it, can't be understood only in that frame. You have to put it in the frame of this, of a long struggle and this long kind of confrontation over Cuban sovereignty that dates back to the end of the 19th century.
- [37:22]
Steven Rodriguez
Well, thank you for that overview. It's really helpful. It is interesting especially to see how the sovereignty question plays such a large part or concern, plays such a large part in fields like public health in Cuba. Kind of thinking of the current moment, the pandemic, Cuba developing three different vaccines and using those and I guess eventually as plans to, to sell them to the rest of Latin America. This is just fascinating to see the legacy of these Things and then manifesting in our, in our current period. I don't know if you want to comment on that, but, you know, in general.
- [37:59]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, I think because Americans haven't understood that, you know, the significance of the idea of sovereignty in, in Cuban history. They don't realize, I think, when they say things that, that, that are completely counterproductive for them to say, you know, so. Yeah, so, you know, the. So when the Americans start talking about. Or not just, you know, not the American government, but American people or Cuban Americans talk about a possible intervention and, or humanitarian intervention, et cetera, without realizing the, you know, the. How deep the rhetoric of sovereignty is and how important it's been. It's just, it doesn't. It's just completely counterproductive.
- [38:53]
Steven Rodriguez
I want to come to the title of the book, and I know you've likely gotten a lot of questions about that and you. You talk about it in your introduction, but, you know, you've called Cuba an American history. I think throughout the book you destabilize the idea of America and American and what it means. Like, to whom this label belongs. Is it Cubans American? How does it apply to Latin America? And all this raises lots of questions about what we mean by the idea of like Latin America versus American. And I find that really generative and useful because in our kind of everyday, in conversations, we tend to not think so much about that. Could you talk a little bit about.
- [39:40]
Ada Ferrer
Right. So there's a way in which I could have just called the book Cuba a history. Right. But it just didn't seem. It seemed. Sounded boring. Yeah. Level. It sounded a little too. Just straightforward and flat. And so my thinking was. Well, there were several things that led me to. To go for that title. One is that because I'm writing in English for a US audience, so I think those readers will be particularly interested in the role of the US in all this. So in that way, it's an American history. Referring to the U.S. right. There's also. But part of what I wanted to do or what I think is that any history of a place that is so deeply connected to the United States. Right. To study that history means that you are gaining perspective on the US itself. So while it's a history of Cuba, I do really think that reading it could give American readers a different kind of perspective into the US because the US Is in the book, you know, a lot, but in ways that maybe American leaders haven't always encountered because it's coming from kind of the outside in. So I like to think of it as. Sometimes I refer to it as a kind of shadow history of the US where leaders will learn, might glimpse at different moments their own country, but through the eyes of another, or seeing it from the outside in. So then that's partly why I called it in American history. And then also because the term itself is so. Is contested and unclear. And I, And I like that, you know, that Americans often think that it applies to them, but for a lot of the world, it doesn't just apply to them. Right. It applies as much to, you know, Canadians and Mexicans and Argentines and Cubans and everyone in the Americas. So I felt like just that in itself is quite, you know, does what I just told you. Right. It kind of gets US readers to see the US maybe slightly different because they're looking at it from the outside in.
- [41:53]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's an incredibly valuable exercise for a lot of Americans, US citizens to. And residents to go through.
- [42:03]
Ada Ferrer
Sorry, if I could just say something else. I mean, you talked about the personal beginning. I mean, it kind of links with that too, then in some sense, you know, for. For someone who grows up, you know, between two places or someone who's an immigrant, you. You do that all the time. Right. You see, you know, you see, you know, you see the country you're living in from the outside in. Right. From the perspective of your parents. You see your parents or your. Your home community from the perspective of your adopted community. Right. So I feel like. Like that's something again. It's. I feel like part of my DNA. So I wanted to make that come alive in the book a little bit in my method.
- [42:46]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah. Those lines are very much blurred for lots of folks.
- [42:51]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, exactly.
- [42:52]
Steven Rodriguez
So a related question. So it's very clear that the US history and Cuban history are very much entangled because of lots of cultural relations, political, economic, etc. But what about Cuba's relationship with the rest of Latin America? And I want to ask this question both in terms of, within scholarship, within historiography, Cuba's place within Latin American studies, and thinking about Cuban studies as a field, how do those interact, but also just in the ways in which perhaps Cubans or Cuban Americans think about themselves vis a vis the rest of Latin America. Always found it kind of very fascinating there because there does seem to be, at least in the historiography, quite a separation. And this is true in other fields like Mexican studies, I'd imagine. But could you just speak about that?
- [43:43]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a. I think it's A fascinating question. I remember one time hosting an event and we had, you know, at the center for Latin American Cities here, we had someone on the panel who was Cuban, refer to someone who asked a question or who was on the panel who was Bolivian, and refer to them. Oh, as the Latin American said, almost as if he himself was a Cuban, was not Latin American. I mean, it was just this interesting moment. So I do think there's a really powerful, powerful Cuban exceptionalism. I think there's, you know, there's multiple sources for it. Some of it is historical. The fact that Cuban history doesn't always follow the, you know, the typical Latin American chronology going back to independence in particular. Right. That Cuba was. Was so late in achieving its independence and. And so on. But so I feel like it's, you know, and the fact that the US Intervened, you know, intervened militarily and actually, although the US did that in many, many places. But. But actually, scratch that, because the U.S. as we know, did that in dozens of places, especially in the beginning of the 20th century. But I do think the particular history of Cuban independence sometimes has. It sets it aside the same thing with the history of the Cuban Revolution that it. The fact of its relationship to the Soviet Union, the Cold War, very close relationship to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War also gave it a particular kind of. Particular and singular kind of profile. So I think there's some actually historical reasons for why that happens sometimes. But I also think that there's. There's a report, obviously Cuba is a Latin American country, and the actors, the historical actors themselves deal with that all the time and sometimes want to highlight that in terms thinking about the 1930s or the 1920s or 30s. And the strong links to movements in Mexico and Latin America are really important similarities between, say, the Cuban Constitution of 1940 and other progressive constitutions and agrarian laws across Latin America in the same period, thinking about even independence itself and, you know, the extent to which Latin American countries thought about Cuban independence in the 19th century. There's a history there that's a broader American America's history that comes in and out of focus in my book. But that I think. I think there's room to do much more with.
- [46:45]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, I mean, I think in the book partially. I mean, you see moments when, like, Cuban politicians or elites invoke, when they decide to invoke the Cuban identity versus the kind of Latin American identity and kind of thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of both. And that's a really fascinating dynamic in the history.
- [47:04]
Ada Ferrer
Right. And of course, Mati himself, I mean, you know, himself with his S AR American. A lot of his writing, I mean, and the fact that he wrote for so many Latin American newspapers and surface console for Latin American countries in the US that you know that there's a. There's a strong pan Latin American consciousness that, you know, that, that that's there as well, that I think hasn't been explored enough.
- [47:28]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, you use the term Cuban exceptionalism before, and I kind of like thinking about that and thinking about sort of comparative exceptionalisms. But I'm wondering for you, when you were writing the book and maybe this happened earlier in your previous work, were there moments when you were thinking about stories that you had heard about Cuba maybe as a child or later on in life, and you're kind of in the archive or reading secondary work and had to kind of be like, well, this is just wrong. And this is clearly something that is part of the mythology or kind of an exceptionalist claim that doesn't really hold up. Were there moments when you were perhaps having some cognitive dissonance of what you had heard versus what you had encountered as a scholar?
- [48:13]
Ada Ferrer
Actually, I'm sure there's many moments like that. The one that comes to mind is less. I mean, it's not anything I had heard as a child, but this idea that is so. It's so central in Cuban historical writing or historical writing about Cuba, which has to do with independence. And because Cuban independence does not follow the Latin American norm. Right. As you know, most of Latin America became independent between 1810 and 1826, and Cuba didn't. And so there's a way in which 19th century Cuban history is often posed as a question like, why didn't Cuba. Why didn't Cuba become independent? Why was Cuban independence so late? And that's often the train. The term that's used is this term of lateness. But then I remember as I got more into Caribbean history and thought, wait a minute, it's not late at all, actually, if you think about the Caribbean, there's no norm. There's, you know, there's Haiti, there's Santo Domingo, there's Cuba, there's the British Islands, there's the French. You know that, like, there is no norm. And so the central, the central question or central theme of 19th century history kind of goes out the window, right. That exceptionalism vanishes when you just shift the context in which you put it a little bit.
- [49:32]
Steven Rodriguez
Thanks for that. I was wondering, this book we've been talking about, how it's in a lot of ways aimed at an American audience or U.S. audience. Are there plans to have this book translated into Spanish? And if so, how do you think a Latin American would understand? I mean, a Cuban or someone from a Latin American, another Latin American country would, you know, would think about this book, and how would their kind of reaction perhaps differ from, you know, an American US reader?
- [50:04]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I'm hoping that it gets translated. I very much want it to get translated into Spanish. There's no firm plans yet, so we'll just have to see. I think people in Cuba would be really interested to read it, and I think they may not agree with everything in it. I mean, they won't agree amongst themselves. Right. But I think they'll appreciate that. That it is this kind of more, you know, you might call, like, epic history on a human scale, that it's such a peopled history. I think that will appeal to them. I think. I think they will see it as balanced, some of them, but. So I think. And then in terms of how it would be read elsewhere, that, I mean, it's. I don't know, we'll just have to wait and see. See, I wonder sometimes if Spanish, how it would be read in Spain, for instance, where the vision of Cuba is very different than in Latin America or in Cuba itself.
- [51:17]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah. I imagine that's like a really satisfying part about writing a book. You write the thing, you're working on it. If you show it to a few people to read drafts, but then it's out in the world, you're sort of done with it. But you hear people's reactions, either through book reviews or doing events, podcasts, whatever the. So it's. I'd imagine it's usually probably pretty satisfying.
- [51:40]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, it is.
- [51:41]
Steven Rodriguez
By times when it's not. So as a final question, I just wanted to ask what you're thinking about doing next. Do you have something in the works?
- [51:55]
Ada Ferrer
I don't have anything in the works. I have some ideas, but they're all very premature. So. Yeah, we'll have to see.
- [52:03]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, this after. This is kind of a tour de force to write a book of this.
- [52:10]
Ada Ferrer
Length, but I have a really hard time not knowing what I'm working on. So I keep. Like, what am I working on? What am I trying to figure that out? Yeah, yeah, trying to. I'm trying to. Actually, I wrote this book because one reason was that I couldn't decide what to do next. Second book, you know, the second book was on Cuban Haiti and I decided that I wanted to go back and do a Cuban book, not continue the, the, the Cuba Haiti work. And but I couldn't decide what to do. Like do I, you know, so I had all these different ideas from different periods and I thought I'll just write all of it. I'll write the history of Cuba and and then that'll let me see what I'm most interested in and that'll be my next, you know, monograph. But actually writing the book did not I, I found it all, most of it really interesting and I couldn't decide.
- [52:58]
Steven Rodriguez
Yeah. So well, great. Well, I'll look forward to, to whatever it is that comes next. Thank you so much for your time for this wonderful conversation and most importantly for the, for the book.
- [53:11]
Ada Ferrer
Yeah, well, thanks for reading it and for and for and for talking about it. It was fun. Sam.