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Performing Revolution 151
which approximately ten thousand people subsequently did. U.S. President Jimmy
Carter then announced that the U.S. borders were open to “freedom-loving Cubans.”
On April 22 an announcement was made in Granma that any Cuban wishing to leave
could do so via the port of Mariel. The ensuing exodus included about 125,000 people,
some released from Cuban jails (including thousands of petty criminals), some
pressured to leave, and some leaving voluntarily.
Juan-Sí González recalls that the UJC asked young people to take part in actions
meant to demoralize those who were leaving—to shout, throw garbage, rob them,
pull their hair. He refused and was subsequently expelled from the organization.
40. The original membership of Los Once consisted of Francisco Lázaro Antigua
Arencibia, René Salustiano Avila Valdés, José Ygnacio Bermudez Vazquez, Agustín
Cárdenas Alfonso, Hugo Consuegra Sosa, Fayad Jamis Bernal, Guido Llinas Quintans,
José Antonio Díaz Pelaez, Tomás Oliva González, Antonio Vidal Fernández,
Viredo Espinosa Hernández, and Raúl Martínez González. Los Once was a more
homogeneous group than Volumen Uno in aesthetic terms, having coalesced under
the common denominator of abstract expressionism. Interestingly, this stylistic adherence
also had a clear ideological proWle, as was later the case with Volumen Uno.
According to Tonel: “in a historical context, the abstract expressionism favored by
many members of the group during this decade was undoubtedly seen as ‘insurgent,’
and it did turn out to be the most effective means of defying just about everything:
pre-existing art (the conventional academic tradition and everything it represented)
as well as the politics of the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista (including its
cultural initiatives).” Antonio Eligio (Tonel), “Cuban Art: The Key to the Gulf
and How to Use It,” in No Man Is an Island (Pori: Pori Art Museum, 1990), 70.
41. Tania Bruguera, interview with the author, Havana, January 4, 2002.
42. Cuba’s economic problems actually began accumulating before the catastrophic
blow of the withdrawal of Soviet support. Unlike much of Latin America,
Cuba’s economy grew from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. In addition to trade
with the socialist bloc, Cuba was receiving—and paying back—loans from the West.
But a series of factors combined to bring the economy to a halt. As economist
Andrew Zimbalist has summarized, “Low sugar prices, plummeting petroleum prices
(Cuba’s re-export of Soviet petroleum provided roughly 40% of its hard currency
earnings during 1983–85), devastation from Hurricane Kate, several consecutive years
of intensifying drought, drastic dollar devaluation, the tightening of the U.S. embargo
and growing protectionism in Western markets, all combined to reduce Cuba’s
hard currency earnings by $337.1 million, or 27.1%.” Cited in Medea Benjamin,
“Things Fall Apart,” in Cuba: Facing Challenge, 15.
43. The “process of rectiWcation of errors and negative tendencies” was initially
undertaken in order to tighten quality controls and work norms, weed out corrupt
administrators, and drive home the work ethic. It quickly took on the much more
ideological meaning of being a process of “purifying” the Cuban revolution. Castro,
in the speech “Che’s Ideas Are Absolutely Relevant Today,” delivered in 1987 at a
ceremony marking the twentieth anniversary of Che’s death and later published as
a postscript to Guevara’s Socialism and Man in Cuba, referred to rectiWcation in the
following terms: “What are we rectifying? We’re rectifying all those things—and
there are many—that strayed from the revolutionary spirit; from revolutionary work,
revolutionary virtue, revolutionary effort, revolutionary responsibility; all those things
that strayed from the spirit of solidarity among people. We’re rectifying all the shoddiness
and mediocrity that is precisely the negation of Che’s ideas, his revolutionary