Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

12 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
the urban renewal of Havana, where previously privately owned residences in
Old Havana (the original colonial town) are being adapted into multifamily
units for poor families in a way that restores their historic beauty. In Revolutionary
Cuba, archaeology is part of social progress. In the United States, it is
viewed as a gnatty impediment to progress or at best an irrelevant amusement.
I found that rather than the politics of the Revolution hindering archaeological
research, in my sub¤eld they had stimulated it. Cuban archaeologists
have been given carte blanche to pursue their research in the historic district
of Havana in a way unimaginable in our “free,” capitalist society, where scholarly
pursuits are actually quite restricted by private property rights and pro¤t
orientation. Certainly, much of Havana’s urban archaeology is motivated
by the pride of Cubans in their heritage. It also serves explicitly nationalist
narrative-building by the Cuban government, but one should not be too
quick to disparage the outcomes of nationalist or civic-minded archaeology.
Were there more of it in the United States, I suspect we would be able to ¤ll
in a lot of nagging research gaps, not to mention be able to block the destruction
of prehistoric mound sites, colonial forts, and historic cemeteries by the
private developer’s backhoe.
The incommensurability of the state of urban archaeology in New Orleans
and Havana was one of the reasons I decided to abandon my ambition for a
comparative project in the form of a dissertation. I needed ¤rst to get archaeology
up to snuff back home (which itself may take a revolution, at least in
the way public money is allocated in Louisiana). The second reason was perhaps
more predictable. The prickly bureaucracies of both countries, built on
a history of mutual fear, resentment, and downright pettiness, made me worry
that permitting hang-ups could prolong the completion of my degree interminably.
I imagined being left forgotten in a jail cell somewhere, all because
of some paperwork peccadillo. I had slipped into Cuba during a period when
regulations were being loosened for research travel in the late Clinton era. The
election of George W. Bush in 2000, I feared, would have a cooling effect on
Cuba-U.S. relations.
This has indeed happened on the diplomatic front with a war of words
exploding between the U.S. and Cuban governments soon after September 11,
2001. In May 2004, the Bush administration imposed new travel and humanitarian
aid restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. Recently, the U.S.
Treasury has even attempted to restrict the exchange of ideas by prohibiting
U.S. publishers from editing or marketing works by Cuban authors, a condition
which has delayed the publication of this very volume. There is no more