You’ll never see Fidel Castro on a pedestal

A huge Cuban flag flutters in the courtyard of the Museum of the Revolution. Havana, 2018. (Vangmayi Parakala/MEDILL)

HAVANA: As we walk through the Museum of the Revolution, where Cuba’s one-party government celebrates its continuing struggle against tyrannical forces real and imagined, we pass a sculpture with three figurines, the heroic triumvirate of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.

They stand as if charging ahead, wind in their hair and a sense of purpose in their chiseled frames.

Some of us wander off to take pictures of the imposing former presidential palace that houses the museum. But the guide gathers us here, and invites us to pay attention to this carving.

“Remember this sculpture,” she says with an unmistakable hint of devotion in her voice. “This is the last one of Fidel Castro that will ever be made. He made sure of it.”

At Castro’s direction, the Cuban government passed a law shortly after his death in 2016, that prohibited the creation of images or representations of him. Raul Castro, who became president in 2008, told the nation of his brother’s wishes.

As she speaks, it occurs to me that this was Fidel’s act of ultimate sacrifice. A man who all but single-handedly shaped Cuba’s life for decades, whose face still stares from billboards, and whose trademark beard is still mimicked by 22-year-olds with skinny faces, makes clear that Cuba is bigger than him and the power of his last name.

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Later that evening, a colleague and I meet Luis Manuel and Yanelys Leyva, an artist couple working with Cuban artists and writers to create collaborative spaces of free expression.

The young couple meets us in a chic café and bar, where you can choose to sit in a low-ceilinged top floor area reminiscent of an attic, a breezy patio, or an underground space with the feel of a tavern.

Luis Manuel, tall and broad-framed, leads the way downstairs.

In the dim light, cocooned in a wooden booth, they start the conversation talking about their latest project. “We recently did a show in the Centre Pompidou, France,” Leyva says. “It was a satirical piece called Fidel Castro’s Last Words.”

But when the idea first occurred to them in January, they had to get the explicit permission of the Cuban government before they could put up the show.

“It’s a problem,” she says. “Because if you’re an artist and you want to work with the image of Fidel, it is illegal. It is prohibited.”

And just like that, a hero’s sacrifice in the tour guide’s world, plays out as state censorship in Leyva’s and Manuel’s. ▪️

This piece was first published here.