04/12/2024 - The Cold War: Education and Socialist Europe-Cuba Relation

WHEN: Wednesday 4 December 2024, 13:30–14:50

WHERE: MUP Strašnice building, Dubečská 900/10, Hall 003

Within the highly restricted Archive of the Cuban Ministry of Culture sit dozens of forgotten files, each labeled after the names of the Eastern European art professors who spent extended periods teaching in Cuba. They are windows into their lives and work, revealing information about their everyday challenges, how they navigated Cuban bureaucracies, the work they did, how they related to their Cuban colleagues, among many other aspects of their assignment in socialist Cuba.

Understanding their experiences expands previous scholarship, which has mainly focused only on the presence of Latin American and other Global South students and workers in Eastern European socialist countries. Drawing upon these rich and untapped primary sources, the presentation sheds light on the other side of the relationship, while also inquiring into the Cuban government officials’ handling of their guests. It uncovers the forms of surveillance and control, the expectations of the professors’ work, the contradiction between the precarity of their living conditions and their status as professional experts, among other issues.

In doing so, the presentation highlights the role of the arts in negotiating power relations on the ground, bringing attention to a little understood dimension of the relationship between Cuba and the Eastern European Socialist Bloc.