The absolution of history: Uses of the past in Castro's Cuba

There are two transitions in question in the Cuban case, neither of which entirely fits the model of dictatorship to liberal democracy: 1) the actual transition form Batista's regime (1952-8), which was undeniably a dictatorship, to the revolutionary government; 2) the prospective transition from Castro's government, in relation to which the term dictatorship is not very illuminating, to an uncertain future. History has a key role in both processes. Louis A. Perez's claim that history served as 'handmaiden to the Cuban revolution', supplying 'moral subsidy and...a sense of continuity', provides the starting-point for my development of two main themes. The first theme, related to the first transition, concerns the conditions of production of the revisionist historiography appropriated by the revolutionaries, which was boosted by a degree of state sponsorship, ironically from Batista himself in the early 1940s. The second theme is the emergence during the 1990s of a critique of the regime's monopoly over Cuba's past, which has its roots in the revolutionary government's own promotion of historical research and debate in the 1960s, before the ideological clampdown of the 1970s and 1980s. In both periods, historians have tried to create a space--however restricted in practice--for civil society. The main comparative point to emerge from the Cuba evidence is that changes in historical perspective can precede and even anticipate political transition.