This thesis explores how the Cuban writer and anthropologist, Lydia Cabrera, experienced exile following the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Cabrera’s personal letters and photos show that she endured a nontypical exile experience. Instead, Cabrera is an example of a transnational exile, because throughout her life she remained both professionally and personally connected to people in multiple locations. Although discussion regarding the Cuban Revolution describes its transnational scope, for Cabrera and similar transnational figures, the events of 1959 meant a disruption to their longstanding international networks. In this way, this thesis will present evidence of Cabrera’s transnational connections and her response to disruption of these networks from 1960 – 1962. Key sources for this thesis can be found in the archival holdings at the University of Miami’s Cuban Historical Collection in Coral Gables, FL.

Lydia Cabrera, the acclaimed 20th-century Cuban writer and ethnographer, is widely recognized for her pioneering studies, beginning in the 1920s, of Afro-Cuban religions and cultures. The broad scope of her contribution to Cuban culture, one that encompasses both Cuba’s African and European cultural heritage, however, has been all but overlooked in critical studies. Often categorized as either fiction or ethnography, Cabrera’s work tends to be dismantled and the various pieces, when not altogether ignored, relegated to critical study from distinct academic disciplines (anthropology and literary studies, and to a lesser extent, lexicography and ethnomusicology). In this study I set aside these disciplinary distinctions by viewing the different parts of Cabrera’s career as a coherent whole. In conjunction with her Afro-Cuban story collections and her extensive ethnographic work documenting Afro-Cuban cultures, which produced not only El monte but also dictionaries and glossaries of Afro-Cuban languages and traditions, I examine Cabrera’s lesser known projects related to Cuba’s colonial European cultural foundations, and particularly her work on decorative arts and the restoration and curation of Cuba’s colonial architecture. I argue that these apparently unrelated and even conflicting facets of her career are not only related but in fact indivisible. To bring together her work on Afro-Cuba and her work on Cuba’s Spanish colonial history, I address two physical and conceptual spaces that overlap and intersect in Cabrera’s career as they do in Cuban culture: the vieja casa criolla, or the traditional Cuban home, and the monte—the sacred ancestral forest. Part I of my study centers on the vieja casa criolla, an intimate and majestic space characterized by Spanish colonial architecture, period furniture and decorative arts. I use the concept of the vieja casa criolla broadly to include religious architecture and artistic traditions associated with Cuba’s Spanish colonial influences. I propose that Cabrera’s work to conserve Spanish colonial architecture and antiques beginning in the 1920s and continuing through the 1950s was not an aberration in her career but integral to her effort to create a living archive of Cuba’s cultural history, both African and European. In the same way that she painstakingly documented Afro-Cuban religions, oral traditions, and cultural practices, she worked to conserve, restore and promote Cuba’s European material culture. Part II of my study focuses on the physical and textual spaces of the monte in Cabrera’s work and in Afro-Cuban culture. I explore the monte (the place) in Cabrera’s fiction and ethnographic writing and move into a discussion of El monte (the book). As the home to Afro-Cuban spirits and the source of traditions and ritual objects, I demonstrate that the monte mirrors Cuba’s casa criolla and religious architecture. Accordingly, in El monte and its complementary studies of Afro-Cuban liturgical languages and customs Cabrera curates the plants and mythology of the monte in the same way that she does her art and antique exhibitions. Cabrera’s conservation of colonial architecture and her documentation of Afro-Cuban religions and cultures together represent integral components for understanding and preserving Cuba’s cultural history.

Thesis (M.A.)--St. John's College, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 70).

Thèse--Neuchâtel. / "Sources manuscrites et bibliographie": p. [599]-614.

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This dissertation studies the influence of film on the works and careers of Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba, 1929- ) and Manuel Puig (Argentina, 1932- ). Emphasis is put on their critical views, fiction, and filmscripts. Generic, thematic, and technical questions concerning film and their works are discussed, without, however, an attempt at exhaustiveness. After an introduction in Chapter 1, the next chapter addresses the relationship of Cabrera to the film, a topic developed more fully in Chapter 3. As the critic of Un oficio del Siglo 20 (1973) and Arcadia todas las noches (1978), he is placed in the "auteurist" tradition, a view which he later modified. Chapter 3 further discusses his concept of film. The next two chapters concern his critical collections. Mythic, generic, and aesthetic areas are treated. The basis for a continuity with his major fiction is demonstrated. In Chapter 6, Vanishing Point (1969-70) is studied from generic and mythic perspectives. The filmscript is used in preference to the film, which severely revised it. The two major fictional works of Cabrera, Tres tristes tigres (1965), and La Habana para un Infante Difunto (1979), are analyzed in Chapters 7 and 8 with reference to filmic allusions, connections to his criticism, and technique. Generic continuity is demonstrated in both works, while Chapter 8 also concerns the mechanisms of parody and of "blasphemy" against the "temple" of film. The next chapter is a comparative overview of Puig and Cabrera. Common (and divergent) directorial and generic interests are discussed, as well as the influence of certain directors on the work of Puig. Molina, from El beso de la mujer arana (1976), is placed within a context of gay movie tastes. Chapter 10 is partially devoted to two filmscripts by Puig, La cara del villano and Recuerdo de Tijuana (originally published in 1980), the first as an adaptation of a literary work and the second as an example of film noir. The chapter also deals with Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), an adaptation of the novel by Puig. Chapter 11 briefly concludes the study.

This project focuses on African American and Afro- Hispanic literature and folklore. Specifically, I employ Fernando Ortiz’s theory of transculturation. Ortiz makes the case that a new Afro- Cuban identity is created with the intermingling of African, Spanish and native inhabitants of Cuba. Using Ortiz’s critical framework as the foundation of my study, I undertake a new critique of Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal of African American identity. Analyzing Hurston’s work through the model of transculturation, I examine the parallel between her work and that of Lydia Cabrera, a Cuban ethnographer whose work represents Afro-Cuban identity as a transcultural one. Establishing this comparison, I reflect on the similarities and differences among their strategies of representing Transculturation in African- based identities. I look at their works from a womanist lens to analyze how their female anthropologist status influenced their folkloric portrayals and how they enacted a political agenda that emphasized female agency. I also analyze the oral aesthetic of their texts; in my opinion, Hurston and Cabrera reproductions of the spoken are ways to represent transcultural dialogue. Finally I compare their ethnographic studies of the African- based spiritual systems of Santeria and Voodoo.

This thesis contextualizes the work of artist Margarita Cabrera within Chicano, postcolonial, and feminist theories, and specifically places her work within discourses surrounding the United States-Mexico border. I address the evolution of Cabrera’s sculptural work from her initial Desert Plants to the collaborative, community-based workshop Space in Between, which prompted her incorporation of Florezca, a for-profit social enterprise. I discuss how Cabrera’s collaborative art-making process and founding of a corporation are strategic methods to challenge and attempt to change oppressive political systems in the United States that disenfranchise undocumented Latino immigrants. / text

The purpose of the present study is to examine the theme of literature in Rayuela (Julio Cortázar, 1963) and Tres tristes tigres (Guillermo Cabrera Infante, 1967), taking into account the importance of this theme within the socio-historical and intellectual context of 1960's Latin America, an era characterized not only by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in the political field, but also the height of poststructuralist literary theory, which arrives in Latin America via Europe. As we will see, the convergence of these two historical and literary moments implies the co-existence in Latin America of a call for a politicized literature that supports revolutionary efforts, and a crisis in terms of our ideas about language and its possibilities of representation with great implications for any critical debate regarding literature and its relation to extra-literary "reality". We will first present an overview of the critical debates regarding the "role" of literature and its relationship with extra-literary "reality" in the context of revolutionary Latin America, focusing on specific criticism of Rayuela and Tres tristes tigres. We will see that in spite of the fact that some revolutionary criticism has accused these texts of nihilism and escapism due to their playful, open structures, a reconsideration of Rayuela and Tres tristes tigres in light of the Poststructuralist theories of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes--which maintain that language does not "reflect" a pre-existing reality, but rather "signifies" or "creates" the "reality" that we perceive as real within the discourse of our society--demonstrates that the true ethical value of these texts resides in their challenge of the discursive violence that dominates in our extra-literary space, and their constant deconstruction and "re-writing" of "reality" in order to suggest new ways to see and live. Subsequently, we will examine the use of literary parody in these texts to highlight the historicity of all language, and consider how these texts define literature as a vital, existential attitude: we should live as literature, treating our reality like a "text" that can constantly be deconstructed and re-written so that no lie can gain status as an irrefutable truth.

La terrisseria medieval de Cabrera d'Anoia constitueix un centre productor de referència per a la comprensió de les tècniques de fabricació de ceràmica en època medieval en el que hem convingut en anomenar Sistema de Producció en Gruta. Aquest jaciment singular se situa al peu d'un altiplà, en el terme municipal de Cabrera d'Igualada, sobre tres terrasses successives. La característica fonamental de l'entorn que acull aquest centre i que afavoreix el seu assentament és l'alternança de nivells geològics de duresa diferent que afavoreixen la creació d'abrics i coves naturals. Aquestes zones arrecerades foren sistemàticament aprofitades per a la instal·lació dels tallers i les característiques de l'entorn van afavorir també l'excavació de forns a la roca. Tanmateix, el relleu agrest i accidentat i la reducció dels espais disponibles van condicionar l'assentament en àmbit rupestre d'un gran centre de producció de ceràmica. Les limitacions espacials van obligar al aprofitament continuat d'estructures obsoletes i a l'optimització de l'espai, tot desplaçant sovint l'activitat a mesura que s'esgota el terreny ocupat a causa de l'esfondrament dels forns i les balmes. El major període d'activitat documentat data del segle XIII i la producció es dedicava pràcticament de forma exclusiva a la fabricació d'olles i algunes altres formes minoritàries en relació amb l'ús culinari. En el nostre treball de tesi doctoral presentem un estudi detallat tant dels forns de Cabrera d'Anoia i els obradors com dels materials recuperats als testers. El nostre treball suposa també el plantejament d'una proposta metodològica per a l'aproximació a grans volums de material ceràmic d'aquest tipus, on l'homogeneïtat i una certa monotonia de formes esdevenen les característiques principals dels productes. El treball parteix de la base de que una aproximació multidisciplinària és imprescindible per al coneixement en profunditat d'aquestes grans col·leccions procedents de centres productors. Així, en aquesta monografia hem treballat en conjunt amb la documentació escrita -certament escassa-, la documentació arqueològica, els estudis antracològics i paleocarpològics realitzats, les datacions per radiocarboni i l'anàlisi del material procedent dels testers. A fi de completar aquest estudi de materials hem dut a terme una anàlisi morfològica en profunditat que passa per la classificació dels materials en funció de tipus definits a partir de l'anàlisi de vores i la vectorització de línies corbes. Aquesta observació macroscòpica d'una mostra de 5000 fragments ens ha servit per seleccionar un centenar llarg de mostres que hem analitzat des del punt de vista petrogràfic a partir de l'observació de làmines primes a microscopi polaritzador i hem caracteritzat químicament i mineralògica per Fluorescència de Raigs-X i Difracció de Raigs-X. Per tot plegat, hem dividit el nostre treball en dues parts clarament diferenciades: la primera dedicada íntegrament a la descripció i interpretació de les instal·lacions del centre i de l'explotació del terreny, i la segona dedicada en exclusiva a l'estudi de la ceràmica. Adjuntem a més, en forma d'annexos, el catàleg complet de materials en forma de taules i làmines de fàcil consulta, un annex amb la descripció petrogràfica detallada de tots els grups i un darrer annex amb la caracterització química i mineralògica dels materials.El conjunt ens revela una producció d'aparença grollera, però altament funcional, que reflecteix la presència d'una tradició que avança a la recerca de la utilitat. El caràcter utilitari i robust de les peces correspon a una optimització dels recursos que l'entorn ofereix per produir a un cos relativament baix una vaixella molt especialitzada d'alta tecnologia que respon a la necessitat de satisfer una demanda concreta, el volum de producció de la qual i la seva llarga durada són un bon reflex del seu èxit. / EXTRACTE EN ANGLÈS: The medieval Kiln Site of Cabrera d'Anoia (Barcelona) is a pottery workshop which exemplifies properly what has being called Cave-Dwelling Pottery Producing System. Such workshops are placed in rocky areas mainly featured by its irregular relief, always combining alternating harder and softer geological strata. The natural caves and shelters are used to place the workshops and the kilns are cut into the natural surface. The reduced space determines the kiln site layout, which takes advantage of the area by enlarging the caves cutting them into the mountainside. Kilns replacement implies that that the fire chamber of a disused kiln was used as an entrance to the fire chamber of the new kiln being built. Consequently, there were lines or rows of kilns perpendicular to the mountain face.This study presents the whole interpretation of archaeological data. This piece of research analyzes deeply the fieldwork documentation and the sherd-collection from the waste dumps and it has been undertaken in order to provide an overview of the pottery produced on the site. The ceramic study has been carried out by means of shape definition, vector determination of angles and macroscopic observation of pastes for a 5000-sample-batch. From this collection, 100 individuals have been sampled in order to characterize their petrographic, mineralogical and chemical composition. Several analyses on ceramic petrography, X-Ray Diffraction and X-Ray Fluorescence allow us to feature pastes and to determine the production techniques and the raw materials technological choice.There is relatively little variation as regards forms. Globular vessels, including cooking pots and jugs for water carrying, casseroles, basins and lids make up the vast majority. The whole view about this site and its production sets up a reference collection which will allow future research projects related to provenancing medieval common cooking wares in a wide spread area.