Remembering Cuba's Past / Discovering Its Future: Giving Voice to Memory in Uva De Aragón's the Memory of Silence

Abstract

The theme of memory tied to family - or memory through family - has a strong presence in the Latin American literature. Cien anos de soledad, in which the memory of five generations of the Buendia family is recorded and chronicled, perhaps serves as the most commonly cited example. Ironically, the very same medium - the familial chronicle - ultimately results in its own un-doing. As Jose Arcadio reads about his own act of reading the family's memoirs, or rather as he becomes aware of his own act of remembering, the novel reaches an insurmountable obstacle of infinity. He remembers remembering. He discovers discovery. In general, there are also a number of authors among the American exile diaspora who focus on an imagined community and the memory of, and through, family. For example, works by Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia and Edwidge Danticat often entail a dynamic relationship among memory, family and political circumstance. More specifically, the political authoritarianism of Trujillo (in Alvarez), Fidel Castro (in Garcia) and Duvalier (in Danticat) has altered the dynamic. The dominating political voice has attempted to create a vacuum, a silenced subaltern. More than merely recovering memory, then, literature in these particular instances serves to uncover silence and to re-endow the character(s) with a voice. As Gloria Andalzua (1987) writes, 'I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence' (81). Andalzua does not posit that her voice has been forgotten; it has never been heard. In a similar vein, Uva de Aragon's The Memory of Silence (2014; Memoria del silencio 2002) reflects upon recent Cuban history, in particular the separation of family brought about by the Cuban Revolution. By giving voice to her characters, she attempts to recover Cuba's past and contemplate what may become of future familial relationships.The Memory of Silence explores the divergences and commonalities in the lives of two sisters separated at the outset of the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, at the age of 18, the twin sisters Lauri and Menchu share a common past, but their lives abruptly take on seemingly irreconcilable differences as Menchu remains in Havana and Lauri leaves with her groom for Miami. The physical separation and resultant emotional split between the two lead to a mutual sense of betrayal and rejection. They both feel abandoned and cut off from communicating with the other. For the next 40 years, both lead distinct lives in terms of their daily concrete realities yet, often unknowingly, they share common milestones, attitudes, values and intimate secrets. Throughout the text, the reader is a witness to and comes to understand the various circumstances that give rise to a range of emotions: nostalgia, regret, disillusionment, bitterness, confusion and - above all - a longing for the other. In short, each sister wants to come to know the other, to come to know her other half, and, thus in reality, herself. To do so, both seek to give voice to the memory of the other, a memory which for four decades has gone unspoken and not shared and, in a sense, not lived. But by unsilencing memories, De Aragon develops an allegorical summation of Cuba's recent past. She does so by envisioning the twin protagonists not as separate characters but as a singular part of a greater whole, separated by the Floridian Straits which serve as an aquatic iron curtain:I look across the horizon and it seems like there's some type of barricade that divides in two the things I love the most. Over there, my brother and sister, my uncles and aunts, my cousins that I don't even know, and so many friends ... Back here, my mother, lazaro, my daughter, Pedritin, the dead I've buried, the countryside, my city, my country ... And that line in the sea that separates us hurts so much. (199)Menchu comes to symbolise the island-state of Cuba, while Lauri stands for all that which pertains to the Cuban diaspora; but as the novel unfolds, the reader perceives each story as a complementary portion of the greater narrative. …