Imagined Homeland: Why does Cuba ignore May 20th, its independence day?

The history of a country is a collection of told facts, silenced facts, and invented facts. This jumble of facts leads to some difficult questions - especially if they come from your own child.

My daughters often ask me: When is Cuba's National Day? Nothing I tell them sounds convincing. I give them ambiguous answers that don't quite hit the mark. Many more questions follow: And what happens on that day? What is Cuba's traditional dress? What do Cubans traditionally eat? The vagueness of my answers only increases.

My daughters learned what constitutes a country in terms of traditions and symbols in Norway, where they have lived since they were two years old.

Like their parents, they were born in Cuba but have only returned a handful of times, less than we would like, so their memories are largely reconstructions based on photos, videos, and stories that vary slightly each time they are told.

May 17th is Norway’s National Day. It’s an important day for its people and they celebrate it for the signing of the Constitution of 1814, which marked Norway's independence from Denmark.

Few countries celebrate their independence day like the Nowegians do. They gather in large numbers in what is mostly a civilian affair that takes precedence over show of military power.

The Norwegian traditions of what to eat, what to wear, and what to do on this day are very clear.

Norway is my daughters’ model country. That's why they can't understand when I tell them that there is no such thing as a National Day in Cuba, that, well, there is, but it is not celebrated.

A forgotten history

What is commemorated in Cuba is October 10th, the day Carlos Manuel de Céspedes gave freedom to his slaves in 1868 to begin the fight for independence.

The other commemoration, not necessarily a celebration, is January 1st, the date marking Fidel Castro's rise to power. There is also July 26th, considered the Day of National Rebellion because that day in 1953 marks the beginning of the struggle that ended in 1959, with the Cuban Revolution.

All of these dates have been declared holidays in Cuba, but none of them have national traditions to uphold, no typical dress is worn, no specific activities are carried out with children, and don't even mention food.

Both January 1st and July 26th are directly linked to the process led by Fidel Castro. Likewise, the government's narrative has always been that the triumph of 1959 was nothing more than a new chapter in the armed uprising of October 10th, 1868, so this historical day has also been associated with the current government.

In much of Latin America, the national day has to do with independence from the Spanish empire. This is the case in Colombia (July 20th), in Venezuela (July 5th), and in Mexico (September 16th).

The day Cuba officially acquired independence was May 20th, 1902, the date on which the Cuban flag was first raised alone at Castillo del Morro.

In this way, Cuba became a Republic, a discredited one with terms like pseudo-republic or neo-colonial republic, because the idea has been spread that it is not until Castro's arrival that the country acquired the character of a fully independent republic.

Therefore, May 20th passes each year on the island without much significance, not even recognised as a holiday, but a large part of the Cuban diaspora has tried to rescue it and give the date a new life.

That day has been described as “the most beautiful day Cuba has ever had”, when after thirty years of war and four years of American intervention, Cuba finally achieved its independence from Spain. It was a day of celebration, relief, and popular rejoicing.

However, time and time again, this day has been denied the recognition it deserves.

Recently, President Díaz Canel vehemently refused to acknowledge the anniversary, considering it a day when Cuba merely passed into the hands of the United States, thus reaffirming that the dates Cubans should identify with their real independence are those recognised by the government of the last sixty years.

Unfortunately, in Cuba, the concepts of homeland and revolution have merged into a single notion. But homeland is not revolution, and a patriot is not a revolutionary, an anti-imperialist, and a socialist. These are distorted concepts.

Homeland is something else. It is much more than governments and political sympathies. Etymologically, the word in English results from the combination of home, land, and country, while in Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian, the equivalent word comes from the Latin patria, from the concept of “terra patria” (land of the fathers, ancestors).

This doesn't mean it's understood as the place of origin of the fathers; it's not about biological paternity but a social one, the homeland as a place of identification.

Around that place, a symbology is constituted, which is nothing more than a consensual representation. The problem arises when there is no consensus in that symbology, as is the case with the choice of a national day that is representative and a subject of identification for all Cubans.

Homeland is a concept that is constantly evolving; it cannot be thought of in the same terms as a century ago, especially when in the case of Cuba, approximately three million Cubans live outside the island (that’s 27 percent of the people who live in Cuba).

The diaspora has modified the world map, and in turn, the effect of the diaspora reconfigures the map of the place of origin, blurring its boundaries while recomposing and nurturing it. The way the subject is constructed in migration is a constant journey of back and forth and reconstruction of the nation. Perhaps the search for a day that represents us all is part of that reconstructive work done when emigrating.

What then remains for Cuban migrants than to embrace the adoptive country's holidays to build a place to belong, to relocate the symbols?

This is what I believe happens with many Cubans in the United States; who as soon as they arrive, embrace the celebrations of July 4th with a passion never before manifested. It is part of the integration process, one might say, but the fervour with which they become involved in a celebration that is alien to them, in my opinion, leads to the need to resignify their identity.

To reclaim May 20th, to stand in solidarity with this date so that it represents Cubans from both inside and outside, could be the key for all Cubans' imagined homelands to converge symbolically at one point.

Because every nation is an “imagined community”, which, as Benedict Anderson said, “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”.

Time passes, and when I have already forgotten about the subject, the question from my daughters returns: When did you say Cuba's National Day was? They ask for the data with a verifiable attitude, as if they need a few missing pieces to finally complete their puzzles.

I see in them an eagerness for grasping, an avidness for constructing a country, for affiliating with a collective consciousness, for making a homeland in the image and likeness of the known, with the same ingredients.

Because a homeland needs a flag, an anthem, a national day, a traditional dress, and above all, it needs us to imagine it, to contribute our own touch so that it doesn't transform the flavour in such a way that the dish remains just one more of its type but at the same time offers a certain singularity.

It's a confusing, abstract, and constant search for the individual and the collective.

To those who, like my daughters, grow up in a place different from that of their parents, there is nothing left but to invent a homeland, another one, distant, unfocused, decentralised, deterritorialised, a scattered homeland, with a bit from here and a bit from there. Stew-homeland, Frankenstein-homeland.

Imagined homeland? Aren't they all? According to Jorge Luis Borges, nobody is the homeland, not even the symbols, but we all are. Homeland is an invention inherent to us, one necessary and perpetual. It is an anchor, lineage, travel insurance, faith, all of that, and also essential luggage for my daughters' journey, and for everyone's.