Alternate Routes A Journal of Critical Social Research Presentation and Editorial Policy Alternate Routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal pub- lished annually by graduate students in the department of Soci- ology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Our mandate is to make Alternate Routes a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country. We are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. The editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and pro- vocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. Although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, mem- bers of the editorial board work within a feminist and marxist tradition. Therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. We also welcome commen- taries and reviews of recent publications. Editorial Board Nicole Bennett, Narinder Brar, Colleen Anne Dell, Christine Gervais, Dominique Masson, Chris Powell, Jeffrey Shantz, Roberta Lynn Sinclair, Antonio Sorge, Andreas Tomaszewski The editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Carleton University community: the department of Sociol- ogy and Anthropology and its chair, Jacques Chevalier; the Deans of Arts and Social Science, G.S. Adam and Bill Jones; the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Roger Blockley. We also wish to thank all the anonymous reviewers. Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research is in- dexed in: Sociological Abstracts; the Left Index. ® 1997 Alternate Routes Call For Student Papers Alternate Routes is seeking submissions for Volume 15, 1998. 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'".. - Introduction l Papers Lisa Drouillard Miami's Little Havana - A Nation in Exile ... 3 Nicole Bennett Global Village Chic: "Multicultural Fashion" and the Commodification of Pluralism 21 Work In Progress Emma Whelan Staging and Profiling: The Constitution of the Endometriotic Subject in Gynecological Discourse 45 Book Reviews Jeffrey Shantz Listen Anarchist! Murray Bookchin's Defence of Orthodoxy: Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism by Murray Bookchin Antonio Sorge Nationalism by Ernest Gel 1 ner 69 77 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Carleton University, Department of Sociology & Anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj14alte Introduction: Context, Content and Meaning in Interdisciplinary Perspectives The articles in this volume of Alternate Routes all examine and assess phenomena located within larger structures of mean- ing which are either politically or socially encompassing. They aptly illustrate how identity politics, artistic expression, and medical categories are elaborated within contexts defined by extant social or political discourses which play an integral role in the mediation of the very form and content of these foci of analysis. Additionally, these articles take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social phenomena, paying no more than nominal heed to the traditional divisions between the social science disciplines. Rather, they cross-cut these divisions, and locate their essence in the view that any phenomenon can be more appropriately accessible to understanding and its complexi- ties better appreciated if not approached from within rigid disci- plinary boundaries. In her article, Drouillard examines the processes of ethnic identity creation within the Cuban exile community in Miami. The difficulties of being caught between "two worlds"—Cuban and American—generate an hybridised Miami-Cuban identity, where the articulation and production of nationalist discourse is contextual ised within a setting which challenges successful inte- gration into US society. Central to her thesis is a recognition of the symbols representing the shared sacrifices of this "imagined community." Bennett deals with the reproduction of particular strands of current ethnic and racial discourse in the modern fash- ion industry. She considers the way in which artistic expression, in her case fashion, can be given to producing stereotypical im- ages of non-western peoples and commoditising their cultural products in ways that do little to promote greater cross-cultural understanding or appreciation. In the final piece, a work-in- progress, Whelan examines the role of expert knowledge in the "constitution of subjectivity" through a case study of the gynecological disease of endometriosis. Medical codifications of this disease, she suggests, construct an "endometriotic sub- ject" which causes research and treatment protocols to be framed in ways which can obscure patients' expressed concerns and ex- periences of the disease. She demonstrates, however, that pa- tient organizations are challenging these official categorisations, and raise the possibility of resistance to them. Each of these contributions, to reiterate, approach their topic from an interdisciplinary perspective which takes cognizance of the encompassing structures and contexts of meaning. It is an- ticipated that the scope of this contextual and interdisciplinary approach may provide material for consideration in social sci- ence research, and that this consideration may also lead to such research or an appreciation of research thus conducted. Miami's Little Havana - A Nation in Exile Lisa Drouillard Even a cursory analysis of the political discourse of Mi- ami's Cuban-American enclave is likely to jar one's understand- ing of what constitutes local politics and what lies within the realm of international affairs. Beyond the perennial focus of Miami's public officials on events outside of their borders, resi- dents and visitors display a confusion over the location and rel- evance of national boundaries. American tourists sense they have entered into a foreign land when visiting South Florida, Cuban immigrants living elsewhere "return" to Miami to feel at home in Havana, and travelers leaving the city may pass billboards read- ing: "Now re-entering the United States of America" (Rieff, 1987:29). When residents refer to Miami as a 'truly interna- tional city' or the 'capital of Latin America', they make refer- ence to many of the structural characteristics that have led a number of academic analyses to categorize Miami as a new 'glo- bal city', comparable in character and function with New York or London. Underlying the analysis that follows is the conten- tion that Miami's Cuban enclave has not contributed merely to the international flavor of the locale but has engaged in a proc- ess of 'nation-building' within the city. The article borrows from contemporary studies of nationalism which describe the nation as a "community imagined through the artifacts of collective sacrifice" (Balakrishnan, 1995:65). Benedict Anderson's (1991) conceptualization of the emer- gence of the nation and the spread of nationalist ideology has had a profound impact on the study of these phenomena. While Anderson's work has not escaped criticism, he has been widely acknowledged for having constructed a hypothesis which effec- Alternate Routes, Volume 14, 1997 tively relieves the tension between the "primordial" versus the "instrumental" definitions of the nation. 1 By defining national identity as a perceived membership in an imagined political com- munity, Anderson's work has initiated a more flexible applica- tion of the concept of nationalism which seems both appropriate and necessary in an era when nationalist loyalties are increas- ingly fragmented by the related processes of economic globalization and expanded autonomy of global cities in their interaction with the global economy. Anderson's more recent work on the emergence and spread of long-distance nationalist movements has noted that the hybridity of national cultures evi- dent in contemporary movements of "long-distance nationalism" does not differentiate these movements significantly from more conventional histories of national creation. Anderson points to several problematic features of these new forms of nationalism where participants are relieved of the demand for any commit- ment to any ultimate patriotic sacrifice, such as responding to a call to arms (Anderson, 1994:327). This article will examine the pertinence of Anderson's depiction of nationalist movements as "projects for coming home from exile, for the resolution of hybridity" and will emphasize the significance of military in- volvement in the creation of an imagined nation (Anderson, 1994:319). The case study will examine the discourse and activities of the dominant convention of Cuban-American nationalists and also the manner in which nationalist culture is reproduced in urban politics and the cultural landscape of Miami. The com- munity has distinguished itself politically by its tenacious at- tachment to a hyphenated national identity and by the involve- ment of many of its members in American foreign policy initia- tives. Here the creative tension between perceived "primordial" characteristics of national culture and the pragmatic adaptation by the Cubans to their place in political geography has devel- oped Little Havana's hybrid national character. Above and be- yond the aspirations of many Miami Cubans for the establish- ment of their sovereign control over their homeland, members of the community have created, as much as maintained, the po- litical, cultural and economic status of a nation in exile, await- ing not for the chance to rebuild Cuba, but to replace it. Migration, Communication and Sacrifice Anderson's work has focused on two significant factors which have generated nationalism that are closely linked to the broader dynamics in the rise of capitalism: mass communications and migration (1992:7). While his study of nation-building in Immagined Communities (1991) focuses mainly on institutions of nationalism that were established in tandem with the develop- ment of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, communica- tion/translation and displacement/exile remain as central fea- tures in the development of post-industrial nodes of production and management as well. Anderson identifies similarities in the processes of nation-building in different historical contexts and has proposed that the establishment of a common identity and sense of place involves either actual or imagined returns from exile. The Cuban enclave shares with the early American colo- nies a project of re-shaping the space where they have landed in the image of a place they remember. Exiles do not merely share an identity or destiny by virtue of a common birthplace, but also by their collective memories of being torn from it and through their efforts to (re-)create a New York or Little Havana. An un- derstanding of the commonalties between Cuban Miami's na- tionalist projects and the dynamics that shaped earlier construc- tions of other imagined communities helps to explain the cohe- siveness and trust which makes the enclave a powerful political and cultural force in the region. Struggles over language are important processes among the conditions of reception that help to solidify the formation of collective identity in immigrant communities. While the use of a common language may not be a sufficient condition for the establishment of institutions of loyalty and trust within a group of immigrants, the imposition of an official language of state on an immigrant group can sharply delineate the boundaries of a lingusitic community. The sense of exile is often strongest among young bilinguals, as Anderson (1994:319) has noted, who are educated in a language other than their mother tongue and can thus recognize the manner in which their own language is deval- ued by the state and the majority population. Reclaiming the vernacular becomes a significant component of the struggle for recognition of a national identity. While many immigrants may create a shared identity under conditions of alienation from both the host society and the send- ing nation, there is considerable skepticism over the extent to which the fraternal bonds of nationalism as a cultural system are sufficient to command fatal patriotic sacrifices. Gopal Balakrishnan (1995:66), and John Breuilly (1985:73) have each noted that the focus on the cultural and linguistic components of nationalism in Anderson's work is at odds with one of his cen- ^% tral organizing questions in Imagined Communities. What makes it possible, Anderson asks, "for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings?" (Anderson, 1991:7) Balakrishnan contributes an analysis of the experience of war as a significant force which calls up national imaginings which are generally dormant in everyday life: The purity and fatality of national imaginings do not arise spontaneously from the social organization of vernacular language, but through the risks of mem- bership in a 'community of life and death'. [The na- tion] speaks the voice of fate when it speaks in one voice, and this is usually and most pointedly in times of war (Balakrishnan, 1995:68) While contemporary 'long-distance nationalists', as Anderson notes (1992:13), are unaccountable for their political actions militarily, the Miami case provides evidence that the discourse of military valour is still a central animator of national imaginings. Miami's cenotaph for the soldiers lost at the Bay of Pigs serves as the nationalist symbol around which Cuban immigrants of varying political persuasions can recognise their common strug- gles and objectives. In the Miami context then, Balakrishnan's (1995:65) reformulation of the definition of the nation as "a community imagined through the artefacts of collective sacri- fice" seems very apt. A Refugee Showcase The Cuban population in Miami is comprised of individu- als from all classes, races and political leanings with diversity of experiences in both Cuba and the United States. Among the first wave of exiles (1959-62) the vast majority of the emigres either held direct political ties to the Batista government or were be- holden to a political and economic system that would collapse entirely with the withdrawal of American capital (Pedraza, 1992:237). Throughout the decade that followed, the exodus remained largely middle and upper-middle class. However as each year passed, it grew to represent the diversity of the Cuban population. By the time of the arrival of the Mariel boatlift in 1980, the makeup of the exodus had changed so dramatically that the new entrants were almost unrecognizable as Cubans to many members of the enclave. "There were not that many Blacks in Cuba," was an often heard remark in 1980, "these are Angolans" (de los Angeles Torres, 1990:33) 2 . Indeed, given the differences in national cultures and personal experiences between these groups of immigrants, the Mariel itos could just as well have arrived from a different continent. Despite the growing hetero- geneity in the emigre population, however, the discourse of ex- ile unity has been asserted with greater force with each passing decade and each new wave of emigres. The initial decision of the Eisenhower government to wel- come the first wave of Cuban immigrants to South Florida was ostensibly based on a calculation of humanitarian concerns, the propaganda value of a mass exodus from Cuba, and the possibil- ity of employing exile forces to overthrow the revolution (Masud- Piloto, 1996:33). Between 1959 and 1962, a population of over 153,000 immigrants emigrated to the Miami region, draining skilled workers and professionals from the Cuban labour mar- ket, and thrusting the resort town into the space of both Cold War politics and another country's national struggles (Azicri, 1982:56). Given the emigre's symbolic importance, the Cuban "exile colony" received a level of specialized care and a command of resources unparalleled in the history of U.S. immigration (Azicri, 1982: 59; Mohl, 1986:8). At an estimated cost of around one billion dollars, the Cuban Refugee Program invested in housing, healthcare facilities, education, and job placement (including assistance in the translation of job skills and professional quali- fications) (Masud-Piloto, 1996:49; Pedraza-Bailey, 1985:47). This obliging treatment provided the emigres with the financial, technical and human capital they would need both to succeed ^% economically and to re-establish many institutions of Cuban culture in a new locale. Not surprisingly, the program led to a significant increase in immigration. It also shaped the establish- ment of a set of political and socioeconomic interests in the Cuban community that were very different both from those of other U.S. minority groups and from the local population (Azicri, 1982:59). A significant component of the Cuban Refugee Program was the resettlement of thousands of emigres across the country to prevent an unmanageable concentration of refugees in Mi- ami. This settlement policy had an enormous impact on the cultural and political construction of Miami as a Cuban space given that the program effectively "exiled" thousands of Cubans from an imagined homeland in Miami (Allman, 1987:294; Portes and Stepick, 1993: 104). Only a decade after the costly resettle- ment project, thousands of Cubans had started to return to Mi- ami to vacation, to conduct business, and ultimately to reset- tle. 3 Many returning Cubans have expressed sentiments of home- coming emerging out of this last migration: From the moment I arrived, I knew I had returned to the Cuba that my parents had always described to me as a kid growing up in Los Angeles... And Miami is the only place where the Cuba they loved and taught me to love still exists (Dario Moreno, cited in Rieff, 1993:134) By 1980, the return of exiles from the North came to surpass both the flow of immigrants involved in the Mariel boatlifts from Cuba and the influx of Haitian refugees (Allman, 1987:324). As Cuban families gained the financial independ- ence to decline the foster care provided by the state, many re- turned to a place that had been transformed by visions of a Cu- ban home similar to those they may have harboured through their winters in Milwaukee or New Jersey. The engagement of thousands of Cuban exiles in America's Cold War struggles served to consolidate the position of Miami as the space of an exiled Cuban nation. The manner in which the exiles were recruited and organized in their participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion reinforced the community's sense of exceptional ism and historic purpose. When the Kennedy admin- istration chose to employ a strategy of facilitating an insurrec- tion within the island assisted by the landing of Cuban exile forces, the operation was framed in the discourse of national self-determination (Forment, 1989:56). The dismal failure of the invasion created a number of significant cultural and politi- cal by-products which helped to solidify the unity of the Cuban enclave: it shattered the hopes of an imminent return for the exiles; it provided the Cubans with a history of military valor and a monument to their national martyrs; it created a profound distrust of the commitment of the American government to the Cuban exile's nationalist cause and illuminated the rifts between Cuban and American interests; and lastly, it necessitated subse- quent long-range programs to involve the exile community in © American military initiatives in order to maintain control over further independent attempts at insurrection that would inevita- bly ensue (Didion, 1987:19; Masud-Piloto, 1996:48). Throughout the next three decades the "exile colony" was used as a pool of agents in sabotage initiatives and military cam- paigns across the Caribbean Basin and Central America, and in the establishment of the country's second largest CIA station at the University of Miami (Grosfoguel, 1993: 159). This develop- ment eased the absorption of the Cubans into the local labour market and heightened the militarism of the Little Havana dis- course. With an estimated 12,000 Cubans on its official payroll by the early 1960s, the CIA became one of Florida's largest employers (Stepick, 1992:41). Despite the investment of hun- dreds of millions of dollars into anti-Castro military initiatives, the need to establish the impression that the U.S. was not in- volved in the exile group's operations encouraged the appropria- tion of these battles by the Cuban community. The attempt to tf!% distance the American government publicly from their military struggles contributed to the sense of betrayal already present in the exile community. The federal government's long-term investments in the en- clave easily surpassed expenditures of any other immigrant set- tlement policy. The budget for the Cuban Refugee Program ex- ceeded that of the entire Alliance For Progress initiatives and has been touted as the American's most successful "international development programs"(Grosfoguel, 1993:161; Stepick, 1992:40). Assistance to the nationalist movement's military and political struggles has also been extraordinary. Nonetheless, the discourse of American betrayal has remained a powerful unify- ing force within the exile community. Language and Difference in the Local Arena The Cuban's sense of alienation from the host society and gov- ernment has been evident in the relations between the enclave and the non-hispanic population of Miami as well as on the national level. The open hostility towards the Cubans from some segments of the Miami population has contributed to the com- munity's sense of exceptional ism and has encouraged the articu- lation of a distinct platform of national interests. Miami's Anglo community initially extended a cautious welcome to the emigres arriving in the early 1960s. Hoever, Miami residents soon became overwhelmed by the flow of im- migrants, and many residents resented being saddled with a cri- sis created in another country (Garcia, 1996: 19). When federal aid began to pour in, many residents were both grateful for the relief but were dismayed by the lavish treatment of the emigres, particularly in the face of the poor conditions evident in Mi- ami's black neighbourhoods. From these early stages onward, both Anglo and African-American communities expressed re- sentment for the Cubans who were at once too successful, too independent, yet too great a drain on the public purse (Rieff, 1987:71). This hostile response to the Cuban presence has often provided the Cubans with evidence that they are a persecuted £tk minority group forced to struggle for respect and representation (Croucher, 1994:195). In response to the Latinization in Miami after the Mariel boatlifts, the city's English-speaking community lashed out in a direct attempt to re-establish the Americanness of their own space. Since 1973 Dade County had been declared officially bilingual and offered a variety of public services in both Spanish and English. In 1980 the crisis of the Marielitos strained relations between the Cubans and the Anglo population culminating in a citizen-generated initiative to prohibit "the expenditure of county funds for the purpose of utilizing any other language than Eng- lish, or promoting any other culture than that of the United States (Stack and Warren, 1990:16)." While the anti-bilingual ordinance had little substantive impact on the availability of serv- ices, the political battles that it incited helped to cement Cuban- American solidarity. The overwhelming support of the Anglo community for the ordinance strengthened the perception that the Cubans were not being afforded a voice in their community proportionate to their contributions to its development. It also compelled the Miami Cubans to make minority status part of their reactive ethnic discourse from this point onward (Baloyra, 1991: 131 ;Croucher, 1994: 195) 4 . Exile leaders did not merely claim they had a right to express themselves in their own tongue, but asserted the dominance of the Spanish language in the lo- cale. Frank Soler, the first editor of El Herald remarked after the anti-bilingual ordinance was passed: "Oh well, we'll just have to go back to using one language. Spanish, I mean. (Rieff, 1987:36)." Both the generous reception initially provided to the Cu- bans by the federal government and heightened sense of differ- ence from Miami natives, allowed many Cubans to wait out the first two decades of the exile as though they were merely caught at the airport fighting for a speedy return home. Policies such as the anti-bilingual ordinance inspired collective indignance within pk the enclave, and encouraged many members to unpack their political bags and to stake out their own political territory. Mas Communication During the late 1970s a staunchly conservative political estab- lishment in Little Havana gained both influence and a greater command over political and economic resources. In the early 1980s Miami millionaire Jorge Mas Canosa secured the support of the Cuban community's business elite and that of the federal government for the establishment of a powerful exile lobby group, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). In barely a decade, the Foundation succeeded in raising the profile of Little Havana politics from talk radio terrorism and community center rhetoric to the UN Human Rights Commission and the Society of International Business Fellows. Chairman Jorge Mas initiated and administered America's media war on Cuba for close to a decade by securing the federal funds to establish Radio Marti and TV Marti. These media have been used to break Castro's "information monopoly" by provid- ing a mixed broadcast of American baseball scores, Mas Canosa's campaign speeches for his leadership in the new Cuba, and sto- ries providing "alternative views of the country's own condition" (Spicer Nichols, 84:35; 90:30). CANF has also displayed a dis- turbing power to limit the freedom of expression and communi- cation of Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. Journalist Maria de los Angeles Torres has claimed that "with a phonecall, Mas apparently can get the State Department to deny visas to Cubans from the island, as he did with the world-renowned dance band Orquesta Aragon when it was invited to Chicago in 1988(90:35)." The work of organizations like CANF have not merely brought exile politics into a the purview of a higher geographic scale of political governance, they have also altered the signifi- cance of spatial boundaries and the historical timeline of the American, Cuban-American and Cuban nations within the dis- course and imagination of the exile. By moving beyond (though €S% never abandoning) localized rhetoric and bullying, into the realm of direct interface with international powerbrokers outside the United States, CANF has shaped the exiles' image of their own power and place and has made the prospect of return seem more immanent and possible. Radio and TV Marti were no mere "broadcasts to nowhere" as policy critics have called them (Kornbluh and Elliston, 1994: 194). For the national projects of the exile, the millions of dol- lars spent to establish and maintain this media provided the sym- bols of an imagined audience living in step with the exile just an AM radio-wave away. Figures such as Mas Canosa, whose rheto- ric has so often been legitimized by its translation into U.S. foreign and domestic policy, have come to hold the power to confirm the exile's interpretation of regional geography. When asked by the newspaper El Pais in Spain whether he believed Americans would take over Cuba if Castro fell, Mas replied "That's bull— . They haven't even been able to take over Mi- ami! (Chardy, 94: IB)" Miami's Soldiers The contemporary images and realities of Little Havana's uni- fied right-wing political agenda is in part the product of succes- sive struggles between these different political factions in the Cuban community. The ability of Miami's ultra-conservative political groups to claim the martyrs of the Bay of Pigs Invasion as their brethren remains a powerful political tool. Contempo- rary nationalist groups consistently recall the collective sacri- fices of the enclave's military history both to make claims on the loyalty of co-nationals in Miami and to assert the right to dictate the political and economic treatment of Cuba in the interna- tional realm. Carlos Forment (1989) has examined the construction of the national martyr in Miami throughout the early history of Florida's Cuban enclave. The study demonstrates how compet- £f% ing anti-Castro movements created the ideational and material preconditions for the rise of the enclave as a "moral community" rather than a mere ethnic economy (Forment, 1989:60). Forment's analysis traces the history of the ascendance of the exiles' conservative political organizations in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the subsequent vilification of the Kennedy administration and notes how these events catalyzed a discourse of ethnic communitarianism that promulgated a dis- trust of Americans and other outsiders (Forment, 89:64). He relates this history to the contemporary economic success of the Cuban enclave, noting the following correlation: If the enclave entrepreneur can today invoke collective claims in order to legitimize his patriarchal system of capital-labor relations and contribute to group cohe- sion it is because the militants and terrorists had ear- lier inculcated the community with these same no- tions (Forment, 1989:73). Forment's analysis invokes the intensity and violence manifested in the definition of the Cuban-American nationalist identity. The struggles of competing claims on moral authority and legitimate representation of this ethnic community have been played out not only in the realm of discourse - the circulation of words - but also in battles claiming human lives. From the onset of the ex- ile, nationalist rhetoric has been made credible by this immedi- ate foreground of violent experience within the enclave. As the Cuban emigres became citizens of the United States, many began to use their political and economic resources as Americans to advance their projects for returning from exile. By the early 1980s the attempts to overthrow the Castro regime through assassination attempts or hit-and-run attacks on the Cuban coastline had largely ended. The heroes of the enclave's armed struggles generally remained as the leaders of the new national projects, though both their tactics and the objects of their politi- cal messages had changed dramatically. As the significance of the Cuban voting block and economic clout grew, the symbols tffr of the exile experience, the fervor of anti-Castroism, and the militant commitment to shaping the future of Cuba became pow- erful means for municipal and state politicians to mobilize the support of the powerful enclave (Mohl, 86:8, Stack and Warren, 1990:16). The imprint of Cuban-American militarism is evi- dent in the electorate's avid concern with each candidate's in- volvement in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the veterans of which still hold an important qualification for holding public office in Miami in the 1990s. Limited, Strategic Assimilation Revisiting Anderson's conception of the creative strengths of hybrid identities as catalysts of nationalist movements, we can note that the most intense manifestations of a nationalist identity were most evident in Miami politics after a period of adjustment and formal assimilation (not to mention accumulation) and in the wake of a massive influx of exiles. Contrary to the general assumption that "the decision to become an American citizen is an important indicator of assimilation" (Boswell and Curtis, 1984: 173), it has been evident that Cuban-Americans have applied the power of their American citizenship to strengthen their nationalist, anti-Communist voice. Engagement in munici- pal and state politics has merely provided another forum for the emigres continued preoccupation with the political status of their homeland (Perez, 1990:5) Little Havana's nationalist imagina- tion has been combined with the strength and autonomy of the Cuban economic enclave to provide the city with an interna- tional image as the "Latin American Capital of the United States" and, within the U.S., the distinction of being the "only Ameri- can city with its own foreign policy" (Mohl, 1986: 1 1). The symbols of Cuban-American national imagination have figured prominently in Miami politics over the last decade. The eventual policy outcome of the exiles' political power has been an overwhelming attention to symbolic expressions of anti-com- tfS munism and support for initiatives (Mohl, 1986:8). A poignant example of the nature of Cuban bearing on local politics was the hostile reception encountered by Nelson Mandela during his visit to Miami in June of 1990. In view of Mandela's expressed grati- tude to Fidel Castro and other communist leaders, neither the Miami, nor the Dade County mayor saw it fit to give the ANC leader any official recognition or key to the city (Croucher, 1994:190). In fact, a number of resolutions passed by the Mi- ami City Council could have officially classified Mandela as persona non grata in the city. Both class and political power structures have mediated the clash of primordial sentiments be- tween distinct ethnic groups in Miami city politics. The success of the Cuban community's invented ethnicity in the Mandela incident when compared to respect for black political recogni- tion, attests to the fact that differences in political and economic power must be taken into account in any analysis of the social construction of ethnicity (Croucher, 1994:197). Conclusion: Staking out Space The Miami case contrasts with Anderson's examination of long- distance nationalism in that it is unlike ethnic communities which merely export their influence or political candidates to directly to their country of origin. The Miami Cubans have truly suc- ceeded in creating a "nation in exile" engaged not merely in inter-ethnic conflicts, but in nationalist confrontations with world leaders. It has asserted power through the creation of an immi- grant nation in which interacts with international actors on its own turf and seeks to build an economic future for Cuba on its entrepreneurial and political successes. The enclave has con- structed its cultural, political and economic institutions upon a foundation of generous state support, the Cuban community has succeeded in reconstructing the social landscape of an imagined nation to the extent that natives of Miami seem like the aliens in the new space. Anderson's work has rightly emphasized the importance of ^_^ the experience of exile and the struggles for control over com- %I0 munication and translation in both colonial nation-building and contemporary national imagination in immigrant communities. With regard to the author's studies of long-distance nationalism, however, the Miami Cubans provide evidence that projects of nation-building in among immigrants may share more with tra- ditional nationalist movements than Anderson has discussed. The cultural and political value of the Little Havana national ceno- taph supports the contention of scholars such as Balakrishnan that the discourse of military valour and the shared history of collective sacrifice are critical pillars upon which nationalist movements among immigrant communities are built. The at- tachment to places recreated in the image of an imagined home- land and the political appropriation of those spaces are also projects which Little Havana's nationalists share with those of earlier nationalist movements. An examination of the cultural (re)-territorialization of Cuban spaces in the city and the devel- opment of strong capabilities for political and economic control over Cuban-Miami territory allows us a bettert understanding of the dynamics that have shaped the choices of many immigrants to maintain or develop a stronger patriotic loyalty to the -Cuban portion of their hyphenated national identity. Notes 1. Breuilly (1985:75) has noted a common tension between those who see nationalism as "the product of an underlying national reality" or a cultural community, and others who regard the nation as a myth employed as an instrument for political associations. 2. In a similar spirit, a Cuban American city official in Miami also noted that "the Marielitos are mostly black and mulattos of a colour I never saw or believed existed in Cuba" (Portes and Stepick, 1993:21). 3. By 1978 an estimated 40% of the Cubans living in Miami had moved there from another part of the country (Portes and Stepick, 1993: 104). 4. Organizations that would become very powerful Cuban-American political lobby groups such as the Cuban American National Foundation £{% (CANF) and the Spanish-American League Against Discrimination^^ (SALAD) were born in part out of the mobilization against the language ordinance (Stack and Warren, 1992: 177). References Aguirre, B.E. 1976 "The Differential Migration of the Cuban Social Races." Latin American Research Review. 1 1( 1): 103-124 Allman, T.D. 1987 Miami: City of the Future. Atlantic Monthly Press. Anderson, Benedict 1991 Imagined Communities . London : Verso . 1992 "The New World Disorder." 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