Podcast
¡El Arte no Calla! x Caminero - Episode 2: Feminist activism and anti-authoritarian struggle
Episode 2: Feminist activism and anti-authoritarian struggle. A conversation with Hilda Landrove and Yanelys Núñez
Welcome to the second episode of this special podcast series, a collaboration between ¡El Arte no Calla! and Caminero. Today, we delve into the intersections of art, activism, and feminism with our guest Yanelys Núñez, curator and feminist activist exiled in Madrid. She is one of the founders of the San Isidro Movement and her testimony is presented in the Método Cuba: Independent Artists’ Testimonies of Forced Exile report, published by ARC, PEN International and Cubalex. In this episode, we explore the profound impact of the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba, the enduring demands for freedom, and the complexities of resistance in a highly repressive environment.
Yanelys shares her experiences as a member of the Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas and Mundo Sur mapping femicides in Latin America and her continuous and challenging engagement with Cuban issues from abroad. Her conversation with Hilda Landrove addresses the internal tensions within, and external perceptions of, Cuban feminism, including the unique challenges of advocating for gender rights in authoritarian systems.
Yanelys reinforces the importance of trans-inclusive and anti-racist feminism and the need for solidarity among various activist communities, resonating with ARC’s work of articulating heterogeneous voices within the feminist arts movement, as witnessed at our 2023 regional workshop in Bogotá, where 20 artists from the region shared experiences and strategies to reinforce transnational movements.
Yanelys Núñez: One of the positive things about July 11, beyond the size of the protests [in Cuba], is that it has remained in the collective imagination and became a social and political reference. Although they have tried to curb the protests with a new and more repressive penal code, the act of protest has become more naturalized. Even in March of this year, we saw that the demands people are protesting for are still the same as those of July 11: electricity, food, and, above all, freedom, which is the fundamental demand.
It is important to recognize that the regime is a professional in diverting the focus of attention, but we must be clear about where the problem really lies. This date [July 11, 2021] reminds us that we must continue to resist, as hard as it is.
“Resistance is always difficult and usually falls on the few, especially in a country forced into exile, precarious, and repressed.”
Hilda Landrove: I wanted to situate the role of the public in your trajectory. In Cuba, you worked as a curator, something that you identify as professionally. You participated in the fight against Decree 349, you are the founder of the San Isidro Movement, and, along with Luis Manuel [Otero Alcántara], you created the initiative the Museum of Dissidence. You also organized the [independent] #00Bienal de la Habana when the thirteenth biennial was not undertaken by the institutional cultural apparatus.
You starred in a famous performance in front of the Capitol, which remains one of the most striking images of the civic struggle in Cuba. Afterwards, you had to leave Cuba due to pressures that have inevitably led many to exile or jail.
In Spain, you have worked on several things, with the Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas being one of the most relevant. You have also worked in regional alliances, such as Mundo Sur, which keeps a map of femicides in Latin America. Your work has always been linked to Cuba, dealing with exile but with your thoughts and actions in Cuba.
I wanted to ask you about your experience of having your head in Cuba and your feet in another place. For you, what are the main challenges of this kind of dislocation?
YN: They are challenges that take time to overcome. I left in 2019 and, although I was still linked to the San Isidro Movement, you really miss a lot of things when you are supporting from outside and coordinating international actions. You miss out on dynamics that were key to developing the actions we were able to carry out in Cuba.
My beginnings outside Cuba were difficult, mainly because of the guilt and the impotence of having abandoned the country. Knowing that there were only a few of us standing together in Cuba, and that each person who leaves creates an important void, was a very big emotional challenge.
Even now, I find it difficult to see myself in Madrid. I know more about Spanish politics and other activist processes and collectives here, but this dissociation sometimes prevents me from being completely in one place or another, and I feel a sense of fracture or loss.
HL: And it's not something that you can wake up one day in the morning and say, “oh, I'm done with this!”
YN: When I can't take it anymore and I'm mentally exhausted, I can't just quit. I have a family member in prison. In addition, with the work at the observatory, I have to be aware of everything that happens: on social media, in the media, and what is coming from citizen complaints.
It is a traumatic process because you are looking at a screen, observing a reality that is happening somewhere else. It is difficult and I am still going through this process, even though I have been here for five years.
I have internalized that this is the place where society has put me and I feel empowered to undertake activism and demand what I consider fair. The consequences are exile, being uprooted, and sadness. There are many challenges.
HL: Let's get into the subject of feminism. I want to know how you articulate the subject from your perspective, and how your experiences have shaped this view.
Yesterday when we were talking, Yanelys, you mentioned your own experience and how important it is to think about feminist activism, which defines your work and your positioning in relation to Cuba and everything else through a series of tensions that are always present. I would like to talk about at least three of them.
The first tension, more internal and related to the structure of the Cuban regime, is that between specific, sectoral and civic activism that is not necessarily political, and political activism against the regime.
That is to say, the type of activism that says: this is a dictatorship, it must be overthrown, from wherever one positions oneself. And specific activisms: gender activism, racial activism, activism in defense of animals, among others. Although these activisms are not so big in Cuba, especially with the almost total closure of the civic space, they continue to exist, and some are very important, such as gender activism.
Another tension is between Cuban feminism and that of other countries. Cuban feminism always has to deal with the structural problem of being turned into an enemy of the state, because the state does not allow any kind of activism that is not in support of the revolution.
A third tension is how feminism is seen: from the right, as a spawn of socialism, associated with totalitarianism and communism, and from the progressive left, as a product of liberal capitalism that is only interested in individual rights, without considering structural elements.
I would like to explore these tensions with you, starting with the last one. In exile, how do you deal with the perception of Cuban feminism from other countries, especially from the perspective that Cuba is a paradise for women because of abortion rights, maternity leave, and supposed gender equality? What is it like to confront that vision in Spain?
YN: Yes, well, I can speak to you from my learning process of the best tools that feminism offers. Here, I meet women very close to me, Spanish feminists and anarchists, young people too. Surprisingly, they also have that romanticism about the Revolution and Cuba, which one might think is typical of older generations. In the end, it is a narrative that is very well positioned by the regime, even among people who are 25 or 26 years old, who defend that vision without knowing the full reality.
It is complicated because, although some do not know much about Cuba, they tend to place the regime's violence below other violence experienced in other states, always from a positive comparative perspective for Cuba. Positioning yourself as a feminist coming from a dictatorship is difficult, it is complex to get people to understand from where you speak and the importance of this activism.
“Dismantling the Cuban government's narrative is an arduous process.”
In sectors such as anti-racist feminism, for example, which has other concerns and is made up of other nationalities, you also find these romanticized ideas about Cuba. It is a constant challenge.
HL: Yes, it is a slow process and demands a lot of energy. In my case, I try to find value in these meetings with anti-racist feminist collectives. I am interested in exploring how Cuba is thought of from the outside, especially in a country with such important historical and current links as Spain. I always ask questions and try to listen.
Recently, Maria Matienzo and I participated in the Afro-descendant forum, which was very interesting. We met activists who know the reality of Cuba and have different sensibilities. Anti-racist activists, especially Latin American ones, can empathize more with us. When they hear the officials talk about the revolution and its supposed achievements in eradicating racism, there is a point of convergence that is not always present in other sectors of feminism.
This process is complex because you receive aggressive responses from many fronts. To remain against the Cuban regime and declare oneself a feminist may seem impossible for different sectors that speak of gender ideology with certain prejudice. We face violent accusations and we must find a safe place where we can contribute more.
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You mention these anarchist communities, [and] I believe that there is at least one feminism that is very close to anarchism in the sense that it understands that much of the foundational structure that sustains gender inequality and violence has a lot to do with the State itself - with the imposition of a homogeneous and hierarchical form onto a large population that produces zones of inequality that pass through race, class, gender and so on.
I find it very interesting that you mention that there are convergences with sectors, for example, of the anti-racist struggle that can better understand the Cuban struggle precisely because they deal with these structural problems. For example, I think of the tragedy that is happening in the Middle East and that is at the center of the public conversation and it makes me think of the actions of white feminism which above all is a feminism that is oriented towards individual rights and fails to see the importance of collective processes, so white feminism is obsessed with [for example] the topic of veiling of Muslim women.
I want to make this point very clear because feminism is not only concerned with women's problems, it is a way of looking at the world that is concerned with the whole of society.
YN: I also wanted to say that the feminism that I identify with is a feminism that is trans-inclusive and anti-racist. So within feminisms, there are many discussions, including the issue of sex work and the issue of trans women. It seems to me that the most anti-feminist thing is to be against trans women.
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In the end, all these activisms, even if they are atomized and even if the regime acts so that they are atomized, we realized that we are part of a whole history of dissidence. We [are nourished] by the acts of Omni Zona Franca, which has more than 20 years of work and community experience. And in this new cycle of mobilizations and activist groups and dissident groups, some more visible than others, even some more frontal, in the end, you realize that we all converge.
For me, building referents is essential…The construction of civic referents, of exercise, of the construction of dialogues.
“So, I do believe that we can converge at some point, and that it is necessary, and part of the tools that I believe are necessary to continue developing to create bridges on the subject of conversation, of listening, of dismantling, of storytelling, of participating.”
HL: You mentioned dialogue and let's stop here for a moment, because it has definitely been a very demonized word in recent times.
You also talked about the need to create relationships; the need to work on a daily basis, which does not have to go to where other types of processes are taking place with which it is possible to explore common horizons and with which it is possible to discuss and from which it is also possible, of course, to learn.
I return to what you were saying before, which perhaps we are not taking into account so much, which is that in order for activism to work, activists must have a minimum mental balance and psychological integrity to be able to continue their activism. What do you think are the tools of feminist activism that would help those of us in this field?
YN: When I left Cuba, I started to think that it took me beyond that, of course, there is the mental continence to make the decision. As I thought about it all, I said it was a feminist exercise for me. It was an exercise in self-care.
One of the tools that feminism can give us is that it can help us do more responsible journalism.
Feminism for me is propositional, that is why we talk about tools, it is not for women to have it better [then others] or to have everything. In the end it is to build a more just society, where the violence women and LGBTI people are subjected to stops.
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In the end, where feminist movements are heading is to make the citizenry aware and offer alternatives, because we aren’t only left with denouncing issues; there are alternatives that to some may seem more radical than others.
I believe that feminist movements and discussions ultimately seek that, because we work towards a process of improvement and betterment for all. That is why it is important not to believe that it is a women's issue. Feminism is not a women's issue; it is a social issue, it is a global issue, it is a community issue, it is an issue that we must not put in competition with others.
Published on August 28, 2024.