Casa de las Américas, un indicio en el tiempo

Abstract

This article is an approach to the Casa de las Américas magazine during the 1980's, a period seldom studied in comparison to the numerous analysis realized on the previous two decades. The article focuses on three issues Its methodological proposal conceives each issue of the magazine as a “sign”, a series of clues whose interpretation can explain the power and domination relationships or the convergence in the dissent. This form of documentary approach evokes the proposal of the "index paradigm" made by Carlo Ginzburg. Using this approach in the analysis helps to make visible almost imperceptible documentary features, an aspect which is essential in sources as dense and complex as cultural journals.

Casa de las Américas is one of the most important magazines in the continent. To study the discourses and the materiality of their issues in the 1980's gives clues to understand certain changes in the relations between politics and culture in a time of historical inflection. As we will see in this article, in the pages of this iconic Cuban magazine several contradictions and nuances were mirrored around the ideals of the Cuban Revolution and their practice. They showed the coexistence of non-univocal ways of thinking.