La Habana es la Habana: Tourism, heritage and symbolic space in Havana, Cuba.

摘要

After more than fifty years, the Cuban socialist regime continues to survive against steep odds. The transition that Cuba has had to face since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 has led to the implementation of a number of policies that have drastically altered the social, cultural, political and economic landscape of the country. My research focuses on the fundamental contradiction that exists between Cuba’s socialist political system and the market capitalism of the tourism industry in Havana, Cuba. I am especially interested in how the State attempts to resolve this contradiction. Drawing on qualitative research, I argue that the Cuban state creates visual and discursive narratives through which it manages these contradictions. I show how imaginaries created through tourist maps and through restoration policies in Old Havana consist of highly malleable symbolic landscapes that the Cuban state utilizes in order to maintain the status quo in the face of an uncertain future.