The session examines the connection between medicine, literature, and arts in Cuba from the late 18th century to the second half of the 20th century. Physicians have played a significant role in the transformation of Cuban society from Tomás Romay (1764-1849) to Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928-1967). Cuban doctors like Carlos J. Finlay or Juan Guiteras were also protagonists of the transition from the Spanish Colonial society to the First Republic at the turn of the 20th century. In the late 18th century, Tomás Romay and the poet Manuel de Zequeira employed the strategies of the medical “campaign” to contain not just smallpox but also the sexually and racially divergent. In the early 20th century, sociologist Fernando Ortiz claimed that the Cuban State must curb alcoholism and prostitution using Carlos J. Finlay’s method against yellow fever, locating the outbreak of the disease in the largely Afro-Cuban poor sectors of the population.

The four presentations in our session explore how the literature and the arts responded to medical conceptions of race, gender, progress and Cuban identity throughout these three centuries. We will establish points of continuity and disruption, and connect them to the present, that is, to what the Cuban State calls the medical achievements of the Revolution.

Roseli Rojo will focus on Romay’s hygiene campaigns and Zequeira’s social writings in turn of the 19th century Havana. Romay and Zequeira promoted radical urban changes to expel corpses, garbage, animal feces, and vulnerable groups from the city. Alberto Sosa will explicate the work of Cuban physician Israel Castellanos and police officer Rafael Roche along with the filmography of Enrique Díaz Quesada. By comparing medical criminological writings to Cuban movies in the early 20th century, Sosa will discuss the position of the African Cuban population in the newly established Cuban Republic. Justo Planas will connect the political uses of the representation of the Cuban Republic as an orphan nation to actual Cuban orphans in the same period. To do this, Planas will examine the appearance of the Cuban orphan/orphan Cuba in U.S. caricatures and photographs, Cuban novels, and medical papers. Reynaldo Lastre will review Reinaldo Arenas’ personal archives to trace the impact of a wasting disease like AIDS in his writings. Lastre will also compare Arenas’ impressions to medical conceptions of AIDS in the 1980s.

Although comparative studies between literature and medicine in Cuba are scarce, historians have published several texts on medicine and vulnerable groups in the Island. As Mariola Espinosa states, there is a long-established literature of the history of Cuban medicine. However, the history of Cuban medicine with regards to any sort of discrimination (race, gender, illness) is quite recent. U.S. and European literary studies have a well-established subfield dedicated to medicine and literature. In Latin America, researchers like Jorge Salessi and Gabriela Nouzeilles from Argentina have also explored the connection between narrative and medicine in regards to socially excluded LGBT and immigrant groups.

Nevertheless, this connection remains practically unexplored in Cuban literary studies. Therefore, our session about Medicine and Literature over three centuries will open a new horizon of debate in Cuban cultural studies.