The bay – The book
Publishing House Ediciones Sinsentido
Independent Publishing House
Havana, Cuba 2018
«The bay we were thinking how to perform a nuclear action is a process based on the poetic relationship of Alessandra Santiesteban or Yunet with Juraguá, the Nuclear City. This is the name given to the town near the Electronuclear Power Plant, CEN.
The CEN represents a myth of the most ambitious radioactive project of the Revolution. Its existence forces the perennial reminder of the facilities that would represent the FUTURE, and whose works were stopped in 1992 by Fidel Castro, after the collapse of the socialist camp and the intensification of the US economic embargo. Those who live in that area of the island located in the province of Cienfuegos have lived, separated by just a few kilometers from the unfinished reactor with the certainty that this proximity is not a random fact. Living close to a myth cannot be a random destiny for any generation. Engineers, technologists and scientists graduated from schools of the socialist camp moved to the City to build there a life of prosperity and future. It was in 1972 that the dialogues to build this mutual alliance between Cuba and the USSR began. Although Juraguá has a fishing community that goes back to several centuries of existence, and whose support continues to be sea fishing, the construction and stoppage of the reactor monopolized the great urban project that was planned for the area.
The bay… has been crossed by a documentary experience, the uncertainty, the uselessness of «being there», the gesture of the «author» and the effect of the dailylife (the simple life of a country town) before an idea of destruction, failure, breakdown. The CEN is a symbol, the failure of a radioactive epopee, the trace of the USSR and the electric future of the Revolution.
The inhabitants of Juraguá live on the margins of everything. After the news published in 2015 that announced the possibility that the reactor would become the Hazardous Waste Dumpster, the «happiness» remained intact…. Those who know say little, those who want to know do not know how to do it and the rest are not interested.
The relationship of Alessandra Santiesteban or Yunet with these facts is perceptible in the pages of this book as notes, simply the notes that accompany the visitor, the artist, the poet, during her meeting and her departure, during her stay and her laboratory project, during the writing and the recording of her travels, the plays, the photos and films she could dream of».
(Fragments from the prologue by Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas)
Credits
Photographs by «Badué. Jiguaní. The best in family portraits».
Illustrations: Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas.
Editing, composition and design: Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas.
Reviews
La Baie in La Maison Antoine Vitez – International Center for Theatrical Translation. French translation: Christilla Vasserot (Paris, 2021)
Ediciones sinsentido: cultura indie en el libro cubano contemporáneo, by Ray Viero
