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Humor in Cuba in Times of Rage

Censorship forced people to perfect their codes. The comedian learned to leave empty spaces, and the audience learned to fill them.

By Yunior García Aguilera (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES – There are books that age badly and officials who age even worse. Abel Prieto’s Misha’s Humor belongs to that rare category of texts that, thirty years later, end up explaining better precisely what their author intended to omit.

Originally published in 1997 and republished this August in Havana – for the deflated Book Fair – the essay examines political jokes in the former socialist bloc. Prieto traces jokes about the Kremlin, bureaucracy, shortages, leaders and everyday absurdity to demonstrate that humor had detected the decay of so-called real socialism long before political scientists did. The idea was not bad. What was bad was that it never occurred to him to apply it at home.

Because if jokes about Brezhnev served to measure the Soviets’ loss of faith, one would have to ask what the jokes circulating in Cuba today are saying. What does it mean that in a line, during a blackout or at a comedy show, a single word, a pause or a look is enough for hundreds of people to understand exactly what – and whom – is being talked about?

For years, Cuban humor has functioned as a kind of instant plebiscite. The comedian does not need to explain much. In fact, their survival instinct screams that they cannot even do so.........

© Havana Times