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BEING NADIE

Linda Jue

Miguel Coyula does not exist. He can’t seek employment because he doesn’t

exist. He can’t run a thriving business because he can’t hire anybody or sell

any goods or services. Nor can he attend most social or public functions.

People generally don’t acknowledge him, much less associate with him,

because he simply does not exist.

Miguel Coyula is nadie. Nobody. The Cuban government has rendered

him a ghost in his own country. His crime? Committing unbridled artistic

expression.

An internationally recognized independent filmmaker, Miguel is as

well known for his stubborn streak as he is for his films. He brooks no

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interference in any aspect of his productions, least of all dictates on content.

Unlike other filmmakers, Miguel even refuses to delegate common

operational tasks to a film crew. He insists on doing his own scriptwriting,

directing, cinematography, editing, sound design … you name it. He does it

all, and all by himself. It’s no wonder his artistic intransigence infuriates a

lot of people. Not just the government, but the entire community of Cuban

filmmakers.

I first encountered Miguel’s work through a mutual friend who

suggested I meet Miguel during my trip to Cuba. As an introduction, our

friend played Miguel’s widely acclaimed documentary profiling another

nobody, appropriately titled, Nadie.

In the film, Rafael Alcides, celebrated poet and writer of the Cuban

Revolution, laments the loss of dozens of his unpublished works as the

homemade typewriter ink fades off their pages. Almost all his novels,

poems, philosophical and political ideas are literally disappearing before his

eyes, and he can feel himself melting away with them. Half blind and half

deaf, and somewhere in his 80s, Alcides knows he can only salvage a

fraction of the manuscripts.

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At one time, this now banished poet and influential thinker was such a

passionate champion of the Revolution that he would extol its wonders as if

–by his own admission–it were a woman and he, her lover. Remnants of that

fervor still come across on screen as he reflects back on the early days of the

new regime.

“Fidel had the heart of the Revolution in his hands,” he says wistfully,

as he recalls the literacy campaign, the crowning glory of the Revolution.

Thousands of young people between twelve and eighteen years fanned out

across Cuba to teach illiterate rural peasants to read and write. The campaign

was pivotal to overcoming the heart-wrenching poverty rampant throughout

the country under Batista’s dictatorship.

The old man tells a story about a prostitute who regularly

“entertained” a young Alcides. Years later, he ran into the woman, who by

then was barely recognizable. Not because she had suffered the ravages of

time and her lifestyle, but because she had gotten an education and

eventually became a professor.

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“What a beautiful thing, this Revolution,” he says, as a wave of

emotion sweeps across his face. He can barely get his words out without

pausing to maintain his composure.

“It was … such a moment … a beautiful thing…. There are no words

to talk about this … no words…. Those are the things one would like to

bring back…. But they fucked all this up. They blew it.”

Fidel’s growing authoritarian rule and the increasing corruption within

the regime broke the spell for Alcides. The final disillusionment came when

the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. Alcides objected to what he

saw as Fidel’s hypocrisy for speaking out against U.S. invasions of other

countries while not protesting the Soviet crackdown on the Czechs, who

were calling for liberal reforms. He walked away from the Revolution in

disgust, like a betrayed lover, disappearing from public life from that

moment on. By his own choice, he became nadie.

As I watch Nadie, Miguel’s unusual film techniques immediately

catch my attention. To break up the monotony of Alcides’s talking head

against a black background, he digitally inserts and manipulates a running

collage of images and sounds taken from a variety of sources, such as old

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movies, photographs, periodicals, TV and radio broadcasts, and music

recordings. He employs some of the images to create the illusion that

Alcides is actually talking with Fidel. He also uses an actress, who I later

learn is his wife, to embody the soul of the Revolution as a woman and with

whom Alcides appears to interact. The serial collage evokes visual and

auditory impressions of Alcides’s words that seem to speak to me at some

deeper level than mere listening can reach. They impart a barely palpable yet

nagging surreal quality to my experience of the film, leaving me feeling

intangibly haunted by the end.

Miguel is indeed no ordinary filmmaker. He’s an exceptionally

creative visual artist for whom film is his medium rather than the canvas,

and who has had to innovate without money, crew or technical resources.

It’s obvious why he’s won accolades outside Cuba, from a Guggenheim

Fellowship to many awards in film festivals around the world.

This film, which has been banned in Cuba for Alcides’s unexpurgated

criticisms of Fidel’s regime, has opened a window for me into the psyche of

the Cuban people. Miguel and Alcides, in their roles as artists, are the voices

of what most Cubans wouldn’t dare say but think.

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It’s clear why the Cuban government wants Miguel to pay the price for

his insistent—some would say petulant—individualism. It has tried to

intimidate him, even manufacture situations that would justify carting him

off to jail—though they have yet to succeed in either. So far, he gets to

remain in his nice Havana apartment with his wife. He has his ration card

like everyone else. He can even travel outside the country to earn money.

But the government has made sure that Miguel can never be recognized or

earn a living in Cuba again.

Several weeks later, I’m sitting across from this ghost in his well-

appointed apartment in Havana’s Vedado district. Elegant chinoiserie

furniture and objets fill the living and dining rooms, reminiscent of the pre-

Revolution fascination with all things “Oriental.”

“My aunt and uncle left this apartment when they moved to Miami,”

Miguel explains. “Everything is exactly as it was then.” He doesn’t say

when they left, but I get the impression that it was either during or right after

the Revolution, when Cuba’s bourgeoisie fled the island.

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Given his reputation as the bad boy of Cuban cinema, I was expecting

a formidable-looking figure with a Type Triple A personality. Instead, the

youngish forty-year-old man before me is gracious and unassuming. Dressed

in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, with a

beard accenting a gentle-looking countenance, he’s the picture of

mellowness. He also comes close to resembling the ghost that he’s supposed

to be. His pallor confers an ironic testament to his nonexistence, though it’s

actually more indicative of a life spent in front of a computer screen.

Miguel briefly demonstrates how he manipulated images to create his

desired effects in Nadie. In one example, he shows how he combined three

paintings by a famous Cuban artist to produce an entirely new, realistic-

looking painting.

“The idea for this documentary is that nothing is in a pure state,” says

Miguel. “In the interview with Alcides, images are always being altered in

front of and behind him.”

I realize that almost every idea Alcides expresses is inflected with

Miguel’s own interpretations through his imagery and sounds. We’re not

only watching and hearing Alcides’s thoughts but Miguel’s as well. At

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times, the images feel like a moving painting. At others, they’re like

hyperkinetic cartoons gone in a flash. They reflect Miguel’s disillusionment

with the Revolution as much as they do Alcides’s. Nadie isn’t just a

documentary; it’s an art form. As he talks, I learn that all his films share this

same cinematic language.

“Your films require a visual literacy that a lot of people don’t have,” I

remark.

“Yeah,” he replies. “You have to have a dialogue with the images.

Otherwise, it’s impossible.” He acknowledges that his films have been

inaccessible for even some art house audiences. His current film, which he’s

secretly making, is even more extreme, he says. It’s a sci-fi take-down of

Fidel’s concept of the ideal socialist man.

Miguel explains that he teaches for a month at different American

universities every year, including the Ivy Leagues. His earnings cover his

living and production expenses. But he has nothing left for luxuries like

computer repairs. His penurious life partially explains why he does his own

production work; his peers maintain he’s an “OCD filmmaker,” in the words

of one.

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Going back to Nadie, I ask how he found Alcides and got him to agree

to be filmed.

“He lives not far from here, actually….He’s married to my cousin.

Since I was a little boy I go to his home.”

But it wasn’t a simple matter of family privilege. Miguel says Alcides

saw the camera as the only way he could preserve his writings. Everything

he talks about are essentially recapitulations of ideas from his manuscripts.

Those ideas spoke poignantly to Miguel’s own disaffection with the

Revolution and the current state of his country.

He grew up during the 1980s, at the height of the economic bonanza

subsidized by the Soviets, which offset the impact of the US embargo on

Cuba. Those subsidies evaporated with the 1991 collapse of the USSR,

initiating the “Special Period,” the Cuban government’s euphemism for the

catastrophic devastation of the country’s economy. That crisis shredded

Miguel’s socialist idealism.

“I became critical not only of Cuban society, but of any society in the

world because, in the back of your head, you’re still looking for those ideals

of social justice. You can’t walk away from that. When we were kids we

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were told that by the year 2000 there wouldn’t be any money, because it was

the utopia of communism. So there’s a part of us that’s dysfunctional in any

society we’re faced with because of that.”

At that moment, Miguel’s wife, Lynn, arrives. An accomplished

playwright as well as an actress, she’s as congenial and passionate as he is.

Together, they paint a far less romanticized picture of Cuba than the one

many foreigners harbor.

“We know that a lot of people outside of Cuba need to believe that the

Revolution is still a [viable] dream,” says Lynn. “The truth is, Cubans

everywhere are unhappy. We’re all trying to find another way to live. We

don’t have social justice anymore.”

“The biggest accomplishments of the Revolution,” says Miguel,

“which were free health care and education, are highly corrupt. Parents have

to bribe teachers to guarantee their kids get good grades. The teachers even

demand presents of no less than 5 CUCs. Also, when you go to the doctor,

you need money to bribe the doctor to get medicine because that doctor has

a limited amount, and of course, he will give the medicine to whoever bribes

him the most. It’s almost institutionalized corruption.”

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They echo what other Cubans told me earlier in the week. Despite

subsidized housing and food rations, Cubans are struggling at subsistence

levels. The free education and professional training don’t lead to wages than

can support families. Cubans frequently work multiple jobs to make ends

meet. Even doctors are driving taxis to supplement their meager incomes.

And yes, free access to medical treatment doesn’t necessarily include

medicines or medical supplies.

Indeed, since I arrived on the island, I’ve been struck by these and

other paradoxes. I’m in a communist country on a destination tropical island.

Cruise ships dock at the ports, and streams of tourists pour out to enjoy the

island’s hospitality as if they were in Hawaii or Tahiti. Private enterprise has

reared its head, mostly catering to tourists. Casa particulares and paladares,

privately run guest houses and restaurants, have exploded all over the

country, establishing a new cottage industry. They have also created a new

wealth disparity.

Moreover, buildings are crumbling to the ground even as people

continue to occupy them, a consequence of the Special Period. The faded

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tropical colors of the edifices make them appear more like a Broadway stage

set than the ruins that they are.

The societal landscape lends a cognitive dissonance to any notions of

a socialist paradise. The country is in transition, with all the social and

economic disruptions that go with it. But while the government recognizes

the need for these changes, it still insists on the Revolution’s success.

Miguel and Lynn say the government has been trying to exert more

control over artists since Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations. It

doesn’t want Americans exposed to Cuba’s internal critics. But cell phones,

computers and the internet thwart these efforts, allowing a growing number

of younger artists to produce works that defy the censors. Hence, security

forces have become more draconian in their dealings with artists.

“Are you afraid of going to jail?” I ask Miguel.

“I’m ready for it … if I have to go to jail or die,” he replies

emphatically. “Because there are so few things we can control in life, and I

found that making films the way I want to is the one thing that makes me

sleep well at night. If I can’t have that.…”

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The government actually did blockade the opening of Lynn’s play,

directed by Miguel, the previous week. Both would have been detained

except for the dozens of cell phones recording the incident. However, the

chances of Miguel facing prison are slim.

“The ones that really worry the government are artists with political

ambitions,” he says. “I don’t have any.”

Almost all of Cuba’s best filmmakers have left the country because of

the straitened economy and heightened censorship. Miguel chooses to stay

because he doesn’t have to worry about housing or basic living expenses.

This allows him to work steadily on his films, albeit as nadie. Like Alcides,

Miguel believes the artist’s responsibility is to hold a mirror up to society

and reveal its contradictions, and he will continue doing so no matter what.

Our conversation answers why I’ve had the same surrealistic feelings

about Cuba since landing on the island as I did watching Miguel’s film. The

country is a feast of contradictions.

Still, music fills the air everywhere, from early morning till late

evening. Residents actually open their doors and windows to let the familiar

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Cuban rhythms blare out into the streets. The joie de vivre so evident among

the people seems to propel them forward with ingenuity and pluck, Miguel

being a prime example. His adamant protectiveness of his creative process,

while extreme to many, gives me courage to face my own creative demons.

And the privilege of becoming acquainted with the thinking of two of

Cuba’s most eloquent nadies gives me hope for rescuing my own teetering

idealism as an American in these extreme times.

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