Cuba. In protest, members of the Veterans' and Patriots' Movement and their associates demanded the “rectification,” “regeneration,” and “moralization” of Cuba (Whitney 2001, p. 32); this was true of the many opposition groups that emerged at this time (Stoner 1991, pp. 59, 69). A representative of Cuban workers said that more than any other specific demand they might have, the workers desired “the realization of the Cuban national personality” (Whitney 2001, p. 33). For the Veterans, the realization of national personality equated with self‐determination in the areas of politics and economics. They complained that “Cuban nationality” was compromised by US influence in Cuba (Whitney 2001, pp. 32–33). Ultimately, the Veterans' and Patriots' resented the favorable treatment – and resultant profits – received by North American investors in the Cuban sugar industry. The Platt Amendment, a 1903 treaty that granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs in order to protect the newly independent nation, symbolized and sustained the disproportionate role the United States played in Cuban politics and economics. The Veterans' and Patriots' uprising in April 1924 was easily quashed, but their moralizing, regenerative national rhetoric shaped the Minoristas' approach to national culture, particularly in the pages of Avance. The discourse emerging from the Veterans' and Patriots' Movement revealed the political nature of the vanguard's interest in national values and personality.
Multiple editorials that appeared in Avance in 1927 and 1928 argued that the key to socially and politically engaged art was the emotional awareness of the artist (Carpentier 1927; Marinello 1927; Casanovas 1928). The articles claimed that an artist integrated in contemporary life would have an emotional response to political realities and thus make art that reflected that political engagement. There was a paradox, then, at the intersection of art and politics in the vanguard's thinking. The journal's editors advocated a vanguard notion of art that was centered in the artist's inner, emotional life, while also being socially aware. Their idea seems to be that if an artist focused on his or her interiority, some response to what was going on in the world would necessarily follow.
“Sincerity” and “truth” were key terms used in both the praise for artists and the criticism of politicians published in Avance. Marinello suggested new art and literature with such traits would result from a revolutionary break with the corruption of the Machado regime (Marinello 1927). The political failings that motivated the editorials centered on character issues and focused on the lack of will for political change as one of the most urgent challenges to the nation. The editors also attacked the character of those who ran the nation and those who administered the art and literary academies, complaining that both sets of leadership lacked honesty, intellectual responsibility and a sense of democracy (Directrices: Frente a la academia 1930a, Directrices: La traición de los hombres ilustres 1930c). For the sake of both the Cuban government and cultural progress, the journal urged Cuba's youth to make a radical break with the crooked Republican generations. Character was clearly a national issue, in terms of identity and sovereignty, affecting both cultural and political realms.
The editors hinted at the nexus between art and politics when they suggested that their “devotion” to new art paralleled their desire for a free and just life on an individual and collective level (Directrices: La izquierda y la siniestra 1929b). This suggests that sincere, emotionally honest expression in art, poetry, or the essays of Avance paralleled their interest in free expression in the public sphere. One of the central tenets of the journal was to publish divergent opinions, from Cuba and abroad (Medina 1980, p. 26). The “American art” survey was one example of such debate. In 1928–1929 Avance published the varied responses of Cuban and Latin American artists and writers regarding the themes and aesthetics that should guide American art (Olea and Kervandjian 2012). The visual corollary to this heterogeneity of opinion was the diversity of styles employed by Cuban modernists. Critics were consistently proud of the fact that the Cuban artists did not display the stylistic consistency of a “school” but rather pursued widely divergent styles. This was a manifestation of their individual, personal expression, and this heterogeneity of expression was taken as a sign of national strength (Maseillo 1993).
The Avance editors might argue that at a time in which individual expression was regulated by political or academic officials, any departure from the officially acceptable standards of expression could be understood to be political. What they valued was sincere freedom of expression. Such expressions, even if they appeared on the surface to be simply cultural, spoke to a national value that had a political valence: that is, the freedom of personal expression. It seems the editors hoped that if citizens and politicians valued honesty and sincerity, the Cuban government would then operate in the best interests of the nation rather than serve the interests of the officeholders and their North American cronies.
Just how cultural practices of sincerity could come to have a political impact was left undefined. The articles suggest that the editors hoped that if the general populace strongly valued honesty and freedom of expression, then they would tolerate nothing less from their politicians and that this strength of feeling would translate somehow into political pressure. Whether or not this could be an effective strategy for political change is another question entirely. Nor is it clear how a discrete national identity could emerge from the widespread pursuit of personal expression by various authors and artists. Although a widespread practice of individually focused, free expression could ultimately have a political impact if enough of the work produced happened to have politically resonant content, this is clearly an uncertain political strategy. But this was not really the vanguard's aim. Close scrutiny of the journal's editorials and contemporary art criticism suggests that rather than produce a particular national identity, the vanguard's aim was to promote freedom of expression as a national value.
This editorial connection between personal expression and the desire for a free and just life could be seen as a veiled critique of the censorship and repression of the Machado regime. The Machado administration regularly jailed, tortured, and exiled its intellectual and militant opponents, as well as shut down periodicals and the university when threatened by the opinions they expressed. Machado's pressure on the editorial board of Avance became so insistent that the journal folded in September 1930. The arrest of Marinello, together with a dramatic rise in violence against the opposition, seems to have brought the journal to this point (Directrices: La agresión al trabajo 1930d). In the final issue, the editors stated that they would rather suspend publication than submit to government censorship. These ideals for government and for art were integral to the vanguard's project to moralize and regenerate national art and politics; the journal had urged for the adoption of these principles for a deeply personal artistic expression, implying that art could model the ethical performance lacking in national politics. In this way, Cuban modernism could be avant‐garde in the sense of being at the forefront – ahead of society – in leading Cuba to a new set of social norms.
During this time, the Lyceum remained open and continued to present vanguard art, poetry readings, and lectures. Former Avance editor and poet Eugenio Florit (1904–1999) remarked in 1936:
In respect to the period when tyranny violently shut the doors of our principal educational centers, we remember that the Lyceum was a truly free university, where the most distinguished professors broke the silence imposed on them, giving lectures and courses of great value. At the same time, the artists, writers, poets gave exhibitions, concerts, and recitals in our salons, attended by unsettled and enthusiastic youth, who also took part in the debates prompted by contemporary subjects and of transcendence in distinct orders of life. (pp. 156–160)
Particularly during the Machado dictatorship, the Lyceum is remembered for its contribution to Cuba's democracy, providing a rare venue for civil debate and disagreement. Lyceum director Elena Mederos de González (1954) also noted that although members were “homogeneous” in their views of the club's mission, beyond that there was great “heterogeneity” of opinion. The homogeneity of the Lyceum extended to race and class as well, for the majority of the members were middle‐to upper‐class, criollo, and presumably Catholic (Stoner 1991, p. 74). Nevertheless, the emphasis on the heterogeneity of thought welcomed and promoted at the Lyceum, the club's association with vanguard buzzwords like las inquietudes (restlessness) and “youth,” and its pursuit of democracy all align the Lyceum's activities with the vanguard's agenda