On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at
times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its
founding in 1857, the island's first psychiatric hospital has been
an object of persistent political attention. Drawing on hospital
documents and government records, as well as the popular press,
photographs, and oral histories, Jennifer L. Lambe charts the
connections between the inner workings of this notorious
institution and the highest echelons of Cuban politics. Across the
sweep of modern Cuban history, she finds, Mazorra has served as
both laboratory and microcosm of the Cuban state: the asylum is an
icon of its ignominious colonial and neocolonial past and a
crucible of its republican and revolutionary futures. From its
birth, Cuban psychiatry was politically inflected, drawing partisan
contention while sparking debates over race, religion, gender, and
sexuality. Psychiatric notions were even invested with
revolutionary significance after 1959, as the new government
undertook ambitious schemes for social reeducation. But Mazorra was
not the exclusive province of government officials and
professionalizing psychiatrists. U.S. occupiers, Soviet visitors,
and, above all, ordinary Cubans infused the institution, both
literal and metaphorical, with their own fears, dreams, and
alternative meanings. Together, their voices comprise the madhouse
that, as Lambe argues, haunts the revolutionary trajectory of Cuban
history.
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