A Cuban Reading of Psalm 137

A Cuban Reading of Psalm 137

There are two Cubas. On the Island are revolutionaries crusading to construct a Cuba that combats any attempt to subjugate her spirit to the US hegemony. On the (main)land are the modernists who look toward the United States as the guide and hope for revitalizing a Post-Castro Cuba. Consequently, the Cuban community is divided into two antagonistic camps: Resident Cubans living under Castro's Marxist regime, and Exilic Cubans living under a global capitalist system. Due to these political and economic differences, we Cubans are a people divided against ourselves.

This division creates a unique space in how we read the Bible differently than the rest of Latin America or other U.S. Hispanic groups. Theologians operating from a liberationalist perspective focus on Exodus as a source of hope for their existential situation. The story of a God who hears the cries of the oppressed and personally leads them toward liberation is a powerful motif. However, Exodus is not the rubric from which we Exilic Cubans read the scriptures. It is the second exodus, narrating the Babylonian Captivity, that resonates within our very being. Like the Psalmist of 137 we sit by the streams of this country, singing about our inability to sing God's songs.

• BESIDE THE MIAMI RIVER WE SAT AND WEPT AT THE MEMORY OF LA HABANA LEAVING OUR CONGA DRUMS BY THE PALM TREES.

In la sagüesera (Southwest Miami), on Calle Ocho (Eighth Street), is a restaurant called Versailles, dubbed El palacio de los Espejos (The mirrored palace). What makes this restaurant unique are the mirrored walls. Sitting at the table in the crowded salon, I constantly see myself reflected on one of many heavily-gilded mirrors. As we Exilic Cubans look in the mirrors surrounding us, we are in fact searching for our ontological origin. Not so much what we are, but what we see ourselves as being.

Versailles serves as a vivid illustration to Lacan's theory of the Mirror Stage. Lacan, the postmodern psychoanalyst, maintains that while I look at myself in the mirror, I assume that what I see is a reflection of a self ─ a secondary reflection faithful (more or less) to the likeness of an existing original self. Lacan would propose the opposite, that the image in the mirror is what constructs the self. My encounter with the mirror literally reverses the direction, and serves the function of forming my "I.