I remember I went. I remember there were a lot of others. What did they do, bury the outcome? That is why the Gutierrez letter irked me. He is a Johnny-come-lately not knowing the long history some of us have had with this site. (see Sunday blog on this subject)Monday, September 17, 2007
Parcel B Charrette December 2004 By Geniusofdespair
I remember I went. I remember there were a lot of others. What did they do, bury the outcome? That is why the Gutierrez letter irked me. He is a Johnny-come-lately not knowing the long history some of us have had with this site. (see Sunday blog on this subject)
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County buries lots of reports.
In the museum as it is currently conceived what will exhibit A be but a tirade against a supposed "inept and week keened" President General Eisenhower who we now know from recently discovered documents was pushed unwillingly into the whole Bay of Pigs fandango to appeal rabid conservatives biting at his administration like those surrounding Sen. Joe McCarthy. The plan was left sitting on a desk unknown to the inexperienced incoming JFK. Thus the museum will go on to slander the myth of the American Camelot, whether it is deserved or not it exists, lead by the youthful JFK's martyred president. What is exhibit B going to be? Perhaps a retelling of Elian, that other PR disaster Cuban-American and Miami Moment, brought to us by the opportunists that surround our current office-holders? Maybe they could add an exhibit to slander that icon of World Statesmanship and David Cameron's (Tory-Conservative party of Great Briton) new best friend Nelson Mandel. Yea, that will make us not look like laughing stocks. This is the kind of stuff dreamed up by the Federalist Society's attempts to retell history. While in its place we could have a multi-cultural narrative on the Caribbean experience that incorporates Cubans, Jamaicans, Dominicans, and the rest of the peoples of the Caribbean. This could serve as a world class institution that people would want to visit as an important adjunct to the other world class institutions that are being build in leading European capitals. These new museums chronicle the lives of people in European colonial empires before and after white Europeans arrived. We all know the kind of tourists who would visit this museums, the New York Times readers, high spenders and Art Basel goers. However we really have no use for those kind of tourists anyways when we could produce our own clown show. What is Mr. Nicholas J. Gutierrez, Jr. director for 9 years of the National Association of Sugar Mill Owners of Cuba if anything but the post-independent Cuba instrument of neo-colonialism? This whole project is racist in its very conceptualizations and opposes the direction of other museums around the world. Worst yet it is really at bottom a shamble of weak ideas thrown together to justify a parking garage!
The suffering of Cubans on the island and the expat community in Miami merits a venue to tell their story. Improvements should be made to the exhibits that currently exist in Little Havana including the one on Elian. These are little more than the home-made biased by volunteers that tell one-sided stories like those on the Troubles in Northern Ireland constructed from the painful experience of one extreme perspective. There are professional conservative ideologue museums like the Terror Museum in Budapest, but they are on a smaller scale and even in that case actually tell a wider story. They are not however, considered "World Class" institutions. The Terror Museum was designed to win a domestic election for the right-wing in Hungary (who lost anyways to the former communists - go figure) However, even in the case of the Terror Museum, it was only build after the decision to construct a Holocaust Museum of Hungary had been made. And while the Budapest Holocaust Museum is clearly the result of a conservative ideology and is considered to be apologetic of Hungarian nationalism (again it served a domestic propaganda function) at least it includes the atrocities committed against the Hungarian Jews, Romany, homosexuals and political dissidents.
In Miami the same kind of conservative ideologue have dreamed up this museum to rub salt in old wounds while nothing but some lame resolution towards Ha-ti is offered up to the other diverse communities in Miami with rich stories to tell. What we all get in the end is the elimination of more park land and a parking garage. Brought to us by a loud obnoxious spokesperson with ties to hard right. And then we wonder why those with real world class collections and our resident artists donate their pieces to other more cosmopolitan cities! We need to build civic pride here. If our civic elite are determined to foist this parking garage upon us then at least they could present a more diverse and representational presentation of reality that we could all support.
We were promised by Mayor Alex Penelas and by the Heat that Parcel B would become a soccer field. Now the Heat want that waterfront park site so millionaires can park closer to their box seats. Where is the community pride? Why can't museums go inland?
Cubans are sure making enemies going after Parcel B.
To beat a dead horse cont. (just noticed the horses superimposed on Miami skyline…oh to get computer literate after age 40…)
On the cheap on the sly and above the law, a quintessential American story
Or
After the “Encounter” how to negotiate history
Several anons have commented on the proposed Bay of Pigs museum. Of course the area should remain green (or be watered and tended if it is only bare coral bleaching in the sun). There is not enough space as it is, we are stressed, distressed. Furthermore ,any Bay of Pigs museum should be private and elsewhere, as is the case.
A good point made by several anons is that a museum represents a narrative of a community as a whole. As EoM illustrates we are not a seamless garment. Rending and unraveling seems more the reality, but weaving does work and museums can do it, if they do it properly.
When I was living in Washington D.C. the celebration of the Quincentennial (500th) anniversary of Columbus’s Discovery was planned, featuring a big exhibition at the National Museum of Art of the Smithsonian. “Not so fast.” Cried revisionist historians (all historians are always revising). “Hold your horses,” (horse graphics please) said Native American rights advocates. “What do you mean “discovery?” “What do you mean celebration?” Suicide rates on the rez point to a less than positive “Encounter.”
A lot had already occurred in the world of museums regarding “cultural sensitivity.” Remains of Native Americans would be ceremonial reburied if descendants could be identified, medicine bags and other objects considered sacred would, if displayed at all, be placed in a more respectful area. The idea that groups of people could be “studied” and “exhibited” and how was under total reconsideration. The entire idea of the Quincientennial was completely revised to take into account the cultures that were lost/destroyed by the European “encounter” and how vibrant they had been previous to 1492. Alongside works by DaVinci and Durer to show where Europe was at the cusp of the Age of Discovery were intricate feather robes and fabrics of Incan kings. A few years later a new museum of the Native Americans was opened.
Years earlier the creation of a Vietnam War Memorial was highly controversial. The veterans organized and paid for it themselves but were themselves caught by surprise when the winning design was found to be done by a Chinese woman architecture student at Yale. The debate over American triumphalism, in design and interpretation of history, was ironically healed through this process.
Controlling the narrative is always political. How people can contribute to it is the sign of a free and healthy society.
The story of the Cuban arrival in Miami, in many ways, fits the “traditional” American narrative of fleeing persecution. But there has been a lot of water under the bridge between 1961 and 2007. The Vietnam memorial is symbolic of it.
As the fiasco with Blackwater in Iraq earlier this week illustrates there is also an ongoing narrative of the U.S. government (in feckless collusion with the electorate) to try and get its foreign policy objectives (ie going to war) achieved on the sly, on the cheap, and above the law if possible. The Bay of Pigs invasion fits that narrative.
Today for every US soldier in Iraq there is a private contractor. They don’t come cheap. Blackwater, the Praetorian guard for high ranking civilian and military US personnel are former navy seals and special ops. However it’s a lot cheaper to contract out than pay the political price of subjecting the entire Iraq operation to full scrutiny by the American people. And the people were bought off at the end of the Vietnam war when the draft was replaced by an “all volunteer” army. The contractors were granted an “extra-judicial” status by the US occupation, not to be subject to Iraqi law (what Iraqi law) or the Code of Military Justice. Congress scrambled to draft some mechanism to be able to prosecute them in US courts if they did something abroad. They are still scrambling with the fallout. The total destruction of Falluja, by US forces after 4 contractors were killed and mutilated, the recent killing of 20 unarmed Iraqi civilians whom Blackwater deemed a threat, the earlier killing of the Iraqi vice president’s body guard.
My point is the US tried to get an invasion on the cheap 40 plus years ago, circumventing our own constitutional process. It could have been a lot worse, as it is now.
Let the narrative games continue.
S
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