AM Roberto Vargas Lee arrives with three Chinese officials and his elite students, who are carrying a Chinese flag, swords, curved axes, and other impressive

looking weapons. The instructors tell us to form a circle around Master Lee in the center of the courtyard, where he addresses us in a clear and decisive tone. He will soon be leaving for Hanoi in Vietnam and Hainan in China with the school’s best students, he says, to represent Cuban wushu: “China has always been a brother to us, and now it is also a friend. We are going to show the world that China lives in Cuba.”

He describes China’s advances in clean energy and the positive consequences for

figure 3.5 Bust of José Martí in the courtyard of the Cuban School of Wushu below the words “Wushu: health and life; an arm of the revolution.” Photo by the author.

Cuba’s transportation industry and then speaks in Mandarin with one of the visitors, who steps forward to address us. Through his translator, the official thanks Master Lee and the Chinese embassy and then tells us about the expansion of trade between China and Cuba and says that he hopes Cuban students will find Chinese computers to be helpful in their studies. By this time, onlookers have gathered at the school’s circular front gate, pushing for a glimpse through the metal bars. I don’t know if they are more interested in listening to the official or watching the wushu demonstration that usually follows these kinds of speeches. . . . At the end of class, at 12:00 PM, the twenty or so people in the novice group have to stand at the front and recite the phrase. Many of us can’t remember it and have to turn to read it off the wall, causing two of my fellow beginners to laugh. Our instructor looks upset and shouts at us that wushu is no joke, and that Martí deserves better. “Do it again,” she orders, “and this time with the fist [wushu salute] and some conviction!”

—Havana, November 16, 2005

As a champion of Chinese culture in Cuba, the school fills multiple functions. Opening a personal channel of communication between Chi-nese officials recommended to Vargas Lee by their embassy and hundreds of Cuban students—and potentially thousands of their family members—

it is a source of information about Chinese perspectives on the world and the implications for Cuba and Barrio Chino. There is no pretense of de-tailed reporting on the environmental impact of Sino- Cuban industrial ventures or on the labor standards, hiring practices, or remuneration policies of Chinese firms operating in Cuba. Even so, spontaneous pre-sentations directly from Chinese vips on the goals and achievements of bilateral projects provide a valued supplement to official news coverage (figure 3.6). They also provide the Chinese government with an unmedi-ated platform for explaining these initiatives and promoting forthcoming Chinese products. The crowds that regularly gather around the school’s gate, whether to glean insights from visiting dignitaries (figure 3.7) or to steal a glimpse of the acrobatic performances staged for them, reveal considerable curiosity about China’s growing impact (figure 3.8).

The school’s lessons are conveyed through a powerful blend of political and cultural symbols: beneath the Cuban flag and the gaze of Martí, stu-dents young and old practice an ancient Chinese art, learn how to count in Mandarin, and become proud of their connection to an emerging su-perpower. Their pride adds newfound confidence to a long- standing

dia-figure 3.6 Celebrating at the Cuban School of Wushu, May 10, 2013. From left to right: Jorge Chao Chiu (secretary general of the Casino Chung Wah), Xu Kezhu (the Chinese consul), Juan Eng (president of the Casino), Zhang Tuo (the Chinese ambassador), General Gustavo Chui, and General Armando Choy. Photo by the author.

sporic process observed elsewhere by Rhacel Parreñas and Lok Siu: “To be part of a diaspora is to reference one’s relationship and belonging to some larger historical cultural- political formation—a people, a culture, a civilization—that transgresses national borders. It is a way of reformu-lating one’s minoritized position by asserting one’s full belonging else-where” (2007, 13).

Far from a handicap, being “minoritized” appears to be an asset for Cuba’s wushu students. Their physical appearance generally shows little evidence of Asian heritage, but their enthusiastic embrace of Chinese martial arts asserts a statement of belonging to a distant homeland whose growing power is globally recognized. However great their enthusiasm, though, the students must accept an implicit hierarchy of devotion: as una arma (an instrument, tool, or arm) of the revolution, the school—

and, by extension, the Chinese culture it represents—is subordinate to the larger political organism, the Cuban state. It is within this hegemonic structure that students and their families learn from Chinese visitors

figure 3.8 A window into the future? The entrance of the Cuban School of Wushu, January 2012. Photo by the author.

figure 3.7 General Moisés Sío Wong delivers a speech at the Cuban School of Wushu, November 2005. Photo by the author.

about the products, services, and new possibilities that are changing their lives: affordable refrigerators and rice cookers, energy- saving light bulbs, inexpensive medicines stocking previously bare pharmacy shelves, Panda television sets screening weekly Chinese movies, low- emission buses and trains that run on time, and the encompassing message that Cuba’s future is secure. As China’s impact reaches further each day into the lives of ordinary Cubans, it is logical that the school should diffuse a vision of order that accommodates this impact within the hegemony of Cuban state nationalism.

Another indispensable contact for business- minded Chinese visi-tors is Vargas Lee’s father- in-law, Tao Jin Rong, an entrepreneur from Shanghai who moved to Barrio Chino to invest in the restaurant sector.

He and a small group of colleagues assist prospective investors by ar-ranging visas, coordinating meetings with interested counterparts, and helping them navigate Cuba’s complex and changeable business environ-ment. His acclaimed Tien Tan (Temple of Heaven) restaurant has gained a reputation among Chinese businesspeople as an auspicious venue for meeting accommodating Cuban officials. Among its patrons are Ramiro Valdés, Cuba’s vice president and minister of information, who has over-seen a joint venture with the Chinese firm Haier to produce consumer electronics in Cuba (see chapter 1). Former Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque and Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas, both advocates of closer en-gagement with China, have also conducted meetings with Chinese offi-cials in the restaurant’s private dining room. Omar Pereira Hernández, the former director of tourism at the Cuban embassy in Beijing, notes that he would frequently refer outbound Chinese officials to the restau-rant, since “in Cuba money alone cannot rule; it has to be backed up by political approval and social connections” (interview, June 14, 2010). The time invested by Chinese officials in cultivating relationships with Vargas Lee, his father- in-law, and Cuban diplomats indicates their familiarity with this code of practice.

Coordinating the potentially chaotic multiplicity of demands from the Cuban and Chinese governments and Barrio Chino’s residents, Vargas Lee treads with precision. The task of balancing all of these interests is complicated further by internal differences between two subgroups of the Cuban state (the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Historian) and two subgroups of the Barrio Chino community (the Chinese

associa-tions and local entrepreneurs, discussed below). In Nan Lin’s (2001, 67) terms, Vargas Lee is a bridging individual, adroitly navigating the distinct but overlapping demands of these interest groups.

The encounters Vargas Lee orchestrates at the Cuban School of Wushu and the Tien Tan restaurant are infused with opportunities for Barrio Chino’s stakeholders. The school gives Chinese government offi-cials and executives a platform for explaining the benefits of Sino- Cuban cooperation and Chinese products directly to hundreds of Vargas Lee’s students and their families. In the more intimate environment of Tien Tan’s vip room, the Chinese acquire insider knowledge on trade and in-vestment from the elite of Cuba’s China enthusiasts and inevitably ex-press the merits of economic liberalization. The Chinese government has compensated Vargas Lee for his work: the school’s gold- painted minivan is hard to miss as it zips around Havana displaying a message stenciled conspicuously on its side: “donation of the embassy of the People’s Re-public of China.”

For their part, the Chinese associations and the independent restau-rant operators of Chuchillo Lane are hopeful that with Vargas Lee’s sup-port, reforms in Barrio Chino under the Office of the Historian will bring new opportunities for commercial expansion. The lack of such opportu-nities to date has led to reliance on informal connections, illustrated in the infamous case of a Barrio Chino association elder observed by Cu-ban agents at the Fair of Canton in Guangzhou with a U.S. investor pur-chasing supplies, equipment, and decorations for the elder’s restaurant.

Clearly articulated legal codes that permit foreign financing and com-mercial expansion are foremost on the wish list of Barrio Chino’s Chinese associations, a growing pool of self- employed small business owners, and the Chinese embassy. Vargas Lee advocates this goal from a solid foun-dation: he has a personal stake in the restaurant sector and is a former member of the executive board of the Chinese community’s foremost body, the Casino Chung Wah.

To mitigate any top- down doubts about his revolutionary loyalty, Var-gas Lee often begins his public speeches with a positioning statement:

“I speak to you in the name of the state.” There is nothing hollow in this claim, as the state has benefited considerably from his work. His centrally conferred functions extend beyond building diplomatic ties and

demon-strating the Cuban government’s regard for traditional Chinese culture.

He also advances a century and a half of official attempts to regulate Bar-rio Chino’s informal sector. As the depth and reach of Cuban linkages with China intensify, he ensures that emerging connections are disclosed and integrated into an official framework of bilateral cooperation. Re-spected by elders and embedded in local networks, he has the capac-ity to convey communcapac-ity priorities upward and official requests down-ward, which has proven particularly useful to the Office of the Historian since 2006.

The next section examines the Office of the Historian’s efforts to achieve in Barrio Chino what no other state institution has been able to:

clamp down on the black market while stimulating economic growth.

Implicit in the Office’s agenda is an attempt to rationalize social capital in a more consensual way than has previously been the case, by integrating community networks intact into official programs for promoting tourism and neighborhood revival. To their own detriment, external administra-tors have long overlooked the benefits that sensitivity to Barrio Chino’s history, culture, and people could bring to their projects. Local opinions of the Office’s civic stewardship reveal that it has improved on past prac-tice, but that it still has much learn before it can harness Barrio Chino’s most powerful but elusive resource: the trust of residents.

FORMALIZING THE INFORMAL: THE OFFICE OF THE HISTORIAN IN BARRIO CHINO Cuban and foreign observers agree that strategies for containing the is-land’s black market are desperately needed. The Havana- based Grupo para el Desarrollo Integral de la Capital has been arguing for over a de-cade that the most pressing task facing the nation is to “formalize the informal” (2001, 1). Tighter regulations may help, but, as Archibald Ritter writes, top- down controls can be counterproductive: “Paradoxically, in attempting to control everything in the past, the government has ended up controlling very little. The effectiveness of stricter state controls actu-ally leads to weaker genuine control due to their promotion of illegalities, corruption and the ubiquitous violation of unrealistic regulations” (2011, 20). As discussed in chapter 1, decentralized authority and functional supply chains will help overcome this problem, but to achieve the

“ab-solute observance of legality” stipulated in Lineamiento 12 (República de Cuba 2011, 11), greater bottom-up respect for the state and the rule of law will also be necessary.

As Cuba moves beyond the political stability of the Castro presiden-cies, the state must find new ways to marshal popular support for its lead-ership and regulatory systems. Social allegiances embedded in neighbor-hood identity, protective solidarity within ethnic communities, loyalty galvanized by religious kinship, and other forms of group membership therefore have considerable influence in contemporary Cuba. As a hub of unregistered trade, headquarters to the nation’s Chinese associations, and a source of emerging ties to China, Barrio Chino is a case in point.

Transpacific ties are augmenting the capacity of community leaders to contest top- down directives and pursue alternative development agen-das. Adopting the position that the support of residents holds the key to administrative success in Barrio Chino, in January 2006 the Office of the Historian of the City became the latest institution to propose a new regulatory framework for the district.

The Office assumed managerial control of Barrio Chino at a time when the long- standing grievances of municipal administrators over inad-equate decentralization were at last catching the ear of national lawmak-ers. In 2000, as noted in chapter 1, Decree Law 91 had divided Havana into 93 (subsequently 105) Popular Councils, but the councils’ ability to implement economic development projects that might draw citizens out of the informal sector was undermined by inadequate financial devolu-tion. Cuban officials acknowledge that the transfer of executive power to Raúl Castro in 2006, while motivated by Fidel Castro’s failing health, generated broad optimism that there might finally be progress toward decentralization (both administrative and economic). The prospect of growing the formal economy through local reinvestment and business development was on the horizon. New commercial powers and territo-rial jurisdictions subsequently conferred on the Office of the Historian afforded cautious hope, though it was not until the 2011 Lineamientos that decentralization was officially recognized as a catalyst for coop-eration between state- owned enterprises, local governments, and small businesses.

There is no Cuban institution more experienced in simultaneously reining in informal practices and expanding registered commerce than

the Office of the Historian. Its principal objective is to design and im-plement commercially viable urban development programs that draw on local cultural heritage. Founded in 1938, the Office was directed by the Cuban intellectual Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring until his death in 1964, when it came under the directorship of the new historian of the City, Eusebio Leal Spengler. In 1981 the Office assumed administrative jurisdiction of Old Havana, the municipality adjacent to Central Havana (where Barrio Chino is located). The Office has developed stable coop-erative synergies with actors ranging from Old Havana’s seven local gov-ernments (Popular Councils) to religious communities and unregistered artistic ensembles (Hearn 2008a; Scarpaci, Segre, and Coyula 2002).^

The Office’s economic plan—managed since 1994 by its commercial enterprise Habaguanex—centers on establishing hotels, shopping cen-ters, and bars oriented to foreign tourism and reinvesting revenues in municipal development projects. While residents have benefited indi-rectly from this plan, most cannot afford to patronize the chic lounges and hotel lobby restaurants springing up around them. Leal’s strategy has nevertheless created jobs, and those willing to commercialize their cul-tural heritage have found ready demand for their talent on cabaret stages.

Folkloric performances of Afro- Cuban religious traditions and other cul-tural exotica have done especially well (Hearn 2004). The political upshot is the incorporation of a broad range of local actors, some of whom might otherwise seek to develop independent unregistered operations, into of-ficially regulated projects.

Leal’s plan for reinvesting profits from tourism in municipal develop-ment was propelled by the austerity of the early years of the Special Pe-riod, which left the Office without a central subsidy, and by the 1993 col-lapse of a revered eighteenth- century heritage site, the Colegio del Santo Ángel (Hill 2007, 59). The incident paved the way for Decree Law 143 of 1993, which designated Old Havana as a Priority Zone for Conservation and made the Office a national exemplar of decentralized municipal eco-nomic management (replicated in the late 1990s in the smaller historic centers of Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, and Trinidad). Henceforth the Office answered not to the provincial government of Havana but directly to the Council of State, in this way acquiring legal authority to establish relations with foreign investors and to tax economic actors in its terri-tory. This authority was expanded in 1995 through Accord 2951, which

recognized Old Havana as a Zone of High Significance for Tourism and eased restrictions there on foreign investment, gastronomy services, and trade in U.S. dollars. In 2003, Accord 4942 extended the boundary of the Priority Zone for Conservation from Old Havana to Barrio Chino, though negotiations with the Grupo and local Chinese leaders delayed the Office’s administrative takeover until January 1, 2006. The Office’s powers were augmented across both districts in June 2011 by Decree Law 283, signed by Raúl Castro, which enhanced its capacity to levy taxes, authorize private businesses, approve new guesthouses, and procure buildings and facilities.

Leal expressed interest in Barrio Chino as early as 1992. In his key-note address at a conference titled “Tourism and Its Importance for Un-derstanding the History and the Culture of the People,” he stated: “Bar-rio Chino: Is there anything more beautiful and interesting in Havana?

And yet I’m convinced that Barrio Chino will die in the coming years if a fundamental task is not accomplished. What is the task? To keep the Chinese community alive . . . it is not a matter changing or adorning the Barrio; it’s a matter of making it live, and life always comes from the inside out” (quoted in A. Wong and Baez 1993, 7– 8). Leal’s advocacy of bottom-up development reflects the Office’s long- standing attempt to le-gitimize commercial initiatives by linking them to widely recognized his-torical processes, or what Sherry Ortner (1991) calls “cultural schemas.”

Just as Afro- Cuban religious heritage in Old Havana has provided the Office’s cabaret clubs with ready material for what it calls “folklore tour-ism,” Chinese settlement in Barrio Chino in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a widely recognized theme for the district’s commercial “revival.” In both contexts the Office has leveraged vague but enthusiastic local and foreign understandings of Cuban history as a basis for specific development projects.

How genuinely history informs the Office’s work is debatable. As Clif-ford Geertz observed four decades ago, invocations of the past to justify the present always involve creative manipulation, or the transformation of a “model of tradition” into a “model for tradition” (1973, 93). Such a transformation is evident in the Office’s approach to Barrio Chino, where Mandarin has become the officially endorsed Chinese language and a statue of Confucius the latest photo opportunity. Mandarin, taught at the Confucius Institute (soon to be relocated from the University of Havana

to Barrio Chino), was unknown to Cuba’s Cantonese- speaking Chinese immigrants. They would have been similarly unfamiliar with Confucius, whose statue is now the centerpiece of a park in the heart of Barrio Chino.

Unveiling the statue to inaugurate Confucius Park in December 2012 with the Chinese ambassador and the president of the World Confucian

Unveiling the statue to inaugurate Confucius Park in December 2012 with the Chinese ambassador and the president of the World Confucian