Celia Sánchez Manduley and the Creation of Cuba’s New Woman

In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson states that “the deaths that structure a nation’s biography are of a special kind.” The death of Cuban revolutionary and Secretary to the President, Celia Sánchez Manduley, on 11 January 1980 was one such special historical event that has earned its place in the biography of Cuba. At the time of her death, two decades of significant economic problems, caused in part by an increasing level of Soviet-Cuban dependency and a failure to diversify Cuban exports, had left their mark on the nation in the form of mounting social and political tensions. While the Cuban government did not yet know that this rising anxiety would eventually result in the mass exodus of thousands of Cubans to the United States during the Mariel boatlift, increasing levels of worker absenteeism and the declining participation of women in work were becoming cause for alarm. In the thirty years since her death, national leaders, individual citizens, and government institutions in Cuba have articulated a complex, and at times contradictory, array of memories of Sanchez's life and contributions to the revolutionary cause. In turn, these memories have shaped a much larger national discourse concerning the relationship of the individual to the body politic and the proper role for women in socialist society. Aligning myself with recent scholarship that situates biography at the intersection of memory, representation, and politics, my work on Sánchez traces a genealogy of the meanings ascribed to her life story. I contend that the process of (re)creating Sánchez as a revolutionary icon following her death had ramifications far beyond memorializing one individual; it played a crucial role in the creation of an ideal revolutionary cubanidad (Cuban national identity) during a time of significant national and global challenge to socialism.