10. The Cuban nuclear dream: the afterlives of the Project of the Century

Nicole Fadellin

In 1953, as part of his defence for his role in the attack on the Moncada Barracks, a young Fidel Castro outlined how the future revolutionary government would address poverty and inequality in Cuba, citing nuclear technology as a means to bring electricity to every corner of the island. It is a small detail in the nearly four-hour speech, yet it marked the beginning of what became known as el sueño nuclear cubano. This dream would begin to materialise 20 years later, in 1976, when Cuba and the Soviet Union signed a bilateral agreement to build two nuclear reactors near Cienfuegos. The project required a monumental investment of labour and resources. A generation of Cuban scientists travelled around the world to gain expertise in nuclear engineering while manual labourers from across the island moved to the isolated location to build the nuclear plant and a ‘city of the future’ from the ground up. The Soviet Union provided materials, expertise, and significant financial support. By the 1990s, however, as the socialist bloc collapsed and Cuba entered a severe economic crisis, Castro explained that the Caribbean nation could not bear the cost of the project alone. With the first reactor nearly 90 per cent complete, construction was halted indefinitely.

For the Cuban state, the Nuclear City would become an uncomfortable reminder of this failed project, since many of the people that were convened to bring the nuclear dream into existence still live among the unfinished structures. Increasingly, the Nuclear City and its inhabitants have been the topic of chronicles, films, and literary texts that seek to shed light upon this forgotten community. This chapter considers two such works: the 2015 film La obra del siglo, directed by Carlos Machado Quintela, and Zona, a play written by Atilio Caballero and first staged at Teatro de La Fortaleza in 2017. The first centres on a nuclear engineer who lives with his father and son in the abandoned Nuclear City, and the second is an absurdist drama in which six characters discuss the possibility of a toxic leak as they await the arrival of an unidentified group of people who will either interview or interrogate them. Through a comparative reading of these two works, this chapter explores the entanglement of ideas, physical structures, and people that persist in the wake of the Project of the Century. It focuses on how the promise of the Cuban nuclear dream lingers over the unfinished structures, eliciting a range of emotions from the city’s inhabitants, including nostalgia, indifference, or even fear.

In his contribution to The Promise of Infrastructure, anthropologist Brian Larkin (2018) explains that infrastructure can attract intense emotional investments regardless of whether it is finished or even built. He attributes this paradox to the unique temporality of infrastructure as a ‘promising form’. According to Larkin:

A promise can refer to a vow, or a commitment, but its other meaning refers to the coming to be of a future state of affairs, the idea we have that someone or something holds promise. Its referent is not to the here and now of things but to an uncertain future that infrastructure is to bring about and institutes a temporal deferral that refuses to deliver something in the present. It involves both expectation and desire, frustration and absence. (p. 181)

In this sense, the Project of the Century was expected to usher in a socialist technological utopia that would allow the island nation to escape energy dependence, bring low-cost electricity to all its citizens, and establish a new form of sociality built around collective infrastructures.

Today, the unfinished nuclear plant serves as a reminder of these ambitious promises of a future that never came to pass. This panorama comes into view most clearly through the perspective of the engineers that dedicated their lives to the project. In their study of road construction in Peru, anthropologists Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox (2015) demonstrate that the engineer is simultaneously inside and outside the social and material world that they seek to transform. They show that, contrary to popular belief, engineering is an embodied and relational practice. In different ways, the creative works considered in this chapter reveal the social complexity that surrounds the Cuban nuclear engineer, a subject shown to have an intimate knowledge of the materials, the technical difficulties, and the individual and collective hopes wrapped up with the Project of the Century.

Finally, the secondary characters of these works have a completely different relationship to the abandoned nuclear plant. They find its presence annoying and even overbearing, responding with frustration, derision, or fear. Even though the plant was never operational, and the radioactive material was never delivered, these characters are haunted by the possibility of nuclear contamination, a sensation that is developed through visual and auditory elements within the film and the mysterious illness at the centre of the play.

In the pages that follow, I begin with an outline of the historical context for the Cuban nuclear dream. Then, through a comparative reading of La obra del siglo and Zona, I explore the atmosphere of the present-day Nuclear City, analyse the portrayal of the Cuban nuclear engineer, and consider how the material properties of radiation influence the uncanny sensation that pervades both works. The chapter closes with a reflection about what is in store for the Nuclear City.

The Cuban nuclear dream

On 26 July 1953, Fidel Castro led a group of young rebels in an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. During the trial that followed, Castro represented himself and delivered a historic four-hour defence. His address, later published under the title La historia me absolverá (History will absolve me), justified their attack as a reaction to the extreme inequality that plagued Cuba under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. In his legal-defence-cum-manifesto, he laid out the goals of the future revolutionary government. Nuclear energy is briefly mentioned as a means for taking electricity to every corner of the island and, by extension, providing dignified housing for all Cubans (Castro, 2007 [1953]). The speech marks the beginning of the Cuban nuclear dream. It was also the origin for the 26 July Revolutionary Movement that would succeed in defeating Batista five and a half years later.

In the article ‘The revolutionary city: socialist urbanisation and nuclear modernity in Cienfuegos, Cuba’, geographer Gustav Cederlöf (2020) traces the evolution of the Cuban nuclear programme throughout the second half of the 20th century. He shows that the Juraguá nuclear plant was part of a multifaceted effort by the revolutionary government to use infrastructure to transform Cuba both socially and economically. The construction of housing complexes and the implementation of a network of ration shops known as bodegas ‘enabled socialist urban practices’ (p. 58). He also documents the expansion of the national electricity system, presenting the thermoelectric plants as a direct precursor for the nuclear programme. Although near total electrification would eventually be achieved through this oil-based network, Cederlöf explains that the shift to nuclear power would have allowed the island to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and re-export the oil received from the Soviet Union for hard currency (2015, p. 655, 2020, p. 69).

When mutual aid came to an end, all of this fell apart. Rations were cut, thermoelectric plants went dark, and Russia dramatically reduced its financial, technical, and logistical support for the Cuban nuclear programme. Cuba no longer had a reliable source of enriched uranium. Nor did it have access to an international fleet of ships to transport materials. The nail in the coffin of the Project of the Century was the fact that Cuba would now have to come up with hard currency to pay the salaries of the Soviet technicians. As a severe economic crisis took hold throughout the island, Castro travelled to the Juraguá nuclear plant on 2 September 1992, to announce the suspension of the project.

Literary critic Ahmel Echevarría (2016) tackles the emotional and psychological impact of this moment in his essay ‘Seis millones de pares de zapatos plásticos’ [Six million pairs of plastic shoes].1 He boils down the almost 40-year period between 1953 and 1992 to a single, dramatic image: ‘The parenthesis of the nuclear dream is opened and closed by the same person. The same fiery discourse in the name of a Revolutionary Government for the good of the people.’2 In both historical moments, the famed orator invokes duty, sacrifice, and the greater good. In the 1953 speech, the greater good involves reducing inequality, eliminating poverty, and increasing access to electricity, healthcare, housing, and education. By 1992, however, it takes on a strangely specific material form. Castro insists that they cannot continue burying money in the project by paying the salaries of the foreign technicians since that same sum could buy enough raw material for 6 million pairs of plastic shoes a year (Castro, 1992).

As part of an implicit socialist social contract, Cuban citizens were expected to relinquish some civil liberties while the revolutionary government would provide basic goods (electricity, housing, foodstuff) and services (education and healthcare) for all. During the extreme economic crisis of the 1990s, known as the Special Period in Times of Peace, the Cuban government was unable to uphold its end of the social contract, yet the same sacrifices were still expected of the Cuban people (de Ferrari, 2015). With the phrase ‘6 million pairs of plastic shoes’, Echevarría underscores the rhetorical manoeuvre that Castro used to recast the social contract within the context of the Nuclear City. In other words, the promise of efficient electricity and national autonomy was replaced by a finite number of plastic shoes. The plant workers were asked to make this final sacrifice for the greater good. According to Echevarría, the nuclear dream began to devolve into a nightmare.

The government proceeded to divert resources to the tourist industry as a stopgap for the extreme economic crisis. The Contingente Vladimir Ilich Lenin,3 the construction brigade summoned for the Project of Century, was transferred to the island’s famous keys to build luxury hotels, while many of the scientists and support workers simply stayed in the unfinished Nuclear City. Nuclear engineers, supervisors, security guards, performers, journalists, teachers, spouses, and children would make up the unlikely transnational community in the isolated location across the Cienfuegos harbour.

In Post-Soviet Social, historian Stephen Collier (2017) considers the fate of small and medium-sized industrial cities throughout Russia following the collapse of socialism. Just like the Cuban Nuclear City, these ‘cities of the future’ had been built as part of an effort to reorganise populations around production and, at the same time, forge new forms of sociality through urban planning. Each city included public spaces, centralised infrastructure, and universal social services while industrial production connected the community to a national distribution network. These industrial cities suffered a total economic collapse following the introduction of economic liberalisation policies in the 1990s, and Collier explains that ‘the devastation was as much existential as it was material’. Decaying buildings and obsolete infrastructures served as ‘stark reminders of a vision of the future (…) that was now past’, a vision that had been forged through decades of hard work and sacrifice by its inhabitants (p. 6).

Interestingly, these same collective infrastructures seemed to hold the communities together. Borrowing a concept from economic geographer Ann Makrusen, Collier explains that ‘things were bad but (...) they were also “sticky”’ (p. 7). Rather than suffering an exodus or succumbing to abject poverty, these small cities banded together to raise funds for those in need and make political demands to their representatives. To some degree, socialist urban planning had succeeded in shaping social practices. In Russia, these cities would survive the difficult years of the 1990s. The collective infrastructures would even resist, and ultimately shape, the neoliberal reforms of the 2000s.

In the decades following the suspension of the project, the Nuclear City would not become the focus of public policy or spending. It would survive, however, as a community with a distinctive identity and shared history. The film La obra del siglo and the play Zona explore the daily life of the engineers, labourers, ferry drivers, Russian teachers, opera singers, and scrap metal traders that live on in the wake of the Project of the Century.

The city of the future, 20 years later

La obra del siglo, by director Carlos Machado Quintela (2015), portrays the tense cohabitation of three generations (grandfather, father, and son) who share an apartment in the city that was built for plant workers near the Juraguá nuclear plant. The film is set in the year 2012, exactly 20 years after the project was suspended and the same year that Nuclear City native Robeisy Ramírez won gold at the London Olympics. About halfway through the film, Otto (the grandfather) and Leo (the grandson) chat about Robeisy’s win over beers as they sit outside a gas station. Otto notes that the Nuclear City did not even make the news. Instead, the win was attributed to the city of Cienfuegos. The oversight leads Otto to explain to his grandson that the Nuclear City had become a ghost town, an embarrassing reminder of the failed nuclear dream: ‘They want us to just disappear out here. They’re ashamed that we’re still here.’4

The film juxtaposes the black-and-white narrative sequences set in 2012 with archival footage from the 1960s–1990s. At first glance, this strategy seems to suggest a simple contrast between past enthusiasm for a socialist technological utopia and a sombre post-apocalyptic present. Upon closer examination, however, the collage style of the film offers surprising emotional and psychological depth. It draws attention to the social bonds forged through the Project of the Century, while highlighting the shortcomings of some of the values associated with socialism. It does not completely abandon the socialist project, but it does criticise the lack of basic social goods and services in the present.

In the first narrative scene of the film, for example, Otto answers the door of the apartment he shares with his son and grandson, and he is met by a team of fumigators. Later in the film it will be revealed that the fumigation is due to an Aedes Aegypti plague and subsequent dengue epidemic triggered by the lack of a functional water supply system. In the present moment of the film, however, Otto chats with the supervisor of the fumigators on the balcony of the apartment. The supervisor begins to reminisce about the space race; he recalls: ‘It was a golden era. There was a sense of epic back then. I miss that … The Cold War. A race to see who had the biggest dick. The Russians or the Americans.’5 As he speaks, the image cuts away to triumphant archival footage of the first Soviet and Cuban cosmonauts to go to space, and once the camera returns to the present moment, the fumigator notes that the pesticide clouds billowing out of the bottom of a nearby building look like a rocket taking off, commenting that he ‘would have liked to have gone to space’.6 The rumbling noise of the foggers increases in volume and a voiceover countdown in Russian completes the illusion.

In the first scene, the space race is presented as part of an epic effort to forge a socialist technological utopia. Later in the film, the idea of the space race as a competition to see who has the biggest manhood will be recast in a disturbing confrontation between the three main characters. As Rafa attempts to entertain a woman in his room, the sexual energy ramps up throughout the apartment. Leo attempts to masturbate in the bathroom, and Otto begins banging on Rafa’s door. He accuses his son’s date of trying to steal the apartment and begins shaking his semi-erect penis at the door while he yells for her to come out and look at his ‘rocket’. This obscene encounter presents a criticism of the hypermasculinity previously celebrated by the fumigator and conveys the fragile social fabric of the abandoned Nuclear City.

This example also illustrates that narrative film has the capacity to create complex and emotionally impactful scenes and develop concepts over time, highlighting the contradictions and multiplicity that shape lived experience. These same strategies are used to consider the fate of the broader community that came together to build the Project of the Century. A scene set on a ferry provides the emotional anchor for this reflection. The camera follows the perspective of Otto as he identifies each passenger for his grandson Leo. A thin old woman, with deep wrinkles carved into her face and hollowed out cheeks, holds the gaze of the camera as her hair slightly blows in the wind. She operated a crane for 20 years. Then there is the picapiedras, a young, black man who stands out from the middle-aged and elderly passengers. Otto explains that the picapiedras sneak into the plant at night to dismantle it and sell the parts for profit. Finally, a nuclear engineer looks up from his reading to meet the camera’s gaze. His expression and body language are full of tense energy that is difficult to decipher. Otto notes that this person always reminds him of his son Rafa. Other passengers include a security guard, a former television producer, a Russian teacher, and a soprano singer from Moscow. The penetrating darkness, the extended shot of each passenger, the gestures, and the expressions create a series of haunting living portraits.

Despite the unsettling atmosphere, the ferry scene serves as proof of the transnational community that was forged through the Project of the Century. There are scientists and labourers, as well as educators, artists, and journalists that each contributed to the project in their own way. Details about these secondary characters appear throughout the film. Shortly after the ferry scene, archival footage from TeleNuclear, the local broadcast station, shows interviews with the Contingente Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the construction brigade that attracted thousands of workers representing all 14 provinces. When asked how such a diverse group manages to get along, a welder explains: ‘Everyone knows that if help is needed, Camagüey will come, Santa Clara will come. It’s like a big family. Cuba is Cuba. We didn’t come here for the province; we came here for the country.’7 This clip is followed by a propaganda video that touts the amenities of the ‘city of the future’. A voiceover explains that the Nuclear City will cover all aspects of life for the plant workers: leisure, entertainment, medical care, and education. The narration is accompanied by shots of the apartment complexes, as well as images of people enjoying the beach and busy telegraph operators connecting messages to the ‘main cities of Cuba and the Soviet Union’.

Finally, the continued presence of the support workers from the Soviet Union is felt in unexpected ways. The soprano singer from the ferry provides an extra-diegetic transition between scenes with a rendition of Te odio by Félix B. Caignet,8 while Rafa’s Russian teacher materialises out of thin air at his bedside to correct his pronunciation when he attempts to speak Russian to his date. The exchange then prompts his date to reminisce about her former Soviet lover. Although the ‘city of the future’ was never finished, these snapshots attest to the ‘stickiness’ of the Project of the Century. Here, the emphasis is not technology or nuclear power, but all the social infrastructures, relationships, and personal trajectories that became intertwined with the process.

While La obra del siglo conveys melancholy and other heavy emotions, Zona by Atilio Caballero (2017) immerses its audience in chaos and uncertainty. This absurdist drama is modelled upon Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Drama critic Martin Esslin (1965) recalls that in the wake of World War II, works like Waiting for Godot shocked audiences and even angered critics because they eschewed almost all accepted theatrical conventions. He explains that there are no well-defined characters. Actors embody archetypes or switch roles halfway through the play. There is no linear plot either. The audience does not observe the resolution of a problem but instead witnesses the unfolding of a ‘poetic image’ or ‘situation’ that takes on new meaning and nuance with each scene.

In the opening scene of Zona, we encounter six characters wearing nasobucos (facemasks) inside a makeshift second-hand clothing store in the Nuclear City. Over the course of nine brief scenes, they talk about the situación, a mysterious illness that is plaguing their community. Mostly, however, they wait. They do not know exactly whom or what to expect. Will they be visited by reporters for an interview? By nurses or scientists that can determine the cause of the strange symptoms plaguing the Nuclear City? Or will they be interrogated and quarantined? No answer is provided. The six characters are based on real-life inhabitants of the Nuclear City, and some of these non-actors are also incorporated into the production, delivering a monologue from a small wooden platform at key moments throughout the play. Both the non-actors and their fictional counterparts evoke the transnational community that inhabits the present-day Nuclear City. There is an opera singer from Kazakhstan (Ekaterina), a prostitute (Ofelia), a libidinous woman (Servicity), and a man in charge of water delivery (Omar). Finally, there are not one but two nuclear engineers: El Ingeniero and El Nervio (an engineer turned handyman).

The characters speculate about the origin of the mysterious ‘situation’ plaguing the Nuclear City, and their hypotheses all point to tensions between the Cuban state and the inhabitants of the Nuclear City. El Nervio proposes that they could be suffering from the highly contagious blight of capitalism from their contact with the used clothing. His comment reflects the official discourse since the 1990s, when the Cuban government doubled down on its effort to resist ideological infiltration from the USA. Ekaterina runs with this idea, suggesting that they are ground zero of a deadly pandemic transmitted through foreign donations. She is relieved, however, that they will at least be guaranteed a well-rounded diet during treatment. This quip refers to the food shortages and insufficient canasta básica (ration of basic foodstuffs) that have plagued Cuba since the Special Period. Finally, Omar develops an elaborate theory based on an experiment from the 1960s involving rats and memory. He believes that a protein deficiency has transformed them into puros esqueletos desmemoriados [simple absent-minded skeletons], going so far as to suggest that the government is intentionally depriving the inhabitants of the Nuclear City of essential amino acids so that they will ‘forget’. These different theories insinuate that the Nuclear City, more than any other place, has remained trapped in the extreme crisis and uncertainty that marked the Special Period. Through the concept of memory, Omar also hints at the government’s complicity in erasing the nuclear project from public discourse and all but abandoning the Nuclear City and its inhabitants.

The engineer as subject: from portrait to parody

To describe his inspiration for La obra del siglo, director Carlos Machado Quintela has explained that: ‘The real failure wasn’t the suspension of the electro-nuclear project, but rather that all these workers handed over their youth and were simply forgotten in exchange.’9 The most affected workers were without a doubt the nuclear engineers. Great lengths were taken to guarantee that Cuban scientists gained the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to carry out a nuclear programme. Over 1,000 Cubans completed advanced studies abroad in radiochemistry, nuclear physics, and nuclear engineering (Castro Díaz-Balart, 2014). They also gained practical experience at nuclear plants throughout the Soviet Union. When the project was suspended, however, they found themselves in a country and a geopolitical context in which their decades of training had become obsolete.

Within the film, Rafa represents this lost generation. He dedicated his life to the Cuban nuclear dream. In 1992 he lost his livelihood, and over the course of two decades he watched as the physical remains of a socialist Cuba crumbled in front of him. Rafa even became an anachronism in his own house. Otto explains to Leo that while neither of them feel an attachment to socialism or the nuclear dream, it was different for Rafa: ‘That’s how your father grew up … with all that shit they filled his mind with. Poor guy … he suffered more blows than he deserved.’10

Following this conversation, and upon his grandfather’s request, Leo takes his father out. In the next scene, the two make the trip out to see the reactor. It is located on an empty concrete plot, housed between some unfinished walls, a few kilometres away from the Nuclear City. The tone is upbeat. The two men climb into the cylinder and play like children, trying to run up the sides of the shaft, hanging from the inserts where the uranium would have been and playing a makeshift game of baseball. When Rafa tires, he takes a break to explain nuclear fission to his son. Then he begins to tell his story.

He remembers his years in Moscow with nostalgia. He delves into detail about the bitter cold, the idiosyncrasies of his teachers, and the academic challenges, emphasising that he was a dedicated student. The tone changes once the story shifts to Cuba. Personal events are contained in brief sentences yet when he narrates his arrival to the Juraguá plant, he draws out each sentence in a gravelly voice: ‘I met your mother. You were born. Your mother left … And I came to work here day and night with the hope that this plant would light up the whole island. I missed out on Cienfuegos by day for fifteen years.’11

As Rafa speaks, the image cuts away to archival footage from TeleNuclear portraying the arrival of the first reactor in 1989. The tone is surprisingly subdued. Much of the footage shows the trailer carrying the reactor as it creeps down the road towards the plant accompanied by the sound of engines rumbling and safety warnings. A small group of engineers, supervisors, and labourers escort the reactor on foot. This footage links Rafa’s memories to the practical, in situ experience of bringing the Project of the Century into existence. The promise of nuclear energy would dissipate in the official discourse of the revolutionary government, but for the engineers that worked on the project, this promise is wrapped up with memories of the equations and intellectual demands, a tactile memory of the materials, and a sense of duty linked to decades of sacrifice and dedication.

Rafa continues his testimony. As he approaches the definitive moment of his testimony, monumental political events are reduced to brief sentences. As he recalls the fateful 1992 speech, he mimics Castro’s dramatic oratory tone and pace:

And then what happened? The Berlin wall fell. The Soviet bloc collapsed. The Soviet Union dissolved … And one day Fidel showed up here under the pouring rain to tell us that even though nature was crying we mustn’t cry. Because if we cry, it should be out of pride, not cowardice. Because we must face our troubles … Well, I was the first to start crying.12

The scene ends with Rafa alone inside the hull of the reactor. He climbs out and walks around the reactor, observing and touching it. Throughout his testimony, these verbal and visual cues reveal the intimate entanglement of ideas, materials, and people from the perspective of the engineer. This scene also marks a turning point for Rafa. After sharing his story with his son, he demonstrates renewed energy and an interest in daily life. Back in the apartment, he and Leo put a fresh coat of paint on the living room walls. While he teaches his son proper stroke technique, Rafa dances to music on the radio. He also invites a date over for dinner. Ultimately, however, this relief is short-lived.

In their 2015 study of civil engineers and road construction in Peru, Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox develop the concept of the engineer-bricoleur who combines academic expertise with embodied, practical experience. The image of the Cuban nuclear engineer presented in La obra del siglo coincides with this approach; the film goes to great lengths to portray Rafa as a thinking, feeling subject. Zona, however, deconstructs this image into two competing characters. El Ingeniero comes across as an out-of-touch expert, while El Nervio is an engineer turned all-purpose handyman. The juxtaposition stages an encounter between these two forms of knowing and doing, and this conflict is furthermore mapped onto a hierarchy with racist undertones. At one point in the play, someone tries to insult El Nervio him by calling him an alchemist and another character responds that she has never seen a black alchemist and suggests that brujo or shaman would be a more fitting epithet.

El Nervio is also accused of causing the ‘situation’, since he repurposes scrap metal from the ruins of the nuclear plant to make bedframes and other necessities. He delivers a lengthy monologue in his defence as the audience accompanies him on his nightly run to the abandoned plant, explaining that all usable materials had disappeared overnight as a bustling slum arose on the outskirts of the city. He insists that the rumours about his bedframes are not true since there was never any hazardous material in there anyway. For safe measure, adds that: ‘If there had been, nothing would have been able to make it out of that tomb.’13 He then describes the procedure for storing nuclear waste, which includes several layers of ceramic, steel, and titanium, a granite tomb, and an indestructible dome. His insistence does not provide reassurance, but rather draws attention to the perception that others have of him.

El Ingeniero visits El Nervio in his ‘laboratory’, i.e. the abandoned plant, and their exchange further accentuates the group’s hypocrisy. El Ingeniero asks El Nervio to build him a radiation detector and within the same breath he shows his contempt for his counterpart’s informal methods. He describes the handyman’s work as: ‘The twisted, the oblique, that which slithers down below, strange mechanics, what everyone knows but no one says aloud. I always tried to distance myself from all that, it has nothing to do with the image that others hold of me.’14 His sanctimonious attitude, exacerbated by the fact that he is asking El Nervio for help, calls into question the hierarchies that privilege ‘objective’ knowledge over embodied experience.

El Ingeniero considers himself a reputable expert within his community, yet he is perceived as pedantic and full of hot air. The other characters call him a demagogue, make jokes, or simply state that he does not know what he is talking about. As the group attempts to determine the cause of the mysterious illness, El Ingeniero assures them that nuclear contamination is not the cause since there is a Sistema de Vigilancia Radiológica [Radiological Surveillance System] monitoring the area at all times. The other characters ignore these claims or openly tease him. Ofelia tells him that his naivety is endearing and invites him to lay his head on her lap. And last but not least, in the final scene, the other characters egg him on as he struggles to pull-start his homemade radiation detector, which appears to be a boat motor covered in flashing lights:

SERVICITY. No matter. Try again.
OMAR. Fail again.
EKATERINA. Fail better.15

The reference to one of Samuel Beckett’s most famous lines is a fitting end for the play. Absurdism is much more than a formal exercise for Zona. It calls into question the political, scientific, and philosophical tenets that sustained the ambitious nuclear programme. The potpourri style of delivery questions the primacy of one form of knowledge over all others. Scientific explanations are indistinguishable from literary quotations, conspiracy theories, personal testimonies, and even verborrhea. The overall effect is a destabilisation of meaning and an atmosphere of uncertainty.

Finally, the parody of the engineer takes on new meaning in light of the metadramatic elements used throughout the play. Teatro de La Fortaleza, the group responsible for creating Zona, has a rigorous creative methodology that involves observation, interviews, historical research, fictional reading assignments, and post-dramatic theatre exercises (Caballero, 2017a). For Zona, the group decided to incorporate interventions from the residents that served as inspiration for the characters. The stage notes indicate that a small wooden platform should be placed onstage for these non-actors, similar to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. The script includes varying degrees of detail for these monologues. The resident who inspired the pedantic engineer clarifies that he does not like vodka; he does not fantasise about being the anonymous Russian soldier who climbed atop the Reichstag cupola to raise the Soviet flag in 1945, nor does he care much about impressing others. Lucho Medina, who served as the basis for El Nervio, simply ‘tells his story’.

Together with the video camera facing the actors onstage at all times, and the pretence of the interview/interrogation that never materialises, these monologues draw attention to the act of testimony. Although the long-awaited reporters/nurses/scientists never arrive, it becomes clear that the play itself has allowed the characters and their doubles to tell their stories through all the expressive languages that theatre affords. In this way, perhaps, Zona breaks with absurdist form by creating an opportunity for meaningful and potentially fulfilling connection between the residents of the Nuclear City, the actors, and the audience.

The disaster that never happened

—Otto, have you stopped to think about what would have happened if that monster exploded?
—Sure, I’ve thought about it, because of Chernobyl, but for that they would have had to finish it.16

In 1986, just three years after construction began on the first reactor at Juraguá, disaster struck at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, located in present-day Ukraine. The horrific events triggered public opposition to nuclear energy throughout the world, and the Cuban government carried out an extensive press campaign to defend the Juraguá project, drawing attention to the difference between the reactor models and the implementation of additional safety measures. Through archival footage, La obra del siglo provides a glimpse of some of these press conferences. In the same sequence, the film also includes interviews with Cuban technicians that complain of missing parts, defects, and other setbacks. Finally, an intertext imitating a computer screen from the 1980s scrolls across the screen, concluding that even under optimal conditions these issues would have triggered unpredictable events.

Following this sequence, the camera pans out to show the Nuclear City in the present day. Pesticide clouds hang in the air as a grating, low-frequency alarm sounds in the background. The image cuts away to what appears to be Leo coughing as he smokes with a friend in a vacant, unfinished apartment. Finally, the fumigators from the opening scene reappear. The camera follows the fumigators as they leave the floor, passing the other residents who fill the hallway, biding time as they wait for the smoke to clear. A voiceover begins to describe the different categories of radiation exposure, explicitly linking the visual cues and sound effects to the idea of nuclear disaster. Once again, the pesticide clouds evoke what could have been. Nostalgia for the space race morphs into the haunting sensation of a disaster that never happened.

Zona, in contrast, portrays contamination in the present-day Nuclear City. The unique material properties of radiation make this impossible situation seem plausible. Radiation is odourless and invisible and, as Rahul Mukherjee (2020) explains in his study of radiant infrastructures in contemporary India, it can silently ‘spread through air, water, river and soil’ (p. 12). For this reason, Mukherjee notes that ‘living next to an atomic test site or nuclear reactor can totally disrupt a human being’s sense of time and space’ (p. 73). The material properties of radiation increase apprehension and deniability, frequently leading to conflict between communities that live near radiant infrastructures and government officials that negate toxicity. In this faceoff, the bodies of victims and survivors often ‘rebel’, displaying the physical and emotional traces of ‘unwanted intimacies with radiant energies’ (p. 14).

In Zona, a character named Omar insists, ‘Whether you want to see it or not, there is something there, and that something has impacted almost everyone that lives here.’17 As proof, he points to a series of curious symptoms: a glazed-over expression, a resigned attitude, nervous giggles, an air of sexual arousal, an addiction to telenovelas. Ofelia, the well-read prostitute, suggests that the symptoms are reminiscent of apraxia, a neurological disorder that impairs communication between the brain and the rest of the body, making it impossible to carry out simple tasks or movements. Finally, all the characters note that the population has been undergoing sudden changes in size.

There is no consensus about the cause of these symptoms, but the most common hypothesis is, of course, the nuclear plant. The characters repeatedly mention the possibility of a leak or contaminated materials, and the two engineers attempt to reassure them. El Ingeniero declares the idea a malicious rumour. On multiple occasions, he insists that there is a surveillance system monitoring the air, and when this does not convince the rest of the group, he commissions El Nervio to build the radiation detector so that he can set the record straight himself. In the final scene, a brief intervention by the two real-life engineers addresses the mechanics of nuclear fission works and the possibility of a leak. Finally, El Ingeniero starts his makeshift ‘contraption’, which looks like a boat motor covered in flashing lights. The machine captures the cacophony of daily life in the Nuclear City: voices, profanity, domino games, telenovelas. As the play ends, the characters realise that no one is coming. The machine starts to emit recognisable, albeit random songs, and El Nervio begins to dance, performing a mix between rhythmic dance and Tai Chi. Slowly, the other characters start to imitate him.

In the end, all their theories boil down to one concern: radiation poisoning. Zona develops an uncanny atmosphere of nuclear contamination, even though there was never any radioactive material delivered to the Project of the Century. The material properties of radiation, combined with the overwhelming feeling of being abandoned by the state, triggers anxiety, hypervigilance, and uncertainty. While it becomes clear that their attempts to find answers have been futile, the final dance provides an open ending. Its interpretation depends on the gestures and affect expressed by the actors in the moment.

Conclusion

Both works analysed demonstrate the potential of fiction to express social complexity. They employ diverse representational strategies. La obra del siglo makes use of archival footage and extra-diegetic visuals and sounds while Zona revels in word play, nonsense, and metadramatic interventions. In both works, the Cuban nuclear engineer is shown to be immersed in the entanglement of ideas, materials, and people that made up the Cuban nuclear dream. Equally important is the representation of the transnational community of support workers and family members that were brought together around the Project of the Century. It is difficult to pinpoint why these secondary characters stayed or what they feel, but both works succeed in conveying a vague, conflicted attachment to place and ambivalence towards the remains of the nuclear plant.

Each work develops a different, yet equally haunted atmosphere. In La obra del siglo the mood is lethargic, eerie, and surreal. The pesticide clouds signal a lack of adequate infrastructure in the Nuclear City, while also evoking the utopian and dystopian potential of a future that never came to pass. In Zona, contamination comes to stand in for the many problems facing the community in the present: lack of livelihood, food, water, health, and information. The characters are plagued by rumours, conspiracy theories, and mysterious symptoms. The most important takeaway from both works is abandonment.

State neglect can have potentially devastating consequences for the future of the Nuclear City. In between the release of La obra del siglo and Zona, it was announced that the crumbling structure of the Juraguá plant would become a storage facility for hazardous substances. The plant is projected to store waste from national industries, yet there is concern that it will give way to the lucrative business of importing nuclear waste. The director of Zona, Atilio Caballero, is one of the people following these developments with great concern. In a series of articles published in an alternative media source, he draws attention to a little-known clause in the 1997 Environmental Law that makes it possible to import radioactive waste when deemed ‘socially justified’ (Caballero, 2017b). According to Caballero, the inhabitants of the Nuclear City have not been consulted and many are unaware of this significant change. Whether the ruins are used to store local or international waste, the decision is a painful epilogue for Project of the Century. It is a topic that requires more attention as ongoing market-oriented reforms in Cuba open the door for nuclear necropolitics.

References

Bloom, L. (2015) ‘Hauntological environmental art: the photographic frame and the nuclear afterlife of Chernobyl in Lina Selander’s “Lenin’s Lamp”’, Journal of Visual Culture, 17 (2): 223–37.

Caballero, A. (2017a) ‘A history of Teatro de la Plaza’, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 22 (4): 895–900.

Caballero, A. (2017b) ‘Sub-zona 1 (I) and Sub-zona 1 (II)’ Hypermedia Magazine, <www.hypermediamagazine.com/author/atilio/> (accessed 4 January 2021).

Caballero, A. (2017c) Zona (Matanzas: Ediciones Matanza).

Castro, F. (1992) ‘Discurso pronunciado en el acto por el XXXIX aniversario del asalto al Cuartel Moncada y el XXXV del levantamiento de Cienfuegos, efectuado en Cienfuegos, el 5 de septiembre de 1992’, Portal Cuba, <www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/> (accessed 14 October 2020).

Castro, F. (2007) La historia me absolverá, 5th ed. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales).

Castro Díaz-Balart, F. (2014) ‘La física nuclear en Cuba: apuntes para una historia’, Nucleus, 56: 5–16.

Cederlöf, G. (2015) ‘Thermodynamics revisited: the political ecology of energy systems in historical perspective’, in R.L. Bryan (ed.), The International Handbook of Political Ecology (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar): 646–58.

Cederlöf, G. (2020) ‘The revolutionary city: socialist urbanisation and nuclear modernity in Cienfuegos, Cuba’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 52 (1): 53–76.

Collier, S.J. (2017) Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

de Ferrari, G. (2015) Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba (New York: Routledge).

Echevarría, A. (2016) ‘Seis millones de pares de zapatos plásticos’, Hypermedia Magazine, <www.hypermediamagazine.com/arte/cine/ahmel-echevarria-seis-millones-de-pares-de-zapatos-plasticos/> (accessed 14 September 2019).

Esslin, M. (1965) Absurd Drama (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Harvey, P. and H. Knox (2015) Roads. An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

Larkin, B. (2018) ‘Promising forms: the political aesthetics of infrastructure’, in N. Anand, A. Gupta, and H. Appel (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press): 175–208.

Lechuga, C. (2019). ‘Sobre cómo fracasar mejor… una conversación con el joven cineasta Carlos Quintela’, Revista El Estornudo, <www.revistaelestornudo.com/carlos-quintela-cine-cubano/> (accessed 14 October 2020).

Machado Quintela, C. (Dir.) (2015) La obra del siglo [The project of the century] (Argentina and Cuba: Rizoma Films/Uranio Films/Raspberry & Cream Films/World Cinema Fund/ICAIC).

Mukherjee, R. (2020) Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).