"A Knack for Making Ruins"

(Herrera).

LITERARY ANALYSIS

In Antonio José Ponte’s short story, “A Knack for Making Ruins”, the tugurs’ rearrangement of material is suggested to collapse space. In the context of Cuban Special Period architecture as well as surreal images, the story suggests that material repurposing reflects protest of political and economic constraints.

MATERIAL AND SPACE

When the narrator and his thesis advisor visit Professor D, the contrast between the establishment of place and the collapsing of place emphasizes the power of rearranging materials. D’s unusual living space is described in detail, as, “there were park benches instead of furniture, the space was subdivided by sections of railing. The lamps were enormous lights for entryways or gates, and street signs hung on the walls” (Ponte 29). The objects in the room seem out of place, as they are normally located outside in public city spaces. The unexpected presence of the objects inside implies that the policies against buying and selling spaces during the Special Period has resulted in a lack of privacy, as if the public space has crept inwards. The narrator sees “two men removing wooden supports from downstairs and carrying them toward the upper floors” (Ponte 29) which alludes to the construction of barbacoas. However, the removal of supports from a lower level reveals a destabilization of the building. As a result of the rearrangement of materials within the building, the building collapses into itself, killing D (Ponte 36). In the process of maximizing space for more people, the space itself is destroyed.

(Del Real and Pertierra 82).

Windows reveal the various layers of material repurposed to form barbacoas.

(Del Real and Pertierra 82).

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CONSTRAINTS

The collapse of the building seems to be a victory for tugurs in the “struggle between miraculous statics and tugurization” (33). The tugurs are a group of residents who “sought to collapse it by any means. But not to die because a true tugur causes a building to fall without letting a speck of brick dust fall on him. His victories consist in returning to the house and not finding it standing” (Ponte 34). Considering the deliberateness with which the tugurs reorganize material to collapse buildings, tugurization seems to represent the struggle between public (government) and private space, as a tugur wins when he destroys the building he does not own while trying to form a private space within it. Thus, the ownership of space collapses in on itself. The destructive role of the tugur resonates with the resistance of many residents of the Special Period, as “avoiding and refuting state policy restrictions to expand and improve their houses, many Cubans appear to be engaging in acts of gentle subterfuge by retreating from the public sphere and focusing their resources on the domestic sphere” during this time (Del Real and Pertierra 78). Due to the scarcity of building materials in public markets, the Cubans represented by the tugurs almost always relied on the underground economy (Del Real and Pertierra 90). In this context, tugurization does not only emphasize the resistance to government-owned space, but it also defies the government-controlled public economy.

Figure 2:

(Del Real and Pertierra 85).

VISUAL ECONOMY

In a case study of Cuban Architecture, Del Real and Pertierra mapped the resources Carmen used while building a barbacoa in Havana (85). As seen in Figure 2, Carmen derived the majority of her resources from within the large circle labeled the black market which emphasizes the direction of money towards family, friends, and craftspeople rather than the government-constrained economy. Containing money and resources within the underground economy resonates with Ponte's tugurs in their struggle to reclaim space from the government.

MOVEMENT: COLLAPSING

Throughout the short story, mysterious events culminate in the discovery of a secret, reclaimed city underneath Havana. Professor D’s Book, “A Brief Treatise Concerning Miraculous Statics” (Ponte 31), explores the magical force that supports Havana, a “city with so few foundations and one that carries more weight than it can support can only be explained by flotation” (Ponte 31). The lack of foundations and the image of floatation suggest that there is space below the city rather than solid ground. Thus, when the book brings death to all those who know about it, including the narrator’s advisor and D himself, it seems as if there is a conspiratorial ploy to “cover up” the book's investigations. In the final scene of the story, the narrator discovers the gates to an underground city, which he realizes is so alike to the one above “that it must have been planned by those who caused the buildings to collapse. In front of a building lacking one of its walls, I understood that the missing wall, still standing in the world above, would not take long to get here” (Ponte 43). This image reveals that, as buildings fall above, they appear below. Thus, the tugurs’ efforts to collapse buildings is a reclamation of the space through an inward collapse of the space itself. As historically, Havana’s people resisted economic and political constraints by subdividing space, the surrealist nature of Ponte’s short story challenges the limits of space to envision ruin-making as a transfer of control from the government back to the people.

Remnants of a collapsed building reflect the consequences of overloading structures. (Bezanger).

CONCLUSION

Overall, Ponte’s “A Knack For Making Ruins” engages with images of place, material, and inward collapse to reveal that the repurposing of material and space resists restrictions imposed by political and economic entities.

NEXT: Comparison and Conclusion

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