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Desmemoria is a photographic, anthropological and social testimony to the community of Cuban azucareros – workers of the sugar industry and the revolutionaries of the first hour.

Pierre-Elie de Pibrac lived nearly a year in immersion with various Cuban families in this community. Through this experience, the photographer questions the end of utopias in a people who believed and worked to incarnate the Castro dream. This project tells how Cubans now apprehend their daily lives, how they look at their recent history.

”Immersed in the heart of Cuba, I met the inhabitants of the bateyes (villages) of the sugar factories still active or abandoned and the sugar workers to witness these lives sacrificed and immortalize these trades so emblematic of the island, condemned to disappear.

Through these portraits made with a field camera, I wanted to photograph different profiles of Cubans born from the miscegenation coming from the sugar cane plantations and to reflect the influence of Castro propaganda on the identity of Cubans. By approaching each portrait, the observer can discover a filigree phrase repeated infinitely but imperceptible at first sight since it merges with the subject of reference.” – Pierre-Elie de Pibrac