Cuba, Hot and Cold

Cuba, Hot and Cold
Author: Tom Miller
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0816535868

"A collection of renowned travel writer Tom Miller's best musings on the history and culture of Cuba"--Provided by publisher.

Cuba Today and Tomorrow

Cuba Today and Tomorrow
Author: Max Azicri
Publisher:
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813017563

Covering the turbulent period of the 1990s, this book examines such issues as the impact on Cuba of the Soviet Union's collapse, the country's social malaise under economic scarcity, the reorganization of its economy, changes in its political system, problems in its relations with the United States, and the renaissance of Cuban religious life in the aftermath of the pope's visit. Azicri offers an objectively researched study that addresses many of the assumptions made by partisan participants. Demonstrating how Cuba's ongoing reform process has allowed it to avoid the fate of other Soviet bloc regimes, he maintains that Havana has continually reinvented the nature of Cuban socialism. Drawing on original sources and scholarly studies from Cuba, the United States, and elsewhere, he argues that a more restrained and limited socialism is suitable to today's Cuba and explains why such a system probably will prevail beyond Castro.

The Sugar King of Havana

The Sugar King of Havana
Author: John Paul Rathbone
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101458917

"Fascinating...A richly detailed portrait." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Julio Lobo was the wealthiest man in prerevolutionary Cuba. He had a life fit for Hollywood: he barely survived both a gangland shooting and a firing squad, and courted movie stars such as Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis. Only when he declined Che Guevara's personal offer to become Minister of Sugar in the Communist regime did Lobo's decades-long reign in Cuba come to a dramatic end. Drawing on stories from the author's own family history and other tales of the island's lost haute bourgeoisie, The Sugar King of Havana is a rare portrait of Cuba's glittering past—and a hopeful window into its future.

Picturing Cuba

Picturing Cuba
Author: Jorge Duany
Publisher: University of Florida Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781683402091

Picturing Cuba explores the evolution of Cuban visual art and its links to cubanía, or Cuban cultural identity. Featuring artwork from the Spanish colonial, republican, and postrevolutionary periods of Cuban history, as well as the contemporary diaspora, these richly illustrated essays trace the creation of Cuban art through shifting political, social, and cultural circumstances. Contributors examine colonial-era lithographs of Cuba?s landscape, architecture, people, and customs that portrayed the island as an exotic, tropical location. They show how the avant-garde painters of the vanguardia, or Havana School, wrestled with the significance of the island?s African and indigenous roots, and they also highlight subversive photography that depicts the harsh realities of life after the Cuban Revolution. They explore art created by the first generation of postrevolutionary exiles, which reflects a new identity?lo cubanoamericano, Cuban-Americanness?and expresses the sense of displacement experienced by Cubans who resettled in another country. A concluding chapter evaluates contemporary attitudes toward collecting and exhibiting post-revolutionary Cuban art in the United States. Encompassing works by Cubans on the island, in exile, and born in America, this volume delves into defining moments in Cuban art across three centuries, offering a kaleidoscopic view of the island?s people, culture, and history. Contributors: Anelys Alvarez | Lynnette M. F. Bosch | María A. Cabrera Arús | Iliana Cepero | Ramón Cernuda | Emilio Cueto | Carol Damian | Victor Deupi | Jorge Duany | Alison Fraunhar | Andrea O?Reilly Herrera | Jean-François Lejeune | Abigail McEwen | Ricardo Pau-Llosa | E. Carmen Ramos

Cuban Revelations

Cuban Revelations
Author: Marc Frank
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813047846

In Cuban Revelations, Marc Frank offers a first-hand account of daily life in Cuba at the turn of the twenty-first century, the start of a new and dramatic epoch for islanders and the Cuban diaspora. A U.S.-born journalist who has called Havana home for almost a quarter century, Frank observed in person the best days of the revolution, the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the great depression of the 1990s, the stepping aside of Fidel Castro, and the reforms now being devised by his brother. Examining the effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Frank analyzes why Cuba has entered an extraordinary, irreversible period of change and considers what the island's future holds. The enormous social engineering project taking place today under Raúl's leadership is fraught with many dangers, and Cuban Revelations follows the new leader's efforts to overcome bureaucratic resistance and the fears of a populace that stand in his way. In addition, Frank offers a colorful chronicle of his travels across the island's many and varied provinces, sharing candid interviews with people from all walks of life. He takes the reader outside the capital to reveal how ordinary Cubans live and what they are thinking and feeling as fifty-year-old social and economic taboos are broken. He shares his honest and unbiased observations on extraordinary positive developments in social matters, like healthcare and education, as well as on the inefficiencies in the Cuban economy.

We Are Cuba!

We Are Cuba!
Author: Helen Yaffe
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2020-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300245513

The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.

Cuba between Empires, 1878-1902

Cuba between Empires, 1878-1902
Author: Louis A. Pérez Jr.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1983-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822971979

Cuban independence arrived formally on May 20, 1902, with the raising of the Cuban flag in Havana - a properly orchestrated and orderly inauguration of the new republic. But something had gone awry. Republican reality fell far short of the separatist ideal. In an unusually powerful book that will appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist, Louis A. Perez, Jr., recounts the story of the critical years when Cuba won its independence from Spain only to fall in the American orbit.The last quarter of the nineteenth century found Cuba enmeshed in a complicated colonial environment, tied to the declining Spanish empire yet economically dependent on the newly ascendant United States. Rebellion against Spain had involved two generations of Cubans in major but fruitless wars. By careful examination of the social and economic changes occurring in Cuba, and of the political content of the separatist movement, the author argues that the successful insurrection of 1895-98 was not simply the last of the New World rebellions against European colonialism. It was the first of a genre that would become increasingly familiar in the twentieth century: a guerrilla war of national liberation aspiring to the transformation of society.The third player in the drama was the United States. For almost a century, the United States had pursuedthe acquistion of Cuba. Stepping in when Spain was defeated, the Americans occupied Cuba ostensibly to prepare it for independence but instead deliberately created institutions that restored the social hierarchy and guaranteed political and economic dependence. It was not the last time the U.S. intervention would thwart the Cuban revolutionary impulse.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
Author: Ada Ferrer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501154575

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.

Handmade in Cuba

Handmade in Cuba
Author: Ruth Behar
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2020-05-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 168340288X

Handmade in Cuba is an in-depth examination of Ediciones Vigía, an artisanal press that published exquisite books crafted from simple supplies during some of Cuba’s most dire economic periods. Vividly illustrated, this volume shows how the publishing collective responded to the nation’s changing historical and political situation from the margins of society, representing Cuban culture across the boundaries of race, age, gender, and genre. In this volume, poets and scholars reflect on the unique artistic direction of Rolando Estévez, who oversaw the creation of over 500 handmade books and magazines between 1985 and 2014. They highlight the beautiful designs and unusual materials selected, including fabric, metals, wood, feathers, and discarded items. Through diverse perspectives, including an interview with Estévez himself, the essays showcase the unlimited inventive possibilities of books as objects, as sculptural pieces, and as installations. Even in the age of technology, Estévez generated enormous excitement and admiration for these hand-crafted books, and this volume offers the first inside view of this important alternative publishing space. Contributors: Ruth Behar | Juanamaría Cordones-Cook | Gwendolyn Díaz | Erin Finzer | William Luis | Nancy Morejón | Kim Nochi | Carina Pino Santos | Kristin Schwain | Elzbieta Sklodowska

Cuba in a Global Context

Cuba in a Global Context
Author: Catherine Krull
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-02-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813062174

Cuba in a Global Context examines the unlikely prominence of the island nation's geopolitical role. The contributors to this volume explore the myriad ways in which Cuba has not only maintained but often increased its reach and influence in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the beginning, the Castro regime established a foreign policy that would legitimize the revolutionary government, if not in the eyes of the United States at least in the eyes of other global actors. The essays in this volume shed new light on Cuban diplomacy with communist China as well as with Western governments such as Great Britain and Canada. In recent years, Cubans have improved their lives in the face of the ongoing U.S. embargo. The promotion of increased economic and political cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela served as a catalyst for the Petrocaribe group. Links established with countries in the Caribbean and Central America have increased tourism, medical diplomacy, and food sovereignty across the region. Cuban transnationalism has also succeeded in creating people-to-people contacts involving those who have remained on the island and members of the Cuban diaspora. While the specifics of Cuba's international relations are likely to change as new leaders take over, the role of Cubans working to assert their sovereignty has undoubtedly impacted every corner of the globe.