Cuba Or The Pursuit Of Freedom

Cuba Or The Pursuit Of Freedom
Author: Hugh Thomas
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780306808272

This first-time paperback edition, now updated, describes and analyzes Cuba's history from the English capture of Havana in 1762 through Spanish colonialism, American imperialism, the Cuban Revolution, and the Missile Crisis to Fidel Castro's defiant but precarious present state.

Cuba

Cuba
Author: Hugh Thomas
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Total Pages: 118
Release: 1971
Genre: History
ISBN:

Detailed narrative history of Cuba from the English capture of Havana in 1762 to the present with emphasis on this century.

The Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution
Author: Georges A Fauriol
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2021-06-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367306571

January 1984 marked the 25th anniversary of Fidel Castro's emergence to power. The Cuban Revolution: 25 Years Later is a product of the CSIS Cuba Project, a long-term effort to focus public as well as policymaker's attention on Cuba-related affairs. The lead author, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, is the dean of political-historical studies on Cuba, and author of the encyclopedic Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. A great deal of myth surrounds the evolution of Cuba since Castro's emergence to power over 25 years ago. Some of this myth is the product of official Cuban propaganda; some of it is also due to a generally misinformed American public. Sifting through available data to distinguish between fact and fiction, this book evaluates broadly the impact of Castro's regime on Cuba itself. Based on the findings of the CSIS Cuba Project, the book draws on the assessments of 18 top Cuban specialists on the political, economic, cuiturai, and social development of Cuba since 1959. In contrast to democracies such as Costa Rica, the equalization of society that has taken place under Castro's leadership has been accomplished by redistributing existing resources, not by creating new wealth. Moreover, the authors conclude that in politics, culture, and the economy, Cuba under Castro has become and remains rigid, stagnant, enormously militarized, and ideologically absolutist.

Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation

Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation
Author: Aisha Finch
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2019-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807170984

Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation offers a new perspective on black political life in Cuba by analyzing the time between two hallmark Cuban events, the Aponte Rebellion of 1812 and the Race War of 1912. In so doing, this anthology provides fresh insight into the ways in which Cubans practiced and understood black freedom and resistance, from the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution to the early years of the Cuban republic. Bringing together an impressive range of scholars from the field of Cuban studies, the volume examines, for the first time, the continuities between disparate forms of political struggle and racial organizing during the early years of the nineteenth century and traces them into the early decades of the twentieth. Matt Childs, Manuel Barcia, Gloria García, and Reynaldo Ortíz-Minayo explore the transformation of Cuba’s nineteenth-century sugar regime and the ways in which African-descended people responded to these new realities, while Barbara Danzie León and Matthew Pettway examine the intellectual and artistic work that captured the politics of this period. Aisha Finch, Ada Ferrer, Michele Reid-Vazquez, Jacqueline Grant, and Joseph Dorsey consider new ways to think about the categories of resistance and agency, the gendered investments of traditional resistance histories, and the continuities of struggle that erupted over the course of the mid-nineteenth century. In the final section of the book, Fannie Rushing, Aline Helg, Melina Pappademos, and Takkara Brunson delve into Cuba’s early nationhood and its fraught racial history. Isabel Hernández Campos and W. F. Santiago-Valles conclude the book with reflections on the process of history and commemoration in Cuba. Together, the contributors rethink the ways in which African-descended Cubans battled racial violence, created pathways to citizenship and humanity, and exercised claims on the nation state. Utilizing rare primary documents on the Afro-Cuban communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation explores how black resistance to exploitative systems played a central role in the making of the Cuban nation.

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.

Voices from Mariel

Voices from Mariel
Author: José Manuel García
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2018-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813063396

Between April and September 1980, more than 125,000 Cuban refugees fled their homeland, seeking freedom from Fidel Castro's dictatorship. They departed in boats from the port of Mariel and braved the dangerous 90-mile journey across the Straits of Florida. Told in the words of the immigrants themselves, the stories in Voices from Mariel offer an up-close view of this international crisis, the largest oversea mass migration in Latin American history. Former refugees describe what it was like to gather among thousands of dissidents on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy in Cuba, where the movement first began. They were abused by the masses who protested them as they made their way to the Mariel harbor, before they were finally permitted to leave the country by Castro in an attempt to disperse the civil unrest. They waited interminably for boats in oppressive heat, squalor, and desperation at the crowded tent camp known as "El Mosquito." They embarked on vessels overloaded with too many passengers and battled harrowing storms on their journeys across the open ocean. Author Jose Manuel Garcia, who emigrated on the Mariel boatlift as a teenager, describes the events that led to the exodus and explains why so many Cubans wanted to leave the island. The shockingly high numbers of refugees who came through immigration centers in Key West, Miami, and other parts of the United States was a message--loud and clear--to the world of the people's discontent with Castro’s government and the unfulfilled promises of the Cuban Revolution. Based on the award-winning documentary of the same name, Voices from Mariel features the experiences of marielitos from all walks of life. These are stories of disappointed dreams, love for family and country, and hope for a better future. This book illuminates a powerful moment in history that will continue to be felt in Cuba and the United States for generations to come.

Neither Peace Nor Freedom

Neither Peace Nor Freedom
Author: Patrick Iber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674286049

Patrick Iber tells the story of left-wing Latin American artists, writers, and scholars who worked as diplomats, advised rulers, opposed dictators, and even led nations during the Cold War. Ultimately, they could not break free from the era’s rigid binaries, and found little room to promote their social democratic ideals without compromising them.

Contesting Castro

Contesting Castro
Author: Thomas G. Paterson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195101201

Describes Castro's insurrection from a 1955 fund raising trip to the United States to the Cuban Revolution.

The Politics of Che Guevara

The Politics of Che Guevara
Author: Samuel Farber
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2016-05-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1608466590

This reexamination of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's thoughts on socialism, democracy, and revolution is a must-read for today's activists—or anyone longing to fight for a better world. Fifty years after his death, Guevara remains a symbol to legions of young rebels and revolutionaries. This unique book provides a way to critically engage with Guevara's economic views, his ideas about revolutionary agency, and his conduct as guerrilla commander and government administrator in Cuba. Samuel Farber was born and raised in Cuba. He has written extensively on Cuba and the Cuban Revolution and is author of Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959.

Cuban Exile Memories

Cuban Exile Memories
Author: Talek Nantes
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-01-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9780578834511

This book is for anyone interested in stories of courage and the pursuit of freedom. It is a collection of memories about the Cuban exile experience of the mid-20th century: a testament to the courage, persistence, and determination of people whose lives were upended quickly, dramatically, and irrevocably by a political movement. These anonymized experiences tell of the sometimes-improbable circumstances that led a generation to leave their homeland and everything they knew to come to a foreign country and start their lives again from scratch. The memories have been collected from anecdotes passed down over generations, interviews, and personal recollections. Many of the stories are in the speaker's own words, which sometimes revert to Spanish, and these are accompanied by English-language translations. Each story is told by a different exile sharing his or her own memory. The main thread that runs through the book is the chaos and confusion of the communist takeover in Cuba and the subsequent exodus of a significant portion of the island's population. Also covered are the struggles and sacrifices the exiles made during the early years of arrival in their new countries as well as humorous examples of cultural clashes while attempting to adapt. Lastly, this is a declaration of unabashed appreciation to the United States, the country that gave so many of us the opportunity to pursue our own destinies in peace and freedom.