Download or read book Inside the Cuban Revolution written by Julia Sweig and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweig shatters the mythology surrounding the Cuban Revolution in a compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the revolutionary roles of Castro and Guevara and restores to a central position the leadership of the Llano. Granted unprecedented access to the classified records of Castro's 26th of July Movement's underground operatives--the only scholar inside or outside of Cuba allowed access to the complete collection in the Cuban Council of State's Office of Historic Affairs--she details the debates between Castro's mountain-based guerrilla movement and the urban revolutionaries in Havana, Santiago, and other cities.

Download or read book Lee Lockwood Castro s Cuba 1959 1969 written by Lee Lockwood and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1959 and 1969, photojournalist Lee Lockwood documented Cuba and its victorious revolutionary Fidel Castro with unprecedented freedom and access, including a marathon seven-day interview with Castro himself. This volume includes Lockwood's evocative photographs of Cuba and Castro, his many insightful observations, and extensive excerpts...

Download or read book Inside El Barrio written by Henry Louis Taylor and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Inside El Barrio" charts the legacy of Fidel Castro through the unique lens of Cuban household life during the El Perodo Especial (the Special Period). Taylor traverses the neighborhoods and residential developments of Havana between 1989 and 2006, the final and most complex period in the "Age of Castros Cuba" to uncover the hidden vibrancy of Cubas streets and citizens. In doing so, he acquires a deeper understanding of Cuban society by exploring what it means to live in a people-centered nation and the importance of neighborhoods in shaping everyday life and culture.

Download or read book Cuba Winner of the Pulitzer Prize written by Ada Ferrer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Inside Havana written by and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2002-07 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having enjoyed four years of unprecedented access to the private interiors of Cuba's capital, Moore has created an unrivaled portrait of both its legendary historic architecture and the city's inner life. 80 color photos.

Download or read book Dreaming in Cuban written by Cristina García and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

Download or read book Made in Cuba written by Molly Mandell and published by Uitgeverij Luster. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer and photographer Molly Mandell portrays 25 Cuban 'makers': creative craftsmen and women with a mission and a lot of passion. They share a striking and admirable do-it-yourself mentality: because Cubans didn't have access to imported goods for a long time, they learned how to make things work with whatever few products were around. This book is an ode to the resilience, the creativity and the self-reliance that have become a necessary way of life for most Cubans. It aims to capture the soul of the people of a country in times of change and transition. Therefore Made in Cuba is not only a source of inspiration for creatives, but also a personal guide to the country, offering a look inside the everyday lives of its people, at a unique moment in time. AUTHOR: Molly Mandell lived and worked in the United States when she started travelling to Cuba. On her countless trips she developed relationships with journalists and scholars but most importantly, with Cuban citizens. Molly is currently based in Copenhagen, where she works as an editor and art director at Kinfolk. SELLING POINT: * Writer and photographer Molly Mandell portrays 25 Cuban craftsmen and woman with a mission, a lot of passion, and a striking and admirable do-it-yourself mentality 120 colour images

Download or read book Conflicting Missions written by Piero Gleijeses and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a compelling and dramatic account of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses's fast-paced narrative takes the reader from Cuba's first steps to assist Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65--where 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara clashed with 1,000 mercenaries controlled by the CIA--and, finally, to the dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-76, which stopped the South African advance on Luanda and doomed Henry Kissinger's major covert operation there. Based on unprecedented archival research and firsthand interviews in virtually all of the countries involved--Gleijeses was even able to gain extensive access to closed Cuban archives--this comprehensive and balanced work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations. It revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War. "Fascinating . . . and often downright entertaining. . . . Gleijeses recounts the Cuban story with considerable flair, taking good advantage of rich material.--Washington Post Book World "Gleijeses's research . . . bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger. . . . After reviewing Dr. Gleijeses's work, several former senior United States diplomats who were involved in making policy toward Angola broadly endorsed its conclusions.--New York Times "With the publication of Conflicting Missions, Piero Gleijeses establishes his reputation as the most impressive historian of the Cold War in the Third World. Drawing on previously unavailable Cuban and African as well as American sources, he tells a story that's full of fresh and surprising information. And best of all, he does this with a remarkable sensitivity to the perspectives of the protagonists. This book will become an instant classic.--John Lewis Gaddis, author of We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History Based on unprecedented research in Cuban, American, and European archives, this is the compelling story of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations, revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, and provides the first look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War. -->

Download or read book True Believer written by Scott Carmichael and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ana Montes appeared to be a model employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Known to her coworkers as the Queen of Cuba, she was an overachiever who advanced quickly through the ranks of Latin American specialists to become the intelligence community's top analyst on Cuban affairs. But throughout her sixteen-year career at DIA, Montes was sending Castro some of America's most closely guarded secrets and at the same time helping influence what the United States thought it knew about Cuba. When she was finally arrested in September 2001, she became the most senior American intelligence official ever accused of operating as a Cuban spy from within the federal U.S. government. Unrepentant as she serves out her time in a federal prison in Texas, Montes remains the only member of the intelligence community ever convicted of espionage on behalf of the Cuban government. This inside account of the investigation that led to her arrest has been written by Scott W. Carmichael, the DIA's senior counterintelligence investigator who persuaded the FBI to launch an investigation. Although Montes did not fit the FBI's profile of a spy and easily managed to defeat the agency's polygraph exams, Carmichael became suspicious of her activities and with the FBI over a period of several years developed a solid case against her. Here he tells the story of that long and ultimately successful spy hunt. Carmichael reveals the details of their efforts to bring her to justice, offering readers a front-row seat for the first major U.S. espionage case of the twentieth century. She was arrested less than twenty-four hours before learning details of the U.S. plan to invade Afghanistan post-September 11. Motivated by ideology not money, Montes was one of the last "true believers" of the communist era. Because her arrest came just ten days after 9/11, it went largely unnoticed by the American public. This book calls attention to the grave damage Montes inflicted on U.S. security—Carmichael even implicates her in the death of a Green Beret fighting Cuban-backed insurgents in El Salvador—and the damage she would have continued to inflict had she not been caught.

Download or read book Cuban Revelations written by Marc Frank and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Visions of Power in Cuba written by Lillian Guerra and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Gue

Download or read book On Location in Cuba written by Ann Marie Stock and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1990s were a time of dramatic transformation for Cuba. With the collapse of its Cold War relationship with the Soviet Union, the island nation plummeted into an era of scarcity and uncertainty known as the Special Period, a time from which it emerged only slowly in the new century. On Location in Cuba views these pivotal decades through the lens of cinema. Ann Marie Stock conducted hundreds of interviews and conversations in Cuba to examine individual artists' lives and creative output--including film, video, and audiovisual art. She explores the impact of the Cold War's end, the economic crisis that ensued, and the decentralization of the state's political, economic, and cultural apparatus. Stock focuses on what she calls Street Filmmaking--the production of emerging audiovisual artists who work outside the state film industry--to examine the island's transformation and changing notions of Cuban identity. Employing entrepreneurial approaches to producing art and to negotiating the exigencies of globalization, this younger generation of filmmakers offers fresh perspectives on what it means to be Cuban in an increasingly complex and connected world.

Download or read book Handmade in Cuba written by Ruth Behar and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba written by Reinaldo Funes Monzote and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this award-winning environmental history of Cuba since the age of Columbus, Reinaldo Funes Monzote emphasizes the two processes that have had the most dramatic impact on the island's landscape: deforestation and sugar cultivation. During the first 300 years of Spanish settlement, sugar plantations arose primarily in areas where forests had been cleared by the royal navy, which maintained an interest in management and conservation for the shipbuilding industry. The sugar planters won a decisive victory in 1815, however, when they were allowed to clear extensive forests, without restriction, for cane fields and sugar production. This book is the first to consider Cuba's vital sugar industry through the lens of environmental history. Funes Monzote demonstrates how the industry that came to define Cuba--and upon which Cuba urgently depended--also devastated the ecology of the island. The original Spanish-language edition of the book, published in Mexico in 2004, was awarded the UNESCO Book Prize for Caribbean Thought, Environmental Category. For this first English edition, the author has revised the text throughout and provided new material, including a glossary and a conclusion that summarizes important developments up to the present.

Download or read book Conceiving Cuba written by Elise Andaya and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Cuba’s 1959 revolution, the Castro government sought to instill a new social order. Hoping to achieve a new and egalitarian society, the state invested in policies designed to promote the well-being of women and children. Yet once the Soviet Union fell and Cuba’s economic troubles worsened, these programs began to collapse, with serious results for Cuban families. Conceiving Cuba offers an intimate look at how, with the island’s political and economic future in question, reproduction has become the subject of heated public debates and agonizing private decisions. Drawing from several years of first-hand observations and interviews, anthropologist Elise Andaya takes us inside Cuba’s households and medical systems. Along the way, she introduces us to the women who wrestle with the difficult question of whether they can afford a child, as well as the doctors who, with only meager resources at their disposal, struggle to balance the needs of their patients with the mandates of the state. Andaya’s groundbreaking research considers not only how socialist policies have profoundly affected the ways Cuban families imagine the future, but also how the current crisis in reproduction has deeply influenced ordinary Cubans’ views on socialism and the future of the revolution. Casting a sympathetic eye upon a troubled state, Conceiving Cuba gives new life to the notion that the personal is always political.

Download or read book Revolution within the Revolution written by Michelle Chase and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handful of celebrated photographs show armed female Cuban insurgents alongside their companeros in Cuba's remote mountains during the revolutionary struggle. However, the story of women's part in the struggle's success has only now received comprehensive consideration in Michelle Chase's history of women and gender politics in revolutionary Cuba. Restoring to history women's participation in the all-important urban insurrection, and resisting Fidel Castro's triumphant claim that women's emancipation was handed to them as a "revolution within the revolution," Chase's work demonstrates that women's activism and leadership was critical at every stage of the revolutionary process. Tracing changes in political attitudes alongside evolving gender ideologies in the years leading up to the revolution, Chase describes how insurrectionists mobilized familiar gendered notions, such as masculine honor and maternal sacrifice, in ways that strengthened the coalition against Fulgencio Batista. But, after 1959, the mobilization of women and the societal transformations that brought more women and young people into the political process opened the revolutionary platform to increasingly urgent demands for women's rights. In many cases, Chase shows, the revolutionary government was simply formalizing popular initiatives already in motion on the ground thanks to women with a more radical vision of their rights.

Download or read book Old Cuba written by Alicia E. García and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Old Cuba presents an insider’s view of the splendid colonial-era sites of the storied island nation, from the grand apartments and magnificent cathedral of Old Havana to the plantation homes of Pinar del Río. Cuba dominates the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, fixed between the great continents to the north and to the south, and has long served as a bridge between the Old World and the New. First visited by Christopher Columbus in 1492, its history of interaction with the Old World of Europe is among the longest in the Americas, and its architecture bears testament to this: Cuba is home to some of the most ancient cities and towns in the western hemisphere. As a result, the country once known as the “pearl of the Antilles,” stands now as a treasure chest of alluring historic architecture—seasoned by European precedents mixed with colonial and Caribbean spice—and boasts an extraordinary number of UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites, from the historic center of Old Havana with its original city walls and the Castillo de la Real Fuerza—the oldest extant colonial fortress in the Americas—to the sixteenth-century city of Trinidad, within the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus, recognized by historians and scholars as a triumph of historic preservation and whose maze of pastel mansions and churches forms one of the best collections of colonial architecture to be found anywhere. From Old Havana to Santiago de Cuba, Old Cuba offers an intimate look at the historic architecture— the houses, apartments, monuments, charming public spaces, and centuries-old churches—of this storied country.