Download or read book Only a Few Blocks to Cuba written by Mauricio Fernando Castro and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Only a Few Blocks to Cuba, Mauricio Castro shows how the U.S. government came to view Cuban migration to Miami as a strategic asset during the Cold War, in the process investing heavily in the city’s development and shaping its future as a global metropolis. When Cuban refugees fleeing Communist revolution began to arrive in Miami in 1959, the city was faced with a humanitarian crisis it was ill-equipped to handle and sought to have the federal government solve what local politicians clearly viewed as a Cold War geopolitical problem. In response, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and their successors, provided an unprecedented level of federal largesse and freedom of transit to these refugees. The changes to the city this investment wrought were as impactful and permanent as they were unintended. What was meant to be a short-term geopolitical stratagem instead became a new reality in South Florida. A growing and increasingly powerful Cuban community contested their place in Miami and navigated challenges like bilingualism, internal political disputes, socioeconomic polarization, and ongoing struggles and negotiations with Washington and Havana in the decades that followed. This contested process, argues Mauricio Castro, not only transformed South Florida, but American foreign policy and the calculus of national politics. Castro uses extensive archival research in local and national sources to demonstrate that the Cuban diaspora and Cold War refugee policy made South Florida a key space to understanding the shifting landscape of the late twentieth century. In this way, Miami serves as an example of both the lived effects of defense spending in urban spaces and of how local communities can shape national politics and international relations. American politics, foreign relations, immigration policy, and urban development all intersected on the streets of Miami.
Download or read book Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away written by David Powell and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Florida Historical Society Samuel Proctor Award Rare accounts of Cuban migration in the words of the exiles themselves Bringing together an unprecedented number of extensive personal stories, this book shares the triumphs and heartbreaking moments experienced by some of the first Cubans to come to the United States after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away is a moving look inside fifteen years of migration that changed the two countries and transformed the lives of the people who found themselves separated from their homeland. David Powell presents interviews with refugees who left Cuba between 1959 and the 1962 Missile Crisis, as well as those who embarked on the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During these years more than 600,000 Cubans migrated to the US, some by way of other countries and many arriving in Miami with only a few clothes and pocket money. In their own words, exiles describe why they left the island, how they prepared for departure, what situations they faced when they arrived in the US, and how they integrated into American life. Offering historical background that illuminates this pivotal period in the context of the Cold War, Powell shows how the US government’s Cuban refugee assistance program had far-reaching effects on refugee policy, bilingual education, and child welfare programs. The testimonies in this book include new information about low-cost “Cuban Loans” that enabled young exiles to attend US colleges, preparing many to be builders and leaders in their adopted country today. A powerful portrayal of the initial effects of a revolution that began a new era in Cuba’s relationship with the world, this book preserves rare accounts of the motivations and struggles of early Cuban exiles in the words of the emigres themselves, adding gripping detail to the history of the modern Cuban diaspora. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Download or read book This Is Cuba written by David Ariosto and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA Today "New and Noteworthy" • One of The Washington Post's "10 Books to Read—and Gift—in December" "Fascinating." —Forbes Fidel Castro is dead. Donald Trump was elected president. And to most outsiders, the fate of Cuba has never seemed more uncertain. Yet those who look close enough may recognize that signs of the next revolution are etched in plain view. This is Cuba is a true story that begins in the summer of 2009 when a young American photo-journalist is offered the chance of a lifetime—a two-year assignment in Havana. For David Ariosto, the island is an intriguing new world, unmoored from the one he left behind. From neighboring military coups, suspected honey traps, salty spooks, and desperate migrants to dissidents, doctors, and Havana’s empty shelves, Ariosto uncovers the island’s subtle absurdities, its Cold War mystique, and the hopes of a people in the throes of transition. Beyond the classic cars, salsa, and cigars lies a country in which black markets are ubiquitous, free speech is restricted, privacy is curtailed, sanctions wreak havoc, and an almost Kafka-esque goo of Soviet-style bureaucracy still slows the gears of an economy desperate to move forward. But life in Cuba is indeed changing, as satellite dishes and internet hotspots dot the landscape and more Americans want in. Still, it’s not so simple. The old sentries on both sides of the Florida Straits remain at their posts, fists clenched and guarding against the specter of a Cold War that never quite ended, despite the death of Fidel and the hand-over of the presidency to a man whose last name isn’t Castro. And now, a crisis is brewing. In This Is Cuba, Ariosto looks at Cuba from the inside-out over the course of nine years, endeavoring to expose clues for what’s in store for the island as it undergoes its biggest change in more than half a century.
Download or read book Waiting For Snow In Havana written by Carlos Eire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.
Download or read book Visions of Power in Cuba written by Lillian Guerra and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 488 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 Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice. Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.
Download or read book Murder Inc written by James H. Johnston and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late in his life, former president Lyndon B. Johnson told a reporter that he didn’t believe the Warren Commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy. Johnson thought Cuban president Fidel Castro was behind it. After all, Johnson said, Kennedy was running “a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean,” giving Castro reason to retaliate. Murder, Inc., tells the story of the CIA’s assassination operations under Kennedy up to his own assassination and beyond. James H. Johnston was a lawyer for the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, which investigated and first reported on the Castro assassination plots and their relation to Kennedy’s murder. Johnston examines how the CIA steered the Warren Commission and later investigations away from connecting its own assassination operations to Kennedy’s murder. He also looks at the effect this strategy had on the Warren Commission’s conclusions that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that there was no foreign conspiracy. Sourced from in-depth research into the “secret files” declassified by the JFK Records Act and now stored in the National Archives and Records Administration, Murder, Inc. is the first book to narrate in detail the CIA’s plots against Castro and to delve into the question of why retaliation by Castro against Kennedy was not investigated.
Download or read book The Cuba Wars written by Daniel P. Erikson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few international relationships as intimate, as passionate-and as dysfunctional-as that of the United States and Cuba. In The Cuba Wars, Cuba expert Daniel Erikson draws on extensive visits and conversations with both Cuban government officials and opposition leaders-plus key players in Washington and Florida-to offer an unmatched portrait of a small country with outsized importance to Americans and American policy.
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 On the Move written by Alejandra Bronfman and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caribbean stands out in the popular imagination as a 'place without history', a place which has somehow eluded modernity. Haiti is envisioned as being trapped in an endless cycle of violence and instability, Cuba as a 1950s time warp, Jamaicans as ganja-smoking Rastafarians, while numerous pristine, anonymous islands are simply peaceful idylls. The notion of 'getting away from it all' lures countless visitors, offering the possibility of total disconnect for the world-weary. In On the Move Alejandra Bronfman argues that in fact the opposite is true; the Caribbean is, and has always been, deeply engaged with the wider world. From drugs and tourism to international political struggles, these islands form an integral part of world history and of the present, and are themselves in a constant state of economic and social flux in the face of global transformations.
Download or read book An Island Called Home written by Ruth Behar and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the author's return to learn about and meet the people who are keeping Judaism alive in Cuba today.
Download or read book Next Year in Cuba A Cubano s Coming of Age written by Gustavo P?rez Firmat and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gustavo P?rez Firmat arrived in America with his family at the age of eleven. Victims of CastroÍs revolution, the P?rez family put their life on hold, waiting for CastroÍs fall. Each Christmas, along with other Cuban families in the neighborhood, they celebrated with the cry, ñNext year in Cuba.î Growing up in the Dade County school system, and graduating from college in Florida, P?rez Firmat was insulated from America by the nurturing sights and sounds of Little Havana. It wasnÍt until he left home to attend graduate school at the University of Michigan that he realized, as the Cuba of his birth receded farther into the past, he had become no longer wholly Cubano, but increasingly a man of two heritages and two countries. In a searing memoir of a family torn apart by exile, P?rez Firmat chronicles the painful search for roots that has come to dominate his adult life. With one brother beset by personal problems and another embracing the very revolution that drove their family out of Cuba, Gustavo realized that the words ñNext Year in Cuba,î had, for him, taken on a hollow ring. Now, married to an American woman, and father to two children who are Cuban in name only, P?rez Firmat has finally come to acknowledge his need to celebrate his love of Cuba, while embracing the America he has come to love.
Download or read book The Rough Guide to Cuba written by Fiona McAuslan and published by Rough Guides UK. This book was released on 2007-08-30 with total page 1171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rough Guide to Cuba is the ultimate guide to the home of sun, salsa and rum From down town Trinidad to small-town street parties, the section introduces the best Cuba has to offer. This revised 6th edition contains ... The guide is full of informed descriptions and accurate listings of the best bars, restaurants and music venues to be seen at, from the lively city of Havana to the seaside resorts of Cayo Coco and Guardalavaca. This guide also takes a detailed look at the country's turbulent history,sport, music and wildlife, and comes complete with new maps and plans for every area. The Rough Guide to Cuba's is like having a local friend plan your trip!
Download or read book Bridges to Cuba Puentes a Cuba written by Ruth Behar and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology by Cuban and Cuban-American writers, artists, and scholars celebrating a new era of restored relations between Cuba and the U.S.
Download or read book The Rough Guide to Cuba written by Matthew Norman and published by Rough Guides UK. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rough Guide to Cuba is the perfect guide for all your travels across the dazzling country of Cuba. Its maps and tips will lead you to the best hotels, bars, clubs, shops and restaurants in the country. Discover all of Cuba's highlights with insider information ranging from Cuba's diverse music, scuba diving and colonial architecture to its world-class ballet and baseball, political history and captivating capital city, Havana. Clear maps will make your travels around this spectacular country easy and unforgettable. You will never miss a sight with the stunning photos included and detailed coverage of Cuba's vibrant cities, glittering beaches, lush countryside and addictive mixture of the Latin American and Caribbean cultures. The Rough Guide to Cuba will take your travels to new heights, ensuring that you don't miss the unmissable while you're there. Now available in ePub format.
Download or read book Letters from Cuba written by Ruth Behar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, where she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late. Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the most challenging times.
Download or read book This Is Cuba written by Ben Corbett and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2004-03-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With personal stories that depict a people torn between following the directives of their government and finding a way to better their lot, journalist Ben Corbett gives readers the daily life of many considered outlaws by Castro's regime.
Download or read book Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba written by Tom Gjelten and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.
