Download or read book To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture written by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in painstaking research, To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture revisits the circumstances which led to the arts being embraced at the heart of the Cuban Revolution. Introducing the main protagonists to the debate, this previously untold story follows the polemical twists and turns that ensued in the volatile atmosphere of the 1960s and ’70s. The picture that emerges is of a struggle for dominance between Soviet-derived approaches and a uniquely Cuban response to the arts under socialism. The latter tendency, which eventually won out, was based on the principles of Marxist humanism. As such, this book foregrounds emancipatory understandings of culture. To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture takes its title from a slogan – devised by artists and writers at a meeting in October 1960 and adopted by the First National Congress of Writers and Artists the following August – which sought to highlight the intrinsic importance of culture to the Revolution. Departing from popular top-down conceptions of Cuban policy-formation, this book establishes the close involvement of the Cuban people in cultural processes and the contribution of Cuba’s artists and writers to the policy and praxis of the Revolution. Ample space is dedicated to discussions that remain hugely pertinent to those working in the cultural field, such as the relationship between art and ideology, engagement and autonomy, form and content. As the capitalist world struggles to articulate the value of the arts in anything other than economic terms, this book provides us with an entirely different way of thinking about culture and the policies underlying it.

Download or read book Dancing with the Revolution written by Elizabeth B. Schwall and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics. Drawing on written and visual archives, including intriguing exchanges between dancers and bureaucrats, Schwall argues that Cuban dancers used their bodies and ephemeral, nonverbal choreography to support and critique political regimes and cultural biases. As esteemed artists, Cuban dancers exercised considerable power and influence. They often used their art to posit more radical notions of social justice than political leaders were able or willing to implement. After 1959, while generally promoting revolutionary projects like mass education and internationalist solidarity, they also took risks by challenging racial prejudice, gender norms, and censorship, all of which could affect dancers personally. On a broader level, Schwall shows that dance, too often overlooked in histories of Latin America and the Caribbean, provides fresh perspectives on what it means for people, and nations, to move through the world.

Download or read book The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City written by Jean Franco and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values--artistic freedom versus communitarianism, Western values versus national cultures, the autonomy of art versus a commitment to liberation struggles--and at a time when the prestige of literature had never been higher. The projects of the historic avant-garde were revitalized by an anti-capitalist ethos and envisaged as the opposite of the republican state. The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard. This was also a twilight of literature at the threshold of the great cultural revolution of the seventies and eighties, a revolution to which the Cold War indirectly contributed. In the eighties, civil war and military rule, together with the rapid development of mass culture and communication empires, changed the political and cultural map. A long-awaited work by an eminent Latin Americanist widely read throughout the world, this book will prove indispensable to anyone hoping to understand Latin American literature and society. Jean Franco guides the reader across minefields of cultural debate and histories of highly polarized struggle. Focusing on literary texts by García Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos, and Juan Carlos Onetti, conducting us through this contested history with the authority of an eyewitness, Franco gives us an engaging overview as involving as it is moving.

Download or read book Culture and the Cuban State written by Yvon Grenier and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture and the Cuban State examines the politics of culture in communist Cuba. It focuses on cultural policy, censorship, and the political participation of artists, writers and academics such as Tania Bruguera, Jesús Díaz, Rafael Hernández, Kcho, Reynier Leyva Novo, Leonardo Padura, and José Toirac. The cultural field is important for the reproduction of the regime in place, given its pretense and ambition to be eternally “revolutionary” and to lead a genuine “cultural revolution”. Cultural actors must be mobilized and handled with care, given their presumed disposition to speak their mind and to cherish their autonomy. This book argues that cultural actors also seek recognition by the main (for a long time the only) sponsor and patron of the art in Cuba: the “curator state”. The “curator state” is also a “gatekeeper state,” arbitrarily and selectively opening and closing the space for public expression and for access to foreign currencies and the global market. The time when everything was either mandatory or forbidden is over in Cuba. The regime seems to have learned from egregious mistakes that led to a massive exodus of artists, writers and academics. In a country where things change so everything could stay the same, the controlled opening in the cultural field, playing on the actors' ambition and fear, illuminates a broader phenomenon: the evolving rules of the political game in the longest standing dictatorship of the hemisphere.

Download or read book Lenguaje arte y revoluciones ayer y hoy written by Alejandro Cortazar and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book depicts new paradigms in Hispanic linguistic, literary and cultural studies. Part I: Literary and Cultural Studies includes eight essays focusing on a new trend of cultural representation attempting to find new meaning(s). They explore a series of reflections on some of those moments – from the period that begins with the cry for independence in 1810 and that spans beyond 2010 – textually translated as new approaches of analysis on the “recollections of things to come.” The contexts examined evince critical occurrences related to periods of change toward democracy and social justice that eventually lead to “revolutionary” or “emancipating” ends, by way of artistic, textual manifestations. Part II: Linguistic and Cultural Studies contains nine articles representative of the most current, ground breaking research on Hispanic linguistics. It focuses on important linguistic and cultural issues pertaining, geographically, to various corners of the Hispanic world, spanning from central Florida and New York City, to Bolivia, and on to the Prince Islands in Turkey. The issues explored include the sociolinguistic and cultural identity of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the pragmatics of humor in Mexican film, the effects of language evolution on modern Spanish, and the acquisition of Spanish by English speakers.

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 Cuba written by Professor Jorge I Doma-Nguez and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upon publication in the late 1970s this book was the first major historical analysis of twentieth-century Cuba. Focusing on the way Cuba has been governed, and in particular on the way a changing elite has made claims to legitimate rule, it carefully examines each of Cuba's three main political eras: the first, from Independence in 1902 to the Presidency of Gerardo Machado in 1933; the second, under Batista, from 1934 until 1958; and finally, Castro's revolution, from 1959 to the present. Jorge Domínguez discusses the political roles played by interest groups, mass organizations, and the military. He also investigates the impact of international affairs on Cuba and provides the first printed data on many aspects of political, economic, and social change since 1959. He deals in depth with agrarian politics and peasant protest since 1937, and his concluding chapter on Cuba's present culture is a fascinating insight into a society which--though vitally important--remains mysterious to most readers in the United States. Cuba's role in international affairs is vastly greater than its size. The revolution led by Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the missile crisis in 1962, the underwriting of revolution in Latin America and recently in Africa--all these events have thrust Cuba onto the modern world stage. Anyone hoping to understand this country and its people, and above all its changing systems of government, will find this book essential.

Download or read book Critical Marxism in Mexico written by Stefan Gandler and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Critical Marxism in Mexico, Stefan Gandler, coming from the tradition of the Frankfurt School, reveals the contributions that Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Bolívar Echeverría have made to universal thought. While in recent times Latin America has taken its distance from global power centers, and reorganised its political and economic relations, in philosophy the same tendency is barely visible. Critical Marxism in Mexico is a contribution to the reorganisation of international philosophical discussion, with Critical Theory as the point of departure. Despite having studied in Europe, where philosophical Eurocentrism remains virulent, Gandler opens his eyes to another tradition of modernity and offers an account of the life and philosophy of Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Bolívar Echeverría, former senior faculty members at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

Download or read book Revolution of Forms written by John A. Loomis and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A revolution of forms is a revolution of essentials."-Jos Mart, Cuban intellectual and independence leader. Although the current surge of interest in Cuba has extended to that country's architecture, few know that the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution stands neglected just outside Havana. The Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art Schools), constructed from 1961 to 1965, were the result of an educational program initiated by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara soon after the Revolution of 1959. The architects they commissioned created an organic complex of brick and terra-cotta Catalan vaulted structures that reflected the optimism and exuberance of the period. The schools attempted to reinvent architecture, just as the Revolution hoped to reinvent society. However, even before construction was completed, the schools fell out of official favor and were subjected to an attack that resulted in their subsequent "disappearance." An ideological campaign branded them politically incorrect, a bourgeois luxury that was not in keeping with the Revolution. The buildings fell into disuse and, abandoned to the jungle, were literally overgrown. Now, almost 40 years later, Cuba is beginning to recognize and reclaim these significant works of architecture. Revolution of Forms investigates the history and politics surrounding the creation of these structures as well as their subsequent abandonment. The text is accompanied by archival photographs, plans, and images of the present condition of these structures.

Download or read book Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture 1961 1987 written by Isabel Story and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-04 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which the Cuban-Soviet relationship was expressed in the cultural sphere between 1961 and 1987. It specifically focuses on the theater and the visual arts to analyze the ways in which the culture became a means of asserting the Cuban Revolution’s independence.

Download or read book Cuba the United States and Cultures of the Transnational Left 1930 1975 written by John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which Cuba's revolutions of 1933 and 1959 became touchstones for border-crossing endeavors of radical politics and cultural experimentation over the mid-twentieth century. It argues that new networks of solidarity building between US and Cuban allies also brought with them perils and pitfalls that could not be separated from the longer history of US empire in Cuba. As US and Cuban subjects struggled together towards common aspirations of racial and gender equality, fairer distribution of wealth, and anti-imperialism, they created a unique index of cultural work that widens our understanding of the transition between hemispheric modernism and postmodernism. Canvassing poetry, music, journalism, photographs, and other cultural expressions around themes of revolution, this book seeks new understanding of how race, gender, and nationhood could shift in meaning and materialization when traveling across the Florida Straits.

Download or read book New Art of Cuba written by Luis Camnitzer and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with the groundbreaking 1981 exhibit called "Volumen I," New Art of Cuba provided the first comprehensive look at the works of the first generation of Cuban artists completely shaped by the 1959 revolution. This revised edition includes a new epilogue that discusses developments in Cuban art since the book's publication in 1994, including the exodus of artists in the early 1990s, the effects of the new dollar economy on the status of artists, and the shift away from socialist themes to more personal concerns in the artists' works. Twenty-four new color plates augment the more than 200 b&w illustrations of the original volume.

Download or read book The Cultural Revolution in Cuba written by Roger Reed and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Chilean New Song and the Question of Culture in the Allende Government written by Natália Ayo Schmiedecke and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-28 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the cultural debate within the left during the Popular Unity government in Chile (1970-73), Chilean New Song and the Question of Culture in the Allende Government situates the discourses and artistic production linked to the Chilean New Song movement, in order to demonstrate that the musicians were part of the committed intelligentsia. Thus, they actively participated in the discussion and proposal of ways to integrate culture in the revolutionary process, playing an important political and cultural role. The analysis is mainly based on the government-friendly press and on records released between 1970 and 1973, verifying how the main trends observed in the cultural debate were expressed in the movement; the extent to which the positions defended by the musicians have been in tune with governmental purposes; and if they have in fact influenced the cultural policies debated and pursued by Popular Unity.

Download or read book Florida Law Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 1122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bibliographic Guide to Latin American Studies written by Benson Latin American Collection and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Culture and Revolution written by Horacio Legrás and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty years of postrevolutionary rule in Mexico, the war remained fresh in the minds of those who participated in it, while the enigmas of the revolution remained obscured. Demonstrating how textuality helped to define the revolution, Culture and Revolution examines dozens of seemingly ahistorical artifacts to reveal the radical social shifts that emerged in the war’s aftermath. Presented thematically, this expansive work explores radical changes that resulted from postrevolution culture, including new internal migrations; a collective imagining of the future; popular biographical narratives, such as that of the life of Frida Kahlo; and attempts to create a national history that united indigenous and creole elite society through literature and architecture. While cultural production in early twentieth-century Mexico has been well researched, a survey of the common roles and shared tasks within the various forms of expression has, until now, been unavailable. Examining a vast array of productions, including popular festivities, urban events, life stories, photographs, murals, literature, and scientific discourse (including fields as diverse as anthropology and philology), Horacio Legrás shows how these expressions absorbed the idiosyncratic traits of the revolutionary movement. Tracing the formation of modern Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s, Legrás also demonstrates that the proliferation of artifacts—extending from poetry and film production to labor organization and political apparatuses—gave unprecedented visibility to previously marginalized populations, who ensured that no revolutionary faction would unilaterally shape Mexico’s historical process during these formative years.