Download or read book The Cuban Democratic Experience written by Charles D. Ameringer and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A serious attempt to explore the strengths and weaknesses of Cuba's Auténtico regime and its programs and failings in service of democracy. We can now see its legacy in the Batista and Castro eras."--Harold Dana Sims, University of Pittsburgh Charles Ameringer looks at eight unique years in Cuban history--1944 to 1952--that generally have been ignored by most commentators, and examines the cultural, economic, political, and social features of the era. Specialists divide the history of Cuba into three periods: the Plattist Republic (1902-1933); the Batista era (1933-1958); and the Cuban Revolution and Castro era (1959 to the present). Ameringer points out that this division glosses over the years when Cubans had a functioning democracy and, he contends, enjoyed a rare freedom of expression and an artistic flowering. These years comprised the administrations of Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás, both freely elected leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Party-Auténtico (PRC-A). They avowed their dedication to fulfill the goals of the Revolution of 1933 (economic liberation and social justice) but failed to live up to those expectations, and their governments ultimately were marked by corruption and violence. Without attempting to rehabilitate the Auténticos entirely, Ameringer probes the Cuban consciousness in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Cuban democracy during this special period. He concludes that the Auténticos eventually lost the respect of the people, and, despite significant reforms, their administrations led to the return to power of the opportunistic Fulgencio Batista. Although written in a readable style, this book offers serious, solid analyses of key developments that fill major gaps in the current understanding of the circles of power in prerevolutionary Cuba. Charles D. Ameringer, professor emeritus of Latin American history, Pennsylvania State University, is the author of The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946-1950 and The Democratic Left in Exile: The Antidictatorial Struggle in the Caribbean, 1945-1959.
Download or read book People s Power written by Peter Roman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing primarily on the municipal level but also presenting material on the national and provincial elected bodies and the newer people's councils and workers' parliaments, Roman (behavioral and social sciences, City U. of New York) offers a theoretical, historical, and contemporary analysis. He finds theoretical foundations in Rousseau, Marx, and Lenin and historical precedents in the Paris Commune, the 1905 and 1917 Soviets, and the Soviet Union before and after Stalin. His coverage extends from the various experiments after the triumph of the revolution in 1959 through effects of the 1992 Constitution and election law, to the present. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Cuba and Its Neighbours written by Arnold August and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Arnold August explores Cuba's unique form of democracy, presenting a detailed and balanced analysis of Cuba's electoral process and the state's functioning between elections. By comparing them with practices in the U.S., Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, August shows that people's participation in politics and society is not limited to a singular, U.S.- centric understanding of democracy. Through this deft analysis, August illustrates how the process of democratization in Cuba is continually in motion and argues that a greater understanding of different political systems teaches us to not be satisfied with either blanket condemnations or idealistic political illusions.
Download or read book Cuba 1952 1959 written by Manuel Márquez-Sterling and published by Kleiopatria Digital Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Manuel Márquez-Sterling writes about Fidel Castro and his revolution from direct personal experience, as a historian with broad and deep knowledge of 50s Cuba. The author knew and had contact with many of the historical figures in the book's pages. His penetrating analysis of the public and behind-the-scenes events clears the fog and shatters myths to reveal the real story of the Cuban Revolution. The book explains how Castro came to power through the convergence of rabid partisanship, radical student politics, media bias, and venal politicians who placed self interest ahead of preserving democracy. Facing a constitutional crisis, these parties espoused "the end justifies the means," embracing political gangsterism and eschewing negotiations with political opponents- resulting in a power vacuum Castro exploited to seize power. Masterful propaganda cast Castro as pro-democracy hero, avoiding scrutiny of his plans for a totalitarian state under his control.
Download or read book Heroes Martyrs and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba 1946 1958 written by Lillian Guerra and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar sheds light on the experiences of ordinary Cubans in the unseating of the dictator Fulgencio Batista In this important and timely volume, one of today’s foremost experts on Cuban history and politics fills a significant gap in the literature, illuminating how Cuba’s electoral democracy underwent a tumultuous transformation into a military dictatorship. Lillian Guerra draws on her years of research in newly opened archives and on personal interviews to shed light on the men and women of Cuba who participated in mass mobilization and civic activism to establish social movements in their quest for social and racial justice and for more accountable leadership. Driven by a sense of duty toward la patria (the fatherland) and their dedication to heroism and martyrdom, these citizens built a powerful underground revolutionary culture that shaped and witnessed the overthrow of Batista in the late 1950s. Beautifully illustrated with archival photographs, this volume is a stunning addition to Latin American history and politics.
Download or read book Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959 written by Samuel Farber and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba’s economic and social performance.” —Foreign Affairs Uncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution’s impact and legacy. “The Cuban story twists and turns as we speak, so thank goodness for scholars such as Samuel Farber, an unapologetic Marxist whose knowledge of Cuban affairs is unrivalled . . . In this excellent, necessary book, Farber takes stock of fifty years of revolutionary control by recognizing achievements but lambasting authoritarianism.” —Latin American Review of Books “A courageous and formidable balance-sheet of the Cuban Revolution, including a sobering analysis of a draconian ‘reform’ program that will only deepen the gulf between revolutionary slogans and the actual life of the people.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
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 Cuban American Political Culture and Civic Organizing written by Robert M. Ceresa and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies civic organizations in Miami’s Cuban community. Few places in the United States have been transformed by immigration the way Miami has been transformed by Cuban exiles. Cuban civic organizations help to explain why this is the case. Civic organizations are the heart of the story of the social and political power and influence of Miami’s Cuban community. This community is home to a broad tradition of active political participation and many civic organizations. The sheer number of organizations suggests they have something to do with the community’s considerable vibrancy and civic capacity. How do the organizations work? How have they managed to be so successful over so many years? What can be learned about successful civic organizing from their experience? How will changing United States-Cuba relations impact Cuban civic organizations, and, in turn, broader Miami? These are questions this book helps to answer.
Download or read book The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered written by Samuel Farber and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007-09-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing the crucial period of the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1961, Samuel Farber challenges dominant scholarly and popular views of the revolution's sources, shape, and historical trajectory. Unlike many observers, who treat Cuba's revolutionary leaders as having merely reacted to U.S. policies or domestic socioeconomic conditions, Farber shows that revolutionary leaders, while acting under serious constraints, were nevertheless autonomous agents pursuing their own independent ideological visions, although not necessarily according to a master plan. Exploring how historical conflicts between U.S. and Cuban interests colored the reactions of both nations' leaders after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, Farber argues that the structure of Cuba's economy and politics in the first half of the twentieth century made the island ripe for radical social and economic change, and the ascendant Soviet Union was on hand to provide early assistance. Taking advantage of recently declassified U.S. and Soviet documents as well as biographical and narrative literature from Cuba, Farber focuses on three key years to explain how the Cuban rebellion rapidly evolved from a multiclass, antidictatorial movement into a full-fledged social revolution.
Download or read book Democracy Delayed written by Juan J. López and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts and international relations scholars expected communist Cuba to undergo transitions to democracy and to markets as had the Eastern European nations of the former Soviet bloc. But more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Castro remains in power, with no sign that the Cuban government or economy is moving toward liberalization. In Democracy Delayed, political scientist Juan López offers a searching and detailed analysis of the factors behind Cuba's failure to liberalize. López begins by comparing the political systems of three Eastern European states—the former German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and Romania—with that of Cuba, in order to identify the differences that have allowed Castro to maintain his hold over the government and the economy. López also shows the various conditions promoting change, including the development of civil society groups in Cuba, and discusses why some U.S. policies help the possibility of democratization in Cuba while others hinder it. While the Catholic Church in Poland and the Protestant Church in East Germany fostered change, the Catholic Church in Cuba has not taken a defiant stance against authoritarianism but seems instead to be biding its time until Castro is out of the picture. In conclusion, López argues that a political transition in Cuba is possible even under the government of Fidel Castro. Some necessary conditions have been missing, but it is possible that U.S. policies could lay the groundwork for democratic charge.
Download or read book The Politics of Che Guevara written by Samuel Farber and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Confidence Trap written by David Runciman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.
Download or read book Youth and the Cuban Revolution written by Anne Luke and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba is a new history of the first decade of the Cuban Revolution, exploring how youth came to play such an important role in the 1960s on this Caribbean island. Certainly, youth culture and politics worldwide were in the ascendant in that decade, but in this pioneering and thought-provoking work Anne Luke explains how the unique circumstances of the newly developing socialist revolution in Cuba created an ethos of youth which becomes one of the factors that explains how and why the Cuban Revolution survives to this day. By examining how youth was constructed and constituted within revolutionary discourse, policy, and the lived experience of young Cubans in the 1960s, Luke examines the conflicted (but ultimately successful) development of a revolutionary youth culture. She explores the fault lines along which the notion of youth was created—between the internal and the external, between discourse and the everyday, between politics and culture. Luke looks at how in the first decade of the Cuban Revolution a young leadership—Fidel, Raúl and Che—were complemented by a group of new protagonists from Cuba’s young generation. These could be literacy teachers, party members, militia members, teachers, singers, poets… all aiming to define and shape the Cuban Revolution. Together young Cubans took part in defining what it meant to be young, socialist and Cuban in this effervescent decade. The picture that emerges is one in which neither youth politics nor youth culture can alone help to explain the first decade of the Revolution; rather through the sometimes conflicted intersection of both there emerged a generation constantly to be renewed—a youth in Revolution.
Download or read book Cuba written by Susan Kaufman Purcell and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this collection offer a range of views on the growing political and economic challenges facing the Castro regime, how these challenges will be met, and Cuba's prospects for a peaceful transition to democracy.
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 The Americano written by Aran Shetterly and published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. This book was released on 2007-08-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic written by Melina Pappademos and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While it was not until 1871 that slavery in Cuba was finally abolished, African-descended people had high hopes for legal, social, and economic advancement as the republican period started. In Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic, Melina Pappademos analyzes the racial politics and culture of black civic and political activists during the Cuban Republic. The path to equality, Pappademos reveals, was often stymied by successive political and economic crises, patronage politics, and profound racial tensions. In the face of these issues, black political leaders and members of black social clubs developed strategies for expanding their political authority and for winning respectability and socioeconomic resources. Rather than appeal to a monolithic black Cuban identity based on the assumption of shared experience, these black activists, politicians, and public intellectuals consistently recognized the class, cultural, and ideological differences that existed within the black community, thus challenging conventional wisdom about black community formation and anachronistic ideas of racial solidarity. Pappademos illuminates the central, yet often silenced, intellectual and cultural role of black Cubans in the formation of the nation's political structures; in doing so, she shows that black activism was only partially motivated by race.
