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 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 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 Picturing Cuba written by Jorge Duany and published by University of Florida Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Picturing Cuba explores the evolution of Cuban visual art and its links to cubanía, or Cuban cultural identity. Featuring artwork from the Spanish colonial, republican, and postrevolutionary periods of Cuban history, as well as the contemporary diaspora, these richly illustrated essays trace the creation of Cuban art through shifting political, social, and cultural circumstances. Contributors examine colonial-era lithographs of Cuba?s landscape, architecture, people, and customs that portrayed the island as an exotic, tropical location. They show how the avant-garde painters of the vanguardia, or Havana School, wrestled with the significance of the island?s African and indigenous roots, and they also highlight subversive photography that depicts the harsh realities of life after the Cuban Revolution. They explore art created by the first generation of postrevolutionary exiles, which reflects a new identity?lo cubanoamericano, Cuban-Americanness?and expresses the sense of displacement experienced by Cubans who resettled in another country. A concluding chapter evaluates contemporary attitudes toward collecting and exhibiting post-revolutionary Cuban art in the United States. Encompassing works by Cubans on the island, in exile, and born in America, this volume delves into defining moments in Cuban art across three centuries, offering a kaleidoscopic view of the island?s people, culture, and history. Contributors: Anelys Alvarez | Lynnette M. F. Bosch | María A. Cabrera Arús | Iliana Cepero | Ramón Cernuda | Emilio Cueto | Carol Damian | Victor Deupi | Jorge Duany | Alison Fraunhar | Andrea O?Reilly Herrera | Jean-François Lejeune | Abigail McEwen | Ricardo Pau-Llosa | E. Carmen Ramos

Download or read book Culture and Customs of Cuba written by William Luis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-11-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba continues to loom large in U.S. consciousness and politics. Culture and Customs of Cuba is a much-needed resource to give students and other readers an in-depth view of our important island neighbor. Luis, of Cuban descent, provides detailed, clear insight into Cuban culture in its historical context. Religion, customs, economy, media, performing and creative arts, and cinema are some of the many topics discussed. Included in this discussion are contributions of Cubans in exile which Luis considers an inherent part of Cuban culture. Encouraging a wider understanding of Cuba, this volume describes and highlights the cultures and customs of the island. Cuba, as one will learn while reading this book, is an island of many cultural customs that have evolved out of a rich history. Presented in the context of three interrelated periods in Cuban history: the Colonial, the Republic, and Castro's Revolution, this book explores Cuba's dynamic culture. Luis also notes the spread of Cuban culture abroad, where a significant part of the Cuban population has lived since the earl 19th century. Students and others interested in this country will find this book to be extraordinarily helpful and informative.

Download or read book Cultural Policy in Cuba written by Lisandro Otero and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 Represent written by Sujatha Fernandes and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cuba something curious has happened over the past fifteen years. The government has allowed vocal criticism of its policies to be expressed within the arts. Filmmakers, rappers, and visual and performance artists have addressed sensitive issues including bureaucracy, racial and gender discrimination, emigration, and alienation. How can this vibrant body of work be reconciled with the standard representations of a repressive, authoritarian cultural apparatus? In Cuba Represent! Sujatha Fernandes—a scholar and musician who has performed in Cuba—answers that question. Combining textual analyses of films, rap songs, and visual artworks; ethnographic material collected in Cuba; and insights into the nation’s history and political economy, Fernandes details the new forms of engagement with official institutions that have opened up as a result of changing relationships between state and society in the post-Soviet period. She demonstrates that in a moment of extreme hardship and uncertainty, the Cuban state has moved to a more permeable model of power. Artists and other members of the public are collaborating with government actors to partially incorporate critical cultural expressions into official discourse. The Cuban leadership has come to recognize the benefits of supporting artists: rappers offer a link to increasingly frustrated black youth in Cuba; visual artists are an important source of international prestige and hard currency; and films help unify Cubans through community discourse about the nation. Cuba Represent! reveals that part of the socialist government’s resilience stems from its ability to absorb oppositional ideas and values.

Download or read book Music and Revolution written by Robin D. Moore and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation A history of Cuban music during the Castro regime (1950s to the present.

Download or read book Cuba the United States and the Culture of the Transnational Left 1933 1970 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 Culture and the Cuban Revolution written by John M. Kirk and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unusual collaboration between a Cuban novelist and a Canadian professor offers uncensored and frank interviews with prominent figures of contemporary Cuban cultural life, from a Grammy-winning jazz artist to world-class filmmakers and actors, writers, ballet dancers, and dramatists. In recent years the small island, with a population of just 11 million, has experienced an astonishing cultural renaissance. The immense popularity of the movies Buena Vista Social Club and Strawberry and Chocolate, the successful international tours of the National Ballet of Cuba, and a host of literary prizes in Spain and Latin America attest to this phenomenon. The thirteen people interviewed played a leading role in cultural life during the years of the revolutionary process and today are considered official Cuban figures - Silvio Rodriguez, Anton Arrufat, Alicia Alonso, Abelardo Estorino, Chucho Valdes, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Leo Brouwer, Nancy Morejon, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Roberto Fabelo, Frank Fernandez, Fernando Perez, and Jorge Perugorria. They discuss a range of topics - their own work and limits on it, the challenge of producing art in a poor country, and threats of censorship. A

Download or read book Anarchist Cuba written by Kirwin Shaffer and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first critical, in-depth study of the anarchist movement in Cuba in the three decades after the republic’s independence from Spain in 1898. Kirwin Shaffer shows that anarchists played a significant—until now little-known—role among Cuban leftists in shaping issues of health, education, immigration, the environment, and working-class internationalism. They also criticized the state of racial politics, cultural practices, and the conditions of children and women on the island. In the chaotic new country, members of the anarchist movement reinterpreted the War for Independence and the revolutionary ideas of patriot José Martí, embarking on a nationwide debate with the larger Cuban establishment about what it meant to be “Cuban.” To counter the dominant culture, the anarchists created their own initiatives—schools, health institutes, vegetarian restaurants, theater and fiction writing groups, and occasional calls for nudism—and as a result they challenged both the existing elite and the occupying U.S. military forces. Shaffer also focuses on what anarchists did to prepare the masses for a social revolution. While many of the Cuban anarchists' ideals flowed from Europe, their programs, criticisms, and literature reflected the specifics of Cuban reality and appealed to Cuba’s popular classes. Using theories of working-class internationalism, countercultures, popular culture, and social movements, Shaffer analyzes archival records, pamphlets, newspapers, and novels, showing how the anarchist movement in republican Cuba helped shape the country’s early leftist revolutionary agenda. Shaffer’s portrait of the conflict between anarchists and their enemies illuminates the multiple forces that pervaded life on the island in the twentieth century, until the rise of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship in the 1920s. This important book places anarchism in its rightful historical role as a vital current within Cuban radical political culture.

Download or read book This Is Cuba written by Ben Corbett and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-10-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the throngs of tourists streaming through Central Havana's broad Prado Avenue, and outside the yoke of Castro's 43-year-old Revolutionary program, there exists a parallel Cuba - a separate evolution of a people struggling to survive. 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 us the daily life of many considered outlaws by Castro's regime. But are they outlaws or rather ingenious survivors of what many Cubans consider to be a forty-year mistake, a tangle of contradictions that has resulted in a strange hybrid of American-style capitalism and a homegrown black market economy. At a time when Cuba walks precariously on the ledge between socialism and capitalism, This Is Cuba gets to the heart of this so-called outlaw culture, taking readers into the living rooms, rooftops, parks, and city streets to hear stories of frustration, hope, and survival. Updated with a new preface.

Download or read book Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba written by Julie Marie Bunck and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An excellent study of political culture, emphasizing cultural and normative resistance to revolutionary values, norms, and goals. Challenges much of the scholarship that maintained that revolution permanently transformed Cuba's traditional culture, and finds that 'most Cuban workers rejected many of the revolutionary requirements of the Castro government' (p. 184). Highly recommended"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

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 Planet Cuba written by Rachel Price and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transformations in Cuban art, literature and culture in the post-Fidel era Cuba has been in a state of massive transformation over the past decade, with its historic resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States only the latest development. While the political leadership has changed direction, other forces have taken hold. The environment is under threat, and the culture feels the strain of new forms of consumption. Planet/Cuba examines how art and literature have responded to a new moment, one both more globalized and less exceptional; more concerned with local quotidian worries than international alliances; more threatened by the depredations of planetary capitalism and climate change than by the vagaries of the nation’s government. Rachel Price examines a fascinating array of artists and writers who are tracing a new socio-cultural map of the island.

Download or read book Cuba s Digital Revolution written by Ted A. Henken and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume argues that recent technological developments are reconfiguring the cultural, economic, social, and political spheres of Cuba's Revolutionary project in unprecedented ways"--