Sugar was Cuba’s principal export from the late eighteenth century throughout much of the twentieth, and during that time, the majority of the island’s population depended on sugar production for its livelihood. In Blazing Cane, Gillian McGillivray examines the development of social classes linked to sugar production, and their contribution to the formation and transformation of the state, from the first Cuban Revolution for Independence in 1868 through the Cuban Revolution of 1959. She describes how cane burning became a powerful way for farmers, workers, and revolutionaries to commit sabotage, take control of the harvest season, improve working conditions, protest political repression, attack colonialism and imperialism, nationalize sugarmills, and, ultimately, acquire greater political and economic power. Focusing on sugar communities in eastern and central Cuba, McGillivray recounts how farmers and workers pushed the Cuban government to move from exclusive to inclusive politics and back again. The revolutionary caudillo networks that formed between 1895 and 1898, the farmer alliances that coalesced in the 1920s, and the working-class groups of the 1930s affected both day-to-day local politics and larger state-building efforts. Not limiting her analysis to the island, McGillivray shows that twentieth-century Cuban history reflected broader trends in the Western Hemisphere, from modernity to popular nationalism to Cold War repression.
This collection of essays includes papers presented at the 21st annual Eugene Scassa Mock OAS Conference, an inter-collegiate competition and prestigious academic conference focused on inter-American political systems and the politics, history, and culture of the Americas. The volume includes papers on US-Mexico and Mexico-Spain business relations written by experts from universities in Mexico; Organisation of American States intervention in Cuba and Venezuela; social histories of Mexico involving women’s rights, civil rights of immigrants in the American Southwest, and the history and nuance of LGBT groups in Mexico; quantitative analysis of protest movements in Chile; religious history as pertaining to politics in the early United States; and a series of three short papers on the importance and legacy of sugar in the Caribbean. Written by recognized authorities in their fields and by promising new scholars alike, the collection presents a wide assortment of viewpoints and research backgrounds to portray the Americas and its vast and diverse cultural fabric.
On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supporters. Recalling the failed popular uprisings of past decades, Castro assured them that this time “the real Revolution” had arrived. As Jonathan Brown shows in this capacious history of the Cuban Revolution, Castro’s words proved prophetic not only for his countrymen but for Latin America and the wider world. Cuba’s Revolutionary World examines in forensic detail how the turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the twentieth century’s most transformative events. Initially, Castro’s revolution augured well for democratic reform movements gaining traction in Latin America. But what had begun promisingly veered off course as Castro took a heavy hand in efforts to centralize Cuba’s economy and stamp out private enterprise. Embracing the Soviet Union as an ally, Castro and his lieutenant Che Guevara sought to export the socialist revolution abroad through armed insurrection. Castro’s provocations inspired intense opposition. Cuban anticommunists who had fled to Miami found a patron in the CIA, which actively supported their efforts to topple Castro’s regime. The unrest fomented by Cuban-trained leftist guerrillas lent support to Latin America’s military castes, who promised to restore stability. Brazil was the first to succumb to a coup in 1964; a decade later, military juntas governed most Latin American states. Thus did a revolution that had seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America bring about its tragic opposite.
My growly, gorgeous personal trainer gave me equipment to work with that was long, thick, heavy, and hard. I’ve been teased about my large size since I was a kid. So this Christmas season, I decide to take matters into my own hands. The gym has always been my personal hell, but not anymore because I’ve hired a professional trainer. What I didn’t expect is for my trainer to be so huge. Patrick Walker has muscles that go on for days, a six pack that bulges, and a glint in his eyes that says come and get your bad boy. Plus, he keeps giving it to me non-stop. The sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups are killing me. I strain and stretch, hoping to rid myself of my curves by December 25. But what if my gorgeous trainer says he likes my hills and valleys? What if he says I look ripe and plush and ready for a candy cane because of them? Will we do the taboo? Or will my trainer’s candy cane go uneaten? Curvy girls unite! Maisie learns to love her curves in this fun-filled tale of slick sweat, Christmas ornaments, and candy canes. Don’t worry – she doesn’t lose her curves and instead, learns to love them with the help of OTT alpha male Patrick Walker, and his hard, sweaty workouts. Even better – Patrick gives her a bouncing baby by the end! No cheating, no cliffhangers, and always an HEA for my readers.
A stunning coming-of-age novel about one young man's eye-opening sexual awakening at the hands of an intriguing older woman. Henry Cane knows exactly what he’s going to do with the rest of his life. That’s the problem. Born into the rarefied world of Manhattan wealth and privilege, after graduating from Princeton, Henry is about to start his perfectly planned out life. He's always known he will move back to Manhattan and be groomed to take over his father’s publishing business. He's destined to date a string of appropriate girls until he dates the most appropriate girl and asks her to marry him. It’s all so awfully tedious. But Henry's been given eight weeks to do something else, to be an entirely different person. When his parents leave him alone in their Sag Harbor estate for the summer, Henry embarks on a double life as Joe, a blue collar fisherman on the other side of the bay. Once ensconced in his fake identity, he finds himself entangled in an affair with an alluring, older European woman—who happens to be married. As he becomes more and more infatuated with her, their affair threatens to unravel his tightly wound story, and could jeopardize his entire future. This is the story of a boy becoming a man, shaped by the hands of women who truly control the narrative.
Although Latin America weathered the Great Depression better than the United States and Europe, the global economic collapse of the 1930s had a deep and lasting impact on the region. The contributors to this book examine the consequences of the Depression in terms of the role of the state, party-political competition, and the formation of working-class and other social and political movements. Going beyond economic history, they chart the repercussions and policy responses in different countries while noting common cross-regional trends--in particular, a mounting critique of economic orthodoxy and greater state intervention in the economic, social, and cultural spheres, both trends crucial to the region's subsequent development. The book also examines how regional transformations interacted with and differed from global processes. Taken together, these essays deepen our understanding of the Great Depression as a formative experience in Latin America and provide a timely comparative perspective on the recent global economic crisis. Contributors. Marcelo Bucheli, Carlos Contreras, Paulo Drinot, Jeffrey L. Gould, Roy Hora, Alan Knight, Gillian McGillivray, Luis Felipe Sáenz, Angela Vergara, Joel Wolfe, Doug Yarrington
A new and necessary examination of how nineteenth-century Cuban white elites viewed the natural world, material culture, and political power as intertwined In the decades before the Cuban wars of independence, white elites exploited the island’s natural history and culture to redefine racial identity and reassert authority. These practices occurred in the face of challenges to their political power from Cubans of mixed race and as Cuba’s dependence on sugar led to ecological and economic precarity. Lee Sessions uses close visual analysis to investigate how white elites wielded power by manipulating material culture, placing in conversation for the first time the natural history museums, botanical gardens, and thousands of paintings, drawings, and prints produced in and about Cuba from 1820 to 1860. This important and novel book explores how groups used material culture to imagine their own future at a moment when racial and political dynamics were changing rapidly, while facing an ecological disaster of unimaginable scale.
Now in a Spanish-language edition: the definitive biography of Senator Marco Rubio, the youngest Speaker of the Florida Statehouse and the biggest rising star in the Republican Party. SENATOR MARCO RUBIO has been called the Michael Jordan of Republican politics and a crown prince of the Tea Party. He is a political figure who inspires fierce passions among his supporters—and his detractors. From his family’s immigrant roots to his ascent from small-town commissioner to the heights of the United States Senate, The Rise of Marco Rubio traces a classic American odyssey. Rubio’s grandfather was born in a humble thatched-palm dwelling in a sugar cane–growing region of Cuba, more than fifty years before Rubio’s parents left the island for a better life in Miami. His father worked as a bartender, his mother as a maid and stock clerk at Kmart. Rubio was quick on his high school football field, and even quicker in becoming a major voice on everything from immigration to the role of faith in public life and one of the great hopes of the Republican Party. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and documents, Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia shows how Rubio cultivated a knack for apprenticing himself to the right mentor, learning the issues, and volunteering for tough political jobs that made him shine. He also has a way with words and the instinct to seize opportunities that others don’t see. As Mike Huckabee says, Rubio “is our Barack Obama with substance.” The Rise of Marco Rubio elegantly tells us why. *** THE RISE OF MARCO RUBIO A POLITICIAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME A slender, delicate right shoulder knifed downward; a cane flipped sideways. Nancy Reagan was crashing. But before the crowd’s applause gave way to gasps, Marco Rubio, his hair parted just so, a valedictorian’s smile on his face, tugged the aging icon toward him. He caught the ninety-year-old almost parallel to the floor and bound for a bone-chipping thud. Extraordinary political careers can build momentum from an accretion of perfect moments, and this was just one more for Marco Rubio. Rubio’s reflexes had only sharpened the impression that a party looking for heroes had found a figure with great promise. American politics had never seen anything like him. A FAMILY THAT FACED THE CHALLENGES OF IMMIGRATION In the summer of 1962 Rubio’s Cuban grandfather Pedro Víctor asked his bosses for a vacation, and this time they granted it. And so it was that on August 31, 1962, he took an incredibly risky step. He boarded Pan American Airlines Flight 2422 bound for Miami. His troubles began not long after the plane landed. A LEGISLATOR FULL OF AMBITION In Marco Rubio’s second year at the Florida capital, a committee was formed to redraw voting district lines. As usual, Rubio’s timing was good and his instincts were spot-on. Redistricting was a once-in-a-decade ritual, and it presented him with a once-in-a-decade opportunity. Not yet thirty, he volunteered to help. In doing so he took the same route he had traveled before, making himself an apprentice in a good position to impress the older generation. Volunteering for the task meant substantial face time with the leaders of the state house. And the leaders noticed him.
Organized labor in the 1950s -- A crisis of productivity -- The employers' offensive -- Workers take stock -- Responses to state terror -- Two strikes -- Last days of Batista -- The first year of the new Cuba -- Conclusion: what was the role of organized labor in the Cuban insurrection?
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 ambitious chronicle written for an era that demands a new reckoning with the island's past. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History reveals 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 influence of the United States on Cuba and 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. 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. --
