Cuba in a Global Context
Cuba in a Global Context

Author: Catherine Krull

Publisher:

Published: 2016-02-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813062174

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Cuba in a Global Context examines the unlikely prominence of the island nation's geopolitical role. The contributors to this volume explore the myriad ways in which Cuba has not only maintained but often increased its reach and influence in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the beginning, the Castro regime established a foreign policy that would legitimize the revolutionary government, if not in the eyes of the United States at least in the eyes of other global actors. The essays in this volume shed new light on Cuban diplomacy with communist China as well as with Western governments such as Great Britain and Canada. In recent years, Cubans have improved their lives in the face of the ongoing U.S. embargo. The promotion of increased economic and political cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela served as a catalyst for the Petrocaribe group. Links established with countries in the Caribbean and Central America have increased tourism, medical diplomacy, and food sovereignty across the region. Cuban transnationalism has also succeeded in creating people-to-people contacts involving those who have remained on the island and members of the Cuban diaspora. While the specifics of Cuba's international relations are likely to change as new leaders take over, the role of Cubans working to assert their sovereignty has undoubtedly impacted every corner of the globe.

Cuba’s Revolutionary World
Cuba’s Revolutionary World

Author: Jonathan C. Brown

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0674978323

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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.

Key to the New World
Key to the New World

Author: Luis Martínez-Fernández

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1683401379

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Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for General Nonfiction International Latino Book Awards, First Place, Best History Book (English) Scholarly and popular attention tends to focus heavily on Cuba’s recent history. Key to the New World is the first comprehensive history of early colonial Cuba written in English, and fills the gap in our knowledge of the island before 1700.

To Make a World Safe for Revolution
To Make a World Safe for Revolution

Author: Professor Jorge I Doma-Nguez

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780674034273

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The twentieth-century history of Cuba borders on fantasy. This diminutive country boldly and repeatedly exercises the foreign policy of a major power. Although closely tied to the United States through most of its modern history, Cuba successfully defied the U.S. government after 1959, consolidated its own power, and defeated an invasion of U.S.-backed exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Fidel Castro then brought the world alarmingly close to nuclear war in 1962. Jorge Domínguez presents a comprehensive survey of Cuban international relations since Castro came to power. Domínguez unravels Cuba's response to the 1962 missile crisis and the U.S.-Soviet understandings that emerged from that. He explores the ties that link Cuba to the U.S.S.R. and other Communist countries; analyzes Cuban support for revolutionary movements throughout the world, especially in Latin America and Africa; and assesses the significance of Cuban political and economic relations with Western Europe, Canada, and Japan. Some have charged that Cuba does not have a foreign policy, that Fidel Castro merely takes orders from his Soviet bosses. Domínguez argues that there is indeed a specifically Cuban foreign policy, poised not only between hegemony and autonomy, between compliance and self-assertion, but also between militancy and pragmatism. He believes that within the context of Soviet hegemony Cuba's foreign policy is very much its own, and he marshals impressive evidence to support this belief. His book is based on extensive documentation from Cuba, the United States, and other countries, as well as from many in-depth interviews carried out during trips to Cuba.

We Are Cuba!
We Are Cuba!

Author: Helen Yaffe

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-04-06

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0300245513

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The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Author: Ada Ferrer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1501154575

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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.

Cuba Libre!
Cuba Libre!

Author: Tony Perrottet

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0735218188

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The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them. Most people are familiar with the basics of the Cuban Revolution of 1956–1959: it was led by two of the twentieth century’s most charismatic figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; it successfully overthrew the island nation’s US–backed dictator; and it quickly went awry under Fidel’s rule. But less is remembered about the amateur nature of the movement or the lives of its players. In this wildly entertaining and meticulously researched account, historian and journalist Tony Perrottet unravels the human drama behind history’s most improbable revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught revolutionaries—many of them kids just out of college, literature majors, and art students, and including a number of extraordinary women—who defeated 40,000 professional soldiers to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Cuba Libre!’s deep dive into the revolution reveals fascinating details: How did Fidel’s highly organized lover Celia Sánchez whip the male guerrillas into shape? Who were the two dozen American volunteers who joined the Cuban rebels? How do you make land mines from condensed milk cans—or, for that matter, cook chorizo à la guerrilla (sausage guerrilla-style)? Cuba Libre! is an absorbing look back at a liberation movement that captured the world's imagination with its spectacular drama, foolhardy bravery, tragedy, and, sometimes, high comedy—and that set the stage for Cold War tensions that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Cuba
Cuba

Author: Professor Jorge I Doma-Nguez

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 708

ISBN-13: 9780674034280

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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.

Creating a Third World
Creating a Third World

Author: Christopher M. White

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780826342386

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White examines the complex political relationships among the three countries during the sixties and how Mexico and Cuba utilized the Cold War to define themselves as influential leaders in the developing world.

Cuban Revolution in America
Cuban Revolution in America

Author: Teishan A. Latner

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 146963547X

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Cuba's grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island's achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation's Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba's multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.