Bringing together an unprecedented number of extensive personal stories, this book shares the triumphs and heartbreaking moments experienced by some of the first Cubans to come to the United States after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
In the years since Fidel Castro came to power, the migration of close to one million Cubans to the United States continues to remain one of the most fascinating, unusual, and controversial movements in American history. María Cristina García—a Cuban refugee raised in Miami—has experienced firsthand many of the developments she describes, and has written the most comprehensive and revealing account of the postrevolutionary Cuban migration to date. García deftly navigates the dichotomies and similarities between cultures and among generations. Her exploration of the complicated realm of Cuban American identity sets a new standard in social and cultural history.
First implemented in 1962, the American embargo against Cuba is one of the most enduring anti-trade measures in human history, having outlived most of the original government and military leaders responsible for its creation. But has it benefited the United States as intended, by weakening Fidel Castro's grip on his country? Or has it, instead, strengthened his position? This unique work draws upon interviews with Cuban exiles to provide broad-ranging insights on the embargo's effects on the Cuban people, and an evaluation of its diminishing role as an effective political tool.
The Cuban revolution of 1959 initiated a significant exodus, with more than 700,000 Cubans eventually settling in the United States. This community creates a major part of what is now known as the Cuban diaspora. In Cuban-American Literature of Exile, Isabel Alvarez Borland forces the dialogue between literature and history into the open by focusing on narratives that tell the story of the 1959 exodus and its aftermath. Alvarez Borland pulls together a diverse array of Cuban-American voices writing in both English and Spanish--often from contrasting perspectives and approaches--over several generations and waves of immigration. Writers discussed include Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Roberto Fernandez, Achy Obejas, and Cristina Garcia. The author's analysis of their works uncovers a movement from narratives that reflect the personal loss caused by the historical fact of exile, to autobiographical writings that reflect the need to search for a new identity in a new language, to fictions that dramatize the authors' constructed Cuban-American personae. If read collectively, she argues, these sometimes dissimilar texts appear to be in dialogue with one another as they all document a people's quest to reinvent themselves outside their nation of origin. Cuban-American Literature of Exile encourages readers to consider the evolution of Cuban literature in the United States over the last forty years. Alvarez Borland defines a new American literature of Cuban heritage and documents the changing identity of an exiled literature.
For many Cubans, Fidel Castro's Revolution represented deliverance from a legacy of inequality and national disappointment. For others—especially those exiled in the United States—Cuba's turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like paradise lost. Michael J. Bustamante unsettles this familiar schism by excavating Cubans' contested memories of the Revolution's roots and results over its first twenty years. Cubans' battles over the past, he argues, not only defied simple political divisions; they also helped shape the course of Cuban history itself. As the Revolution unfolded, the struggle over historical memory was triangulated among revolutionary leaders in Havana, expatriate organizations in Miami, and average Cuban citizens. All Cubans leveraged the past in individual ways, but personal memories also collided with the Cuban state's efforts to institutionalize a singular version of the Revolution's story. Drawing on troves of archival materials, including visual media, Bustamante tracks the process of what he calls retrospective politics across the Florida Straits. In doing so, he drives Cuban history beyond the polarized vision seemingly set in stone today and raises the prospect of a more inclusive national narrative.
Our Lady of the Exile is a study of Cuban-American popular Catholicism, focusing on the shrine of Our Lady Charity in Miami. Drawing on a wide range of sources and using both historical and ethnographic methods, the book examines the religious life of the Cuban exiles who visit the shrine. Those pilgrims are diverse, and so are the motives that bring them. At the same time, author Thomas A. Tweed argues, Cuban devotees of the national patroness share a great deal. Most come to pray for their homeland and to recreate bonds with other Cubans, on the island and in the diaspora. The shrine is a place where they come to make sense of themselves as an exiled people. The religious symbols there link the past and present and bridge the homeland and the new land. Through rituals and artifacts at the shrine, Tweed suggests, the Cuban diaspora "imaginatively constructs its collective identity and transports itself to the Cuba of memory and desire." While the book focuses on Cuban exiles in Miami, it moves beyond case study as it explores larger issues concerning religion, identity, and place. How do migrants relate to heir homeland? How do they understand themselves after they have been displaced? What role does religion play among these diasporic groups? Building on this study of one exiled group, Tweed proposes a theory of diasporic religion that promises to illuminate the experiences of other groups that have been displaced from their native land. As the first book-length analysis of Cuban-American Catholicism, Tweed's book will be an invaluable resource to scholars and students of not only Religious Studies, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies, but also those who study cultural anthropology, human geography, and Latin American history.
During the violent years of war marking Cuba's final push for independence from Spain, over 3,000 Cuban emigres, men and women, rich and poor, fled to Mexico. But more than a safe haven, Mexico was a key site, Dalia Antonia Muller argues, from which the expatriates helped launch a mobile and politically active Cuban diaspora around the Gulf of Mexico. Offering a new transnational vantage on Cuba's struggle for nationhood, Muller traces the stories of three hundred of these Cuban emigres and explores the impact of their lives of exile, service to the revolution and independence, and circum-Caribbean solidarities. While not large in number, the emigres excelled at community building, and their effectiveness in disseminating their political views across borders intensified their influence and inspired strong nationalistic sentiments across Latin America. Revealing that emigres' efforts were key to a Cuban Revolutionary Party program for courting Mexican popular and diplomatic support, Muller shows how the relationship also benefited Mexican causes. Cuban revolutionary aspirations resonated with Mexican students, journalists, and others alarmed by the violation of constitutional rights and the increasing conservatism of the Porfirio Diaz regime. Finally, Muller follows emigres' return to Cuba after the Spanish-American War, their lives in the new republic ineluctably shaped by their sojourn in Mexico.
Presents a glimpse into four centuries of Cubans in America, from the sixteenth century to the present day, and profiles such noted Cubans as Oscar Hijuelos, Gloria Estefan, and Jeff Bezos.
This book is for anyone interested in stories of courage and the pursuit of freedom. It is a collection of memories about the Cuban exile experience of the mid-20th century: a testament to the courage, persistence, and determination of people whose lives were upended quickly, dramatically, and irrevocably by a political movement. These anonymized experiences tell of the sometimes-improbable circumstances that led a generation to leave their homeland and everything they knew to come to a foreign country and start their lives again from scratch. The memories have been collected from anecdotes passed down over generations, interviews, and personal recollections. Many of the stories are in the speaker's own words, which sometimes revert to Spanish, and these are accompanied by English-language translations. Each story is told by a different exile sharing his or her own memory. The main thread that runs through the book is the chaos and confusion of the communist takeover in Cuba and the subsequent exodus of a significant portion of the island's population. Also covered are the struggles and sacrifices the exiles made during the early years of arrival in their new countries as well as humorous examples of cultural clashes while attempting to adapt. Lastly, this is a declaration of unabashed appreciation to the United States, the country that gave so many of us the opportunity to pursue our own destinies in peace and freedom.