Cuban History Research Articles

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959: By Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro Garcia. Translated by Franklin W. Knight and Mary Todd. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xxviii, 496. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Sources. Index. Cloth $59.95. Paper $29.95.)

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959: By Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro Garcia. Translated by Franklin W. Knight and Mary Todd. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xxviii, 496. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Sources. Index. Cloth $59.95. Paper $29.95.)

A Secret Society Goes Public: The Relationship between Abakua and Cuban Popular Culture

The Abakua Society for men is derived from the West African Ekpe Societies of the Cross River region. It was founded in Havana, Cuba, in 1836 to resist slavery, and has since been active in many aspects of Cuban culture. Although hermetic and little known even within Cuba, an analysis of Cuban popular music recorded from the 1920s until the present reveals Abakua influence in nearly every genre of Cuban popular music. Abakua lore is orally transmitted, and Cuban musicians who are Abakua members have continually documented key aspects of their society's history in commercial recordings, often in Abakua language. Because theirs is a secret language for initiates only, Abakua have commercially recorded actual chants of the society, knowing that outsiders cannot interpret them. Even so, these recordings have been very popular because the Abakua represent a rebellious, even anticolonial, aspect of Cuban culture. Now played throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia, Cuban popular music and its derivatives maintain Abakua language and aesthetics as integral elements. Because so little has been written about the society by members themselves, commercial recordings with Abakua content are an important source of knowledge about this group. While listening to the lyrics, I realized that Abakua musicians have sung about their contributions to Cuban history, their liberation struggles, and race relations. My research suggests the rising importance of Abakua as a symbol of Cuban culture.

Tropics of History: Cuba Imagined

A Suggestion for the Reader Introduction: Tropics of History: Cuba Imagined The Stone and Its Images: The Poetry of Nancy Morejon History as Stepping Razor: Tragedy and Revolution in Alejo Carpentier's Explosion in a Cathedral History and Its Doubles: The Master-Slave Dialectic, or What Happens When Hegel Meets the Keystone Cops (Virgilio Pinera) Dulce Maria Loynaz: The House Where the Nation Dreams Dragons and Theurgy: Jose Lezama Lima's Images of History Cross Dressing as Transculturation in Three Novels by Severo Sarduy Paradigms Lost: The Manigua of Meaning Living Tropes, Living Hopes Appendix: Cuban History: An Overview Bibliography Index

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959 (review)

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959 (review)

The Unsettling Return of the Butterflies

Homophobic discourses articulated as part of modern national precepts have been publicly expounded by Cuban nationalist leaders from the earliest days of modern Cuban history, and their discussions have often defined the homosexual body, implicitly or explicitly, as a threat to the health of the body of the nation.1 But since the latter part of the twentieth century there have been some obvious changes in the resignification of the homosexual issue in Cuban society. There are now clear indications of a crisis in the Cuban public imagination concerning the supposedly natural relationship between heterosexuality and citizenship. The questioning of this relationship is manifested in many cultural phenomena: from Reinaldo Arenas' works and persona to the critical and popular success of the film Fresa y chocolate; from popular songs like Pablo Mila n?s' Pecado origina?' and Pedro Luis Ferrer's ?l tiene delirio de amar varones to the docu? mentary on transvestism Mariposas en el andamio? Although lacking institutional bases which

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959

Sugar and Railroads: A Cuban History, 1837-1959

Prologue to revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958

Jorge Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958 (trans. Marjorie Moore. Boulder and London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1998), 229pp.This is the first work by Jorge Ibarra, Cuba's most distinguished social historian, to appear in English. First published in Cuba in 1995 (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales), it appears now in Reinner's Studies in Cuban History Series, edited by the Cuban-American historian Louis A. Perez, Jr. It is a welcome addition to the slowly growing list of works by Cuban historians now available to anglophone readers in a field hitherto dominated by US and Cuban-American writers. This is more particularly the case, since it provides us for the first time with a Cuban historian's perspective on a period which has already attracted worldwide as well as much Cuban scholarly attention.The book presents a forceful, rigorously documented and keenly analytical interpretation of the economic, social and political circumstances which produced the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It is densely written and comprehensively conceived. Building on a swathe of carefully critiqued Cuban statistical, periodical and secondary sources, Ibarra investigates the shifting economic and political conditions of each class and stratum within the class: its composition is carefully defined and its history is then traced across the whole period. This innovative approach establishes that the impetus for revolution derived not, as other writers (Blackburn, 1963; Sabbatini, 1968) have suggested, solely from the proletarianization of the middle class, but from the proletarianization of the people, middle class, peasant, proletarian and youth as a whole.Central to this process was the operation of US capital which moved into the island on a substantial scale in the wake of the 1895-1898 War of Independence and, assisted by US tariff policies and reciprocal trade treaties (1902, 1934), siphoned off Cuba's national surplus. It dominated sugar, tobacco, transport, utilities and, increasingly from 1934, the Cuban import market. Cuban governments depended on loans from US banking houses (they were not allowed to borrow in Europe) and, from 1927, on US government bodies which could exert (like the IMF) even closer control of Cuban government policies.Within this framework, however, elements of Cuban and Spanish capital survived and one of Ibarra's most interesting findings is that among the import and export merchants, traditionally considered simply as pillars of US neocolonialism, there were some who played a dual role as merchants and industrialists. They maintained significant interest in sugar and tobacco, expanded into paper and textile mills, cement and crackers, beer and footwear, and also into banking.This trend accelerated, as in most of Latin America, in World War II when US imports were reduced. Most enterprises, however, were small scale (almost 50 percent had five workers), so a nationwide working class did not develop. And although large-scale Cuban landlords and leaseholders maintained and expanded (1932-1959), their hold on agricultural production - more than 50 percent of sugar production in 1958 came from Cuban-owned mills - they did not use their profits to modernize production. Cuban capital gains, instead, increasingly took refuge in foreign banks, real estate investments and illicit activities. These investments generated what Ibarra calls an absentee bourgeoisie whose interests were allied with international capital and the US mafia. This was the economic structure which under the impact of the 1930s world depression resulted in the unfinished 1933 revolution and the successful 1959 uprisings.In the first decades of the Republic the middling classes (small merchants, manufacturers, proprietors and professionals) joined forces to defend their political interests, opposing US exploitation and its corrupt Cuban government agents, and playing a leading role in the movement to topple Machado. …

Loyalist Overkill: The Socioeconomic Costs of “Repressing” the Separatist Insurrection in Cuba, 1868-1878

This study evaluates the repressive measures implemented by Spanish authorities and conservative loyalists opposed to reformist and anticolonial forces, in different regions of Cuba, during the Ten Years' War (i868-78). In particular, it analyzes the consequences of socioeconomic repression on wealthy, middleclass, and poor individuals and families who were affected by official decrees allegedly aimed at drastically curtailing logistic support to the Cuban separatist insurrection. Pioneering Spanish and Cuban historians have viewed economic repression during the Ten Years' War, particularly the policy of expropriation (embargo e incautacidn de bienes), as a strategic failure.1 They argue that the injustice, abuse, and bad administration of such policies prolonged the war instead of shortening it.2 This study contends that the loyalist groups in fact

La historia de Cuba vista desde España: estudios sobre "política", "raza" y "sociedad"

Studies on Cuban History in the 19th Century have developed widely in Spain in the last ten years, particularly in the field of Economic —less in Social— History. The perspectives and approaches applied, as well as the objects of study have widened and evolved into an open and varied panorama. By focusing on some of the most interesting titles and novelties, the author of this critical review evaluates the latest tendencies and discusses their insertion both in their original context and in the current Spanish historiography.

Tropics of history: Cuba imagined

A Suggestion for the Reader Introduction: Tropics of History: Cuba Imagined The Stone and Its Images: The Poetry of Nancy Morejon History as Stepping Razor: Tragedy and Revolution in Alejo Carpentier's Explosion in a Cathedral History and Its Doubles: The Master-Slave Dialectic, or What Happens When Hegel Meets the Keystone Cops (Virgilio Pinera) Dulce Maria Loynaz: The House Where the Nation Dreams Dragons and Theurgy: Jose Lezama Lima's Images of History Cross Dressing as Transculturation in Three Novels by Severo Sarduy Paradigms Lost: The Manigua of Meaning Living Tropes, Living Hopes Appendix: Cuban History: An Overview Bibliography Index

Nationalism and Civil Rights in Cuba: A Comparative Perspective, 1930-1960

For most of the twentieth century U.S. history and Cuban history have been closely interconnected. African-Americans and Afro-Cubans in particular share common bonds of struggle for civil rights and equality in their respective countries. But individuals are products of their environments and African-Americans and Cubans shaped distinct civil rights platforms in accordance with their national, political and social institutions. African-Americans and Cubans learned to respond to their political systems through a series of historical experiences that reaped success or failure over time. Cuba's Hispanic colonial heritage that recognized miscegenation and mestizaje provided a different mode of action than African Americans who lived for most of their history under a segregated U.S. system.(1) This essay will examine the Cuban struggle for social, economic, political and cultural equality from 1930-1960, while comparing those events with the civil rights struggle in the United States during the same period. Citizen's rights, to be sure, are uniquely national, if not constitutional constructions. According to Hegel, right in society is that which the law wills. Those rights, defined by the state, theoretically represent the collective views of the individuals who rule the nation.(2) Civil Rights which often refer to freedom from discrimination based on nationality, race, gender, religious liberty, as well as immunity from brutality must be scrutinized within a national framework. Members of particular nations define civil rights as the rights of citizens to pursue civil liberties within that nation. United States Civil Rights, for example, are based on a constitution dating back to 1789, and which continues to be redefined for inclusively. Part of the U.S. Civil Rights Movements was bent on redefining and reelaborating on issues that would include African-Americans in the citizen's phrase We the people.(3) Owing to the historically weak Constitution in Cuban history and its political and economic underdevelopment, what Cubans have come to expect as their rights as citizens have tended to take on a nationalist focus. Moreover, while nationalism in the African-American community often meant black nationalism and implied racial solidarity, self sufficiency, black capitalism, and often separatism, among Afro-Cubans, nationalism was a patriotic call to bring all Cubans of all races together in pursuit of sovereignty, often against foreign threats. To this end, Cubans passed several nationalist laws which would shape Afro-Cubans' civil rights drive. In 1910, the Cuban Senate passed the Morua Amendment to an Electoral Reform Law which prohibited the organization of political parties based on one race only. The subsequent race war that followed in 1912 was an aberration in post-abolition history.(4) Cubans found a variety of non-political ways to pursue economic and social rights and to attain social mobility. In 1918, Jose Armando Pla explicated options available to Afro-Cubans. First, there was the individualist approach in which educated Afro-Cubans could attain high levels of achievement despite the obstacles of society; second, the collective approach called for Afro-Cubans to join together to affect the political process; third, politically influential men, such as Martin Moria Delgado argued that blacks should associate themselves with established political parties, promoting their interests within the party system.(5) Two decades after the race wars and the passage of the Morua Law, the collective option was limited to cultural and non-political activities which would not challenge the state. Moreover these options must be understood in terms of the new generation of Afro-Cubans. The Cuban Republic had just come of age. Created in 1902, by the 1930's, a new generation born after independence became increasingly interested in national sovereignty and advancement. Patriotism and nationalism ignited the passions of Cubans of all backgrounds, motivating them to seek solutions to pressing problems. …

Cuba: transition of disintegration?

[First paragraph]Toward a New Cuba? Legacies of a Revolution. MIGUEL ANGEL CENTENO & MAURICIO FONT (eds.). Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997. ix + 245 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95)Essays on Cuban History: Historiography and Research. Louis A. PEREZ, JR. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xiv + 306 pp. (Cloth US$ 44.95)Cuba's Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage.JORGE F. PEREZ-LOPEZ. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 1995. 221 pp. (Cloth US$ 32.95)Sport in Cuba: The Diamond in the Rough. PAULA J. PETTAVINO & GERALYN PYE. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994. ix + 301 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.94, Paper US$ 19.95)Cuba is clearly at yet another major turning point, and the four books under review here testify, each in its way, to this. Two are single-authored monographs (one on sport, the other on the informal economy) one is a single-authored collection of essays on history and historiography; and one is a multidisciplinary anthology of essays by various authors. In approach, they cover a broad political spectrum, and all are concerned with an understanding of process in Cuba, whether prior to or since the 1959 revolution, pre- or post-1989, or during the 1990s.

Filibusters and Freemasons: The Sworn Obligation

From 1848 to 1851, Cuban separatists residing in the United States established organizations, released publications, and mustered four filibuster invasions to overthrow the Spanish colonial government and establish a Cuban republic. They were following the Texas model by using American funds, volunteers, and weapons to achieve independence. The islanders would later decide the question of statehood through a referendum. Filibuster expeditions led by disgruntled former Spanish Army General Narciso L6pez and his aide-de-camp Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, violated the Neutrality Law of 1818, which prohibited armed enterprises against nations at peace with the United States. L6pez's attempts to liberate Cuba had profound consequences for United States-Spanish relations and the course of Cuban history. L6pez, Gonzales, and most of the filibuster leadership were Freemasons who relied extensively on the international fraternity to accomplish their plans. There had been a similar precedent in the creation of the Republic of West Florida in 1810 and the Republic of Texas in 1836. Louisiana Freemasons led the revolt against Spain that proclaimed the seventy-two-day Republic of West Florida, an area that was later annexed to their state. In Texas, revolutionary leaders Stephen F. Austin, Samuel Houston, David G. Burnet, Mirabeau Bounaparte Lamar, William B. Travis, David Crockett, James Fannin, and

Natural history collections and the National Museum of Natural History in Cuba

Natural history collections and the National Museum of Natural History in Cuba

Essays on Cuban History: Historiography and Research

Essays on Cuban History: Historiography and Research

Essays on Cuban History: Historiography and Research.

Essays on Cuban History: Historiography and Research.

Cuban Geography in Higher Education: Survival in the “Special Period”

Abstract Geography in higher education survives in Cuba today, despite political isolation and a grave economic crisis. The interests, methodologies, and programs of Cuban geographers will be familiar to North American geographers. The “special period” in Cuba's history presents special issues, challenges, and opportunities for Cuban and North American geographers working in concert.

“SPACE … EVEN FOR THE DEAD, AT THE KITCHEN TABLE”:

Entering into grounds I was born into a very poor home, and as many Cubans we belong to more than one race. My father's parents came from the Canary Islands (Spain), and my grandmother (on my mother's side) was descended from our black Cuban ancestors. Many years ago, I had the feeling of entering into holy grounds when I went into my grandmother's kitchen. I saw her sitting at the table having lunch. She was eating and while eating she spoke to an empty chair in front of her. A plate with a delicious meal was on the other side of the table. I sat down silently waiting for the end of this rare conversation with somebody who was not there . . . this was the usual place at the table of my grandfather who had died some months before my visit. My grandmother . . . with curly hair and wider nose that showed clearly to everybody that she was a descendant of our cruel Cuban history of slavery. How much I loved her! She had a beautiful garden with all kinds of fruit, especially mangoes and guava trees. I liked to go there, and usually I walked in her garden full of fruit and flowers, but very wild, like her . . . . My strong grandmother who always received us with food and sweet dishes! But, my questions at that time were: why is she talking with my grandfather if he is dead? How can she communicate with him without having any fear? I was only twelve years old but all these questions were in my mind and this particular scene is still very vivid in my mind and heart. He was there, his presence in the kitchen was so real that I almost could touch him. My grandmother smiled when she saw me and without being scandalized because I had entered into her secret, she welcomed my presence. We sat down at the table together. She didn't explain anything to me. She knew how much my grandfather loved me. Then, we were there with him, talking about small things of our daily life, experimenting with the knowledge that DEATH is not definitive for those who love deeply. As the poem of Birage Diop, quoted by Luisah Teish, says: Those who are dead are never gone; They are there in the thickening shadow The dead are not under the earth: they are in the tree that rustles, they are in the wood that groans, they are in the water that sleeps, they are in the hut, they are in the crowd, the dead are not dead. Those who are dead are never gone they are in the breast of the woman, they are in the child who is waiting, and in the firebrand that flames. The dead are not under the earth: they are in the fire that is dying, they are in the grasses that weep, they are in the whimpering rocks, they are in the forest, they are in the house, the dead are not dead.(1) And I would like to add . . . and they are at our mother's and grandmother's kitchen tables too! In the lives of our Cuban people there is no simple Afro-Catholic syncretism. Their religious sensibility is composed of many ingredients and taken separately, none of them is very simple. They all permeate Cuban culture to a higher or lesser degree, and in diverse forms and proportions they penetrate the different sectors of the population. It has been affirmed that there is no other organized religion that has had more influence on popular religiosity in Cuba than the one we call santeria. The santeria colours the philosophy of the people, above all of the black people, but also that of many whites. Our spirituality was not brought to us by colonization and conquest, but by the first black slave who stepped onto Cuban soil. This is my personal and existential conviction, because it is what I have experienced in my family, my neighbourhood, among my friends and in my community. Paraphrasing a sentence of Nicolas Gillen, our national poet: Whoever in Cuba is not influenced by the CONGO is not influenced by the CARABALI, and this includes not only our blood, the colour of our skin or our festive spirit, it also includes the religious, the spiritual, which penetrates the whole life of my people. …

Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonia

Reinaldo Arenas is considered one of the most important Cuban writers of recent decades. His most ambitious project was a pentalogy on Cuban history, the literary legacy that he worked on intermittently from the time he was 18. Three of the novels are available in English, and the last two (completed shortly before his suicide in 1990 and published in their original Spanish one year later) are also planned for translation into English. Arenas described these five books as both a writer's autobiography and a metaphor of Cuban history. Francisco Soto's study, examines the quintet in its entirety and, in English, considers the five-book sequence in the context of Cuba's state-sanctioned tradition that promotes documentary novels of immediate and practical utility. Soto argues that Arenas subverted that tradition, insisting that the writer's voice must be a call for freedom, challenging both literary and social establishments. Arenas's criticism of the Cuban Revolution was more than an attack against Communism, Soto says; it was an angry cry against injustice and against a system that persecuted him simply for being homosexual. The characters of the pentalogy - dissidents, extravagants, dreamers, freethinkers, homosexuals - represent marginal perspectives that Arenas believes should be given a voice in documentary novels but were not. The appendix contains a conversation (translated into English) between Soto and Arenas that took place in 1987 - revised and expanded by Arenas shortly before his death - in which the novelist talks at length about the pentalogy and its genesis.

Cuba in the Age of Perestroika

Hurricanes are endemic to Cuba, and so are political upheavals at 30-year intervals. At the turn of the century, again in the early 1930s, and in the late 1950s, political tumult resulted in new governments. Whether the Castro government will survive the disappearance of the Soviet bloc and a reduction of its trade turnover by over 50 percent is a hotly debated subject. Right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami have been predicting Christmas in Havana since 1989, but Cuba scholars have pointed to the great resilience of the revolution. The revolution's changing legitimacy in the eyes of the Cuban people and its ability to adapt to the new world circumstances will be telling factors. The efficiency of the government's repressive apparatus and the policy of other governments toward trade with and aid to Cuba will also be important. Understanding the direction and/or survivability of the Castro government, then, depends ultimately on understanding the Cuban Revolution itself. Each of the books under review makes a contribution to this goal. Jean Stubbs's Cuba: The Test of Time is a welcome overview of the revolution concentrating on the late 1980s. Stubbs is a British historian who lived in Cuba for the better part of the 20 years between 1968 and 1988. Her view of the revolution is filled with firsthand knowledge and experience and free of ideologically driven rhetoric. Stubbs's work includes informative and critical discussions on the current rectification drive, the impact of the U.S. blockade, Cuba's external trade, international relations, religious freedom, and human rights. Her analysis is, however, at its best in the rich chapter on agriculture and the cooperative hope. The chapter begins with a brief history of Cuba's agrarian