Author: Tom Astley Publisher: John Hunt Publishing ISBN: 1780994109 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 117
Book Description
Through the reclamation of a left-wing identity, disparate groups of Cuban musicians seek a collective Cubanness ‘outside of the Revolution’. ,
Author: Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt Publisher: PM Press ISBN: 1629631302 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 442
Book Description
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.
Author: Tom Astley Publisher: John Hunt Publishing ISBN: 1780994095 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 117
Book Description
In the often fraught political landscape of Cuba, a constant need to define and redefine the ‘space’ of national identity has long pervaded all manner of discourse. In its assumed role as the last bastion of resistance against the hegemonic forces of ‘globalisation’ (‘Americanisation’), the Revolution of 1959 is often made an all-encompassing indicator of ‘authentic’ Cuban identity. However, political recalcitrance, economic stagnation and the ever-present lure of the States has left generations of young Cubans questioning the ability of the Revolution to represent a contemporary Cuban identity. A growing number of what may broadly be classified as ‘alternative musicians’ are utilising a re-established and redefined left-wing voice - one that recontextualises notions of what constitutes ‘el pueblo’ (‘the people’) - precisely as a critique of the anachronisms of the Revolution. This book examines briefly the work of three such artists - punk band Porno Para Ricardo, rapper Eskuadrón Patriota, and singer-songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer - to provide examples of such reclamations of a left wing voice within Cuba. Redefinitions of ‘the people’ pan-nationally, along cultural and social, rather than exclusive nationalisitic lines; attempts to reclaim the means of cultural production from an overbearing and censoring hegemony; narratives of Cuban history and geography that seek to augment the often rigidly defined space of ‘official Cubanness’ by recognising cultural difference (often made tacit in the unifying rhetoric of the revolution), yet appealing to the notion of social equality, are all constituent parts of this ‘new’ new left in Cuba. As yet another evental tipping point – the death of Fidel Castro – comes ever closer, yet potentially less traumatic, this book outlines a less epochal, and more measured reinterpretation of established symbols of Cuban identity; one that can maintain its localness whilst engaging in global politics and cultural flows.
Author: Jonathan C. Brown Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674978323 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 600
Book Description
As Castro’s democratic reform movement veered off course, a revolution that seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America brought about its tragic opposite. Jonathan C. Brown examines in forensic detail how the turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the century’s most transformative events.
Author: T. J. English Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061795585 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 422
Book Description
In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.
Author: Antoni Kapcia Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1780325266 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
Most conventional readings of the Cuban Revolution have seemed mesmerised by the personality and role of Fidel Castro, often missing a deeper political understanding of the Revolution's underlying structures, bases of popular loyalty and ethos of participation. In this ground-breaking work, Antoni Kapcia focuses instead on a wider cast of characters. Along with the more obvious, albeit often misunderstood, contributions from Che Guevara and Raúl Castro, Kapcia looks at the many others who, over the decades, have been involved in decision-making and have often made a significant difference. He interprets their various roles within a wider process of nation-building, demonstrating that Cuba has undergone an unusual, if not unique, process of change. Essential reading for anyone interested in Cuba's history and its future.
Author: Marifeli Pérez-Stable Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780195127492 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
"Now in its second edition, The Cuban Revolution has been updated to include an entirely new chapter on the changes affecting Cuba's policies and economy since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the failure of communism in general."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Patrick Symmes Publisher: Pantheon ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
From the author ofChasing Che, here is the remarkable tale of a group of boys at the heart of Cuba's political and social history. Chosen in the 1940s from among the most affluent and ambitious families in eastern Cuba, they were groomed at the elite Colegio de Dolores for achievement and leadership. Instead, they were swept into war, revolution, and exile by two of their own number, Fidel and Raúl Castro. Trained by Jesuits for dialectical dexterity and the pursuit of absolutes, Fidel Castro swiftly destroyed the old Cuba they had come from, down to the hallways of Dolores itself. At once sweeping and intimate, this remarkable history by Patrick Symmes is a tour de force investigation of the world that gave birth to Fidel Castro – and the world his Cuban Revolution leaves behind.
Author: Charlotte Al-Khalili Publisher: UCL Press ISBN: 1800081189 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
Revolution Beyond the Event brings together leading international anthropologists alongside emerging scholars to examine revolutionary legacies from the MENA region, Latin America and the Caribbean. It explores the idea that revolutions have varied afterlives that complicate the assumptions about their duration, pace and progression, and argues that a renewed focus on the temporality of radical politics is essential to our understanding of revolution. Approaching revolution through its relationship to time, the book is a critical intervention into attempts to define revolutions as bounded events that act as sequential transitions from one political system to another. It pursues an ethnographically driven rethinking of the temporal horizons that are at stake in revolutionary processes, arguing that linear views of revolution are inextricably tied to notions of progress and modernity. Through a careful selection of case studies, the book provides a critical perspective on the lived realities of revolutionary afterlives, challenging the liberal humanist assumptions implicit in the ‘modern’ idea of revolution, and reappraising the political agency of people caught up in revolutionary situations across a variety of ethnographic contexts.
Author: Tom Astley
Author: Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt
Author: Tom Astley
Author: Jonathan C. Brown
Author: Fidel Castro
Author: T. J. English
Author: Antoni Kapcia
Author: Marifeli Pérez-Stable
Author: Patrick Symmes
Author: Charlotte Al-Khalili