Patriots And Traitors In Revolutionary Cuba

Authorities in postrevolutionary Cuba worked to establish a binary society in which citizens were either patriots or traitors. This all-or-nothing approach reflected in the familiar slogan “patria o muerte” (fatherland or death) has recently been challenged in protests that have adopted the theme song “patria y vida” (fatherland and life), a collaboration by exiles that, predictably, has been banned in Cuba itself. Lillian Guerra excavates the rise of a Soviet-advised Communist culture controlled by state institutions and the creation of a multidimensional system of state security whose functions embedded themselves into daily activities and individual consciousness and reinforced these binaries. But despite public performance of patriotism, the life experience of many Cubans was somewhere in between. Guerra explores these in-between spaces and looks at Cuban citizens’ complicity with authoritarianism, leaders’ exploitation of an earnest anti-imperialist nationalism, and the duality of an existence that contains elements of both support and betrayal of a nation and of an ideology.

From television to travel bans, geopolitics to popular dance, The Subject of Revolution explores how knowledge about the 1959 Cuban Revolution was produced and how the Revolution in turn shaped new worldviews. Drawing on sources from over twenty archives as well as film, music, theater, and material culture, this book traces the consolidation of the Revolution over two decades in the interface between political and popular culture. The "subject of Revolution," it proposes, should be understood as the evolving synthesis of the imaginaries constructed by its many "subjects," including revolutionary leaders, activists, academics, and ordinary people within and beyond the island's borders. The book reopens some of the questions that have long animated debates about Cuba, from the relationship between populace and leadership to the archive and its limits, while foregrounding the construction of popular understandings. It argues that the politicization of everyday life was an inescapable effect of the revolutionary process as well as the catalyst for new ways of knowing and being.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Introduction. A History That Dare Not Be Told: Political Culture and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1946-1958 -- 1 Cuba on the Verge: Martyrdom, Political Culture, and Civic Activism, 1946-1951 -- 2 El Último Aldabonazo: Fulgencio Batista's "Revolution" and Renewed Struggle for a Democratic Cuba, 1952-1953 -- 3 Los Muchachos del Moncada: Civic Mobilization and Democracy's Last Stand, 1953-1954 -- 4 Civic Activism and the Legitimation of Armed Struggle Against Batista, 1955-1956 -- 5 Complicit Communists, Student Commandos, Fidelistas, and Civil War, 1956-1957 -- 6 Clandestinos, Guerrillas, and the Making of a Messiah in the Sierra Maestra, 1957-1958 -- Epilogue. Revolutionary Cuba: December 1958 and Beyond -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

In order to truly understand the emergence, endurance, and legacy of autocracy, this volume of engaging essays explores how autocratic power is acquired, exercised, and transferred or abruptly ended through the careers and politics of influential figures in more than 20 countries and six regions. The book looks at both traditional "hard" dictators, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and more modern "soft" or populist autocrats, who are in the process of transforming once fully democratic countries into autocratic states, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The authors touch on a wide range of autocratic and dictatorial figures in the past and present, including present-day autocrats, such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, military leaders, and democratic leaders with authoritarian aspirations. They analyze the transition of selected autocrats from democratic or benign semi-democratic systems to harsher forms of autocracy, with either quite disastrous or more successful outcomes. An ideal reader for students and scholars, as well as the general public, interested in international affairs, leadership studies, contemporary history and politics, global studies, security studies, economics, psychology, and behavioral studies.

Explores intelligence and espionage during the Revolutionary War, and the key role this information played in the colonies gaining their independence.

This title sxplores the love-hate relationship between the USA and China through the experience of Chinese students caught between the two countries. The book sheds light on China's ambivelance towards the Western influence, and the use of educational and cultural exhanges as a political device.

This volume provides is a look at the social function of myth during two distinct phases of the Cuban revolutionary process. The first period spanned the years of armed struggle, from 1953 through 1958, a time during which the rebel leadership prevailed. Moving onto the years between 1959 and 1963, the achievements during the revolutionary war, and particularly the deeds of the Rebel Army, in which sacrifice and measure of heroism whose function was to sustain morale and consciousness.

Focusing on a period of history rocked by four armed movements, Lillian Guerra traces the origins of Cubans' struggles to determine the meaning of their identity and the character of the state, from Cuba's last war of independence in 1895 to the consolidation of U.S. neocolonial hegemony in 1921. Guerra argues that political violence and competing interpretations of the "social unity" proposed by Cuba's revolutionary patriot, Jose Marti, reveal conflicting visions of the nation--visions that differ in their ideological radicalism and in how they cast Cuba's relationship with the United States. As Guerra explains, some nationalists supported incorporating foreign investment and values, while others sought social change through the application of an authoritarian model of electoral politics; still others sought a democratic government with social and economic justice. But for all factions, the image of Marti became the principal means by which Cubans attacked, policed, and discredited one another to preserve their own vision over others'. Guerra's examination demonstrates how competing historical memories and battles for control of a weak state explain why polarity, rather than consensus on the idea of the "nation" and the character of the Cuban state, came to define Cuban politics throughout the twentieth century.