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Coveted from the beginning of the 19th century by the United States who wanted to annex it to their territory, Cuba lived under the constant threat of seeing its aspiration for independence questioned by the powerful neighbor who denied them the right to a sovereign existence. After the military intervention of 1898 and the occupation of the island, Washington in one way or another exerted a more or less direct influence over all aspects of Cuban society, thereby gaining control over its natural resources. The origins of the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro lie in the turmoil of this tormented history, between aspiration for independence and subjection.

Based on unpublished primary sources (private collections, diplomatic archives, interviews), this article examines a key moment for French commitment to Cuba’s revolutionary project: the Cultural Congress of Havana of January 1968, an international conference that gathered around 500 foreign guests, including nearly 80 French intellectuals. The “Third Worldist” inclination of the Cuban Revolution and its ideological defiance to the USSR was keenly welcomed by many French people, who saw in Cuba the emergence of a non-dogmatic revolutionary model focused on South-South solidarity, and freedom of thought and creation. Back in France, many participants in the congress implemented concrete initiatives in support of the Cuban Revolution, but the events of May 1968 and Castro’s backing of the military intervention in Czechoslovakia (August 1968) dampened this militant momentum, obstructing French solidarity projects towards Cuba.

Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the relations between the United States with Cuba have entered an era of antagonism and political tensions. After more than half a century of close intimacy, both countries come to be enemies inside the context of the Cold War. As a result, the United States engaged in an austere strategy of foreign policy towards Cuba, ceasing diplomatic relations and imposing a commercial embargo that would come to perpetuates itself for more than fifty years. Even with the end of the bipolar conflict the antagonist relations between the countries remained unchanged, and Cuba remained in isolation thanks to the American embargo. It was only in 2014 that the Obama administration betted on a different strategy, breaking with decades old political paradigm and promoting a rapprochement with Cuba. Still, the process of normalization was never fully complete, and evidenced how the strategy of the United States foreign policy towards Cuba depends of different domestic actors and their diverse interests. To understand this phenomenon, it’s needed to comprehend how the old strategy was formed, why was it perpetuated and which were the conditions that led to be possible to break it. This article brings a historical study of the main events that happened between Cuba and the United States since the Revolution, seeking to better explain the formation and changes of the American foreign policy strategy.

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Copyright of Caravelle: Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Bresilien is the property of Presses Universitaires du Mirail and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, many US reporters, including some of the best-known names in American journalism (such as Barbara Walters and Dan Rather), had the opportunity to interview Fidel Castro. All of the resulting interviews, which range from relatively brief exchanges to book-length texts, served as contributions, to one degree or another, to Americans’ perception of Fidel Castro and, more generally, to Americans’ conception of the Cuban political system and US-Cuba relations. Given the high caliber of many of the journalists who interviewed Fidel, one would naturally assume that said contributions consist, by and large, of well-informed, unbiased, enlightening interviews with the leader of the Cuban Revolution. But is that what we really find in these interviews?A careful analysis of interviews with Fidel Castro by major US journalists reveals that well-informed, unbiased, enlightening interviews are in fact the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed, most of these journalists’ interviews with Castro—such as those of Lisa Howard (1963); Barbara Walters (1977); Robert MacNeil (1985); Maria Shriver (1988); and Tom Brokaw (1995)—follow a surprisingly similar script: the interviewer focuses on alleged human rights abuses in Cuba; treats Cuba’s political institutions and practices with skepticism; insists on knowing what concessions Cuba is prepared to make to the United States; implicitly criticizes Cuba’s foreign policy and—prior to 1990—Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union; neglects to consider the validity of Cuba’s complaints about US policy; and, in general, suggests that the US government’s aggressive attitude toward Cuba is justified in light of the policies pursued by Castro. As a result, in interviewing Fidel many prominent and influential American journalists did little more than justify and perpetuate the attitudes and policies toward Cuba of successive US governments—something that becomes quite apparent when one contrasts these journalists’ endeavors with the major interviews conducted by well-known journalists from other nations who also had the chance to converse with Castro. In sum, far from enhancing the American public’s understanding of Revolutionary Cuba, many high-profile US journalists actually reinforced some of the very misconceptions, distortions and elements of misinformation that have long constituted an important barrier to a healthier relationship between the United States and its Caribbean neighbor.

While the Eisenhower administration had observed the utmost discretion regarding the atrocities committed by the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, it instead voiced its criticism when the new power led by President Manuel Urrutia decided to apply revolutionary justice during the first weeks of 1959 against those who were guilty of “blood” crimes. Washington's position triggered the first diplomatic crisis with Havana, which recalled the White House’s support for the military regime and called into question the sincerity of these accusations. The United States’ objective was different: to discredit the new Cuban authorities.

In May 1959, the revolutionary government promulgated the Agrarian Reform Law. Due to the massive presence of US investments in the Cuban economy, this measure affected the interests of the multinationals, which owned the best land on the island. At the prospect of losing nearly $800 million in assets in the country, Washington expressed reservations about the reform and demanded compensation terms that Cuba could not respond to because of its economic situation. Beyond material loss, the Eisenhower administration was especially concerned about the impact of such a measure in Latin America and around the world, where governments facing similar realities might be tempted to follow the same path.

While the Eisenhower administration had observed the utmost discretion regarding the atrocities committed by the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, it instead voiced its criticism when the new power led by President Manuel Urrutia decided to apply revolutionary justice during the first weeks of 1959 against those who were guilty of blood crimes. Washington's position triggered the first diplomatic crisis with Havana, which recalled the White House’s support for the military regime and called into question the sincerity of these accusations. The United States’ objective was different: to discredit the new Cuban authorities.

The Catholic faith has had a major shaping influence on the political imaginary of Conservatism. Québec, a province whose political and historical evolution bore until the 1960s a strong Catholic imprint, is a privileged vantage point to analyze the ambiguities and the complexities of their relationship. After the Duplessis era (1944−1959), the mainstream right tried to revitalize itself ideologically through the embrace of economic and fiscal liberalism. But the newfound visibility of cultural themes such as immigration, secularism or the “reasonable accommodations” soon replaced religion at the heart of public debates. We will focus on the writings of the sociologist and journalist Mathieu Bock-Côté, who enjoys high media visibility both in Québec and in France. The way Catholicism merges with the political imperative of Québecʼs nationalism and the defense of Franco-Canadian cultural heritage will stand at the forefront of our research. This constant back-and-forth between religion and culture suggests a paradoxical ideological position, which Bock-Côté describes as that of a “non-believing Catholic”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the literary representation of dissident sexual and gender subjectivities in revolutionary Cuba in Marcial Gala’s novel Llámenme Casandra (2019). Grounded in queer, gender, and cultural studies, it analyzes how gender fluidity challenges the state apparatus of social control that punishes any infringement of the “new man” model. It also reflects on the stigmatization of gender transgressions and its impact on the articulation of transgender subjectivities devoid of agency.

The article is devoted to the most “politically engaged” and the most controversial novel by the prominent Cuban writer. It took Alejo Carpentier eighteen years to create a work that appeared at the intersection of two literary coordinates: “a new Latin American novel” and “a novel of Cuban revolution”. In this regard the author studies both history and prehistory of “a novel of Cuban Revolution”, and observes the main stages of its development. In the course of work on The Rite of Spring (1978), three different variants of the novel’s plan (1959, Silver Guests, and Russian from Baracoa) were reinterpreted by the writer, the materials of Carpentier's early essays and reportages were used, as well as the memories of his mother, a Russian emigrant. The article analyses the artistic peculiarities of this novel by Carpentier (its genre identity, specific intertextuality, various levels of reading). The fact is that Carpentier, having his characters live through the twentieth century, from the Russian revolution to the Cuban revolution, creates a special perspective and perception of reality for them. His focus is laid upon history, comprehended through the prism of art. Justifying the expectations of some literary critics and disappointing others, The Rite of Spring remains open for interpretation up to the present day.

The bandido or bandit uprisings that began in 1959 had their origins in the resistance of some peasants to agrarian reform. Many small property owners with a few coffee trees or tobacco plants or a small cattle herd feared the redistribution of private lands. Many landless rural laborers also joined the fight against the comunistas who administered the agrarian reforms. The Castro Regime maintained that the “real” peasants supported the Revolution. Indeed, rural residents who benefitted positively from land reform did fill out the militia units that fought the “bandits” in the Escambray Mountains and elsewhere on the island. The Cuban counterrevolution, in this regard, compares to the Vendée in France, the Cristero Revolt in Mexico, the kulaks of Russia, and the Contra Movement of Nicaragua. Sources : Cuban military records and CIA documents.

On January 30, 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS) on the basis that “the Castro regime was an ally of the Sino-Soviet bloc” in violation of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance commonly known as the Rio Treaty. At a ministerial conference held in Punta del Este in 1962, two-thirds of the OAS members (that is to say fourteen countries) approved a resolution excluding Cuba from the Inter-American system. By this act, the United States won a battle that lasted two years and whose main objective was to ostracize Cuba from the hemispheric system to give a strong signal to Fidel Castro and the potential pro-communist revolutionary in the region. The underside of the Punta del Este Conference shows that the United States achieved a victory, “the kind that we cannot be proud of”, wrote a member of the U.S. delegation Samuel Belk to President John F. Kennedy. The archives confirm that the United States did not skimp to pressure some delegations and to monetize certain countries in order to bring them to vote in favor his position against Cuba.

The “Izquierda Nacional”, led by Jorge Abelardo Ramos, was a political-cultural group, the visibility and public intervention of which, grew in the mid-20th century. From the beginning, this group intended to rethink the basis of socialism, through a profound debate, an editorial policy and the spreading of several publications. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution meant a new moment for this family´s alignment in left culture. The support they first gave to the Cuban process, seen as an anti-imperialist event, later became an estrangement in relation to the roads to socialism in Latin America. Ramos and his group developed a thorough critique of “foquismo” and, specially, of Ernesto “Che” Guevara´s thesis, that we analyze in this article, taking into consideration the crisis and transformation of argentinian left towards the early 60's.

It is well known that the Cuban revolution was a particular moment that brought many political and cultural changes. In this paper I explore how the important Uruguayan review Marcha - which in the 60s became internationally relevant - revised its traditional topics under the light of the revolution: anti-imperialism, Latin American integration and the defense of democracy. I analyze a short period in which the Cuban revolution did not mean what it was going to mean soon. This allows me to examine at Marcha the transformation and redefinition process of the revolution’s meanings. The reception of the revolution experience was related to the questions about Uruguay as an exceptional country in Latin America. Specifically in a period that has been considered one of an “structural crisis” that could affect Uruguayan viability.

In this article I am studying the imaginary world of Cuban fiction films and particularly the relationship of the individual with the identity references of We and the Others. A thorough analysis of six films, made during the course of the five decades of the revolutionary process and chosen for their thematic relevance, allows us to conclude that the ideal of the revolutionary We, which entails that the collective interest prevails over individual interests, is experienced by these protagonists as a complex and conflicting process at the personal level. Since the 1990s, the protagonists’ experience has revealed the desire for and the necessity of a We open to diverse personal aspirations and based on the identification of individuals to cultural references, shared memories and emotional bounds.

The academic literature has demonstrated the early impact the Cuban Revolution had upon Latin America. In Argentina, it is the growing literature devoted to the intellectuals which has been wondering the most about this influx. The pioneering work of Oscar Teran and Silvia Sigal has shown this significant influence on an important intellectual group which was under a process of transformation in the 1960s. In this paper, I will analyze the ideological impact this revolution had on the student movement which, due to the process of left radicalization that it was going through, would begin to increase its effect on the national political scene. To avoid falling into facile generalizations, this paper will focus on the situation at the University of Buenos Aires, the largest university in the country. In particular, I am interested in showing what groups this event affected the most and the different ways in which its influence was perceived. This is necessary in order to refrain from the common and equivocal expression that presupposes the impact of the Cuban process oriented all the youth towards left positions, thus sidestepping the opposite effect.

The article focuses on the translation of literary works of the Cuban writers in France. The translations and publications of the Cuban writers were conducted only after the Cuban revolution in 1959. The French editors translated the idealistic and honest presentation of the revolutionary events which were depicted in the Cuban literature.

La relación entre literatura e historia no sólo tiene que ver con la creación de contextos para el análisis literario o con la identificación de nuevas fuentes de datos para la investigación histórica. Afecta tanto a la manera en que los textos literarios participan de la historia como a las semejanzas y diferencias entre las representaciones que ambas disciplinas generan. En este artículo nos proponemos reflexionar sobre estas cuestiones tomando como ejemplo la formación y recepción de un género denominado testimonio. El testimonio se crea en la Cuba de los setenta y de aquí se difunde como un ejemplo óptimo para ilustrar las propuestas de ciertas tendencias críticas emergentes como la crítica postcolonial o los estudios subalternos. El testimonio ha sido definido como un género híbrido, un tipo de literatura creada en la intersección entre disciplinas para abrir un nuevo espacio para la expresión de las voces subalternas. En este artículo, estudiaremos la recepción crítica de este género así como también las dificultades para atribuir una autoría única a los textos testimoniales, una cuestión, esta última, que podría determinar su posición entre la literatura y la historia.The links between Literature and History are not only related to the creation of social contexts for the literary analysis or to the identification of new sources of information for the historical research. They also are connected with the way in which literary texts take part in History as well as with the similarities and differences between the discursive representations created by both disciplines. In this paper we will use a genre called testimonio to analyse these issues. Testimonio was created during the 70s in Cuba and later divulged by literary critics as a good example to illustrate the proposals of new critical tendencies such as Postcolonial Criticism or Subaltern Studies. Testimonio has been defined as a hybrid genre, a type of literature created in the intersection between different disciplines in order to open a new space for the expression of subaltern voices. This paper will discuss the critical reception of this genre and the difficulties of the attribution of authority in testimonial texts, a question that could determine its location between Literature and History.

Copyright of Études Caribéennes is the property of Etudes Caribeennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Études Caribéennes is the property of Etudes Caribeennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Études Caribéennes is the property of Etudes Caribeennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cine documental y deporte femenino en la Revolución cubana: una comparación entre el Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano (1960-1990) y Campeonas (Oscar Valdés, 1988)This article analyses the representation of women's sports in the documentary productions of the Cuban Revolution through the perspective of gender studies. It establishes a comparison between the film newsreels produced weekly by the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinema) over a period of thirty years (Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano, 1960-1990) and a short documentary film by director Oscar Valdés, Campeonas (1988), which portrays the Cuban national volleyball team. The Noticiero takes a very positive view of women's sports, both amateur and professional: it celebrates the triumph of Cuban athletes in international competitions, presents sport as part of a wider women's emancipation movement and as a way of spreading the values of the Revolution. In these editions, the film emphasizes the physical strength of these women and apart from two exceptions, does not sexualize them. Campeonas inherits this vision of women's sport but nuances it, addressing the issues of injury, motherhood and retirement for female athletes. It also gives more space for the players to express themselves, through interviews that are rare in the Noticiero, and features black women, but without addressing the issue of racism in sport. The end of the short film seems to suggest an adherence to Noticero’s representation of women's sport linked to the historical context: it is seen as a way of integrating women into the revolutionary process, since their emancipation is not conceivable outside of socialism.

During the 1960s, Cuba attracted many activists of the French “revolutionary left” who had broken with Soviet Marxism and sought a more radical and “Third-Worldist” revolutionary project. The members of the Comité de liaison scientifique et universitaire franco-cubain (CFC) founded after the Cultural Congress of Havana (1968) embody this political orientation and the emergence of this association attests to the rapprochement between the “New Left” and Castroism. The CFC advocated growing collaboration between French and Cuban intellectuals, for instance through the organization of summer schools. But the imprisonment of Heberto Padilla in 1971 announced Cuba’s sovietization, which worried many CFC members who feared a Stalinist drift of the Cuban Revolution. The CFC un-consulted archives allow us to explore the debates triggered by the Padilla affairs, which broke the unity of the organization and undermined solidarity with the Castro project.

This article attempts to rethink some of the conclusions reached in my doctoral research on the history of the InstitutoCubano del Arte e IndustriaCinematográficos (Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industry) (ICAIC). The article assesses the relationship between the institution and the cultural policies of the post-revolution government, taking the films produced by the ICAIC as prerogative to understanding the aesthetic dilemmas and ideological confrontations experienced by Cuban intellectuals and filmmakers. This relationship is analyzed by considering two films produced by the ICAIC at different times :CoffeaArábiga (Arabica Coffee) (NicolásGuillénLandrián, 1968) and El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco) (Sergio Giral, 1973). Through the identification of formal options, ambiguities and political dialogues of the time, this analysis provides an understanding of the tensions that permeated the relationship between the Board of the ICAIC and the filmmakers, and between both of the latter and the Cuban government. The starting point of this study is that the ICAIC participated directly in the creation of cultural policy at the national level, while developing its own micro-politics, which contributed to its configuration as a « privileged institution » in the Cuban cultural scene, according to Raymond Williams’concept. As part of a necessary political game of adhesion and resistance, the filmic production of the ICAIC reflected government campaigns and demands while giving birth to ideological projects, dilemmas and questions that reverberated within the guidelines of cultural policy.

Copyright of Études Caribéennes is the property of Etudes Caribeennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)