Cuba: Island of Dreams By Antoni Kapcia
2000 | 288 Pages | ISBN: 1859733263 | PDF | 14 MB
As spiritual home of Che Guevara and arch-enemy of the United States for more than forty years, Cuba exerts a powerful hold over people's imaginations. The Revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro, have survived invasion, repeated external and internal crisis, and most astonishingly, economic collapse and political isolation. What is at the root of the continuity and success of the 'Revolution' and in what sense can it be termed a 'revolution'? This book is the first in-depth study of Cuba to examine its history and revolutionary transformation through the evolution of ideology and myth. Music, political campaigns, street and media propaganda, literature, cinema, and drama have served to establish a cubanista tradition, supported by powerful myths such as Che Guevara and Jose Marti, the New Man, youth, and an Afro-Cuban identity. Challenging preconceptions and conventional wisdoms about Cuba and its leadership, this book presents a remarkable portrait of the distinctive history of the island's culture. The interplay of history, revolutionary action, and ideology through myth and collective experience make this book essential reading for Cuban scholars, Latin American and US historians, political analysts and those generally interested in the history and future of Cuban political culture.

C. Fred Judson, "Cuba and the Revolutionary Myth: The Political Education of the Cuban Rebel Army, 1953-1963"
English | ISBN: 0367017210 | 2021 | 306 pages | EPUB | 471 KB
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.

Cuba - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture by Russell Maddicks
English | July 1, 2016 | ISBN: 1857338480 | 146 pages | PDF | 3.81 Mb
Cuba is a land of contradictions that is easy to enjoy but difficult for first-time visitors to decipher. The largest island in the Caribbean, it is a tropical paradise that Christopher Columbus called "the most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen." It is famous for the romantic charm of its crumbling colonial cities, the beauty of its white sand beaches, and its irresistible Afro-Cuban dance beats. But it is also a land of shortages and tight government control, which has been in a sixty-year political standoff with its superpower neighbor, the USA. The homegrown version of single-party socialism created by Fidel Castro has kept Cuba in a Cold War time warp that only now is beginning to change. As travel restrictions are relaxed US tourists can once again visit the island. Greater flexibility toward private enterprise is opening it up to boutique hotels and high-quality home-based restaurants. There is a boom in special-interest tourism for cyclists, hikers, birdwatchers, and scuba divers, while foreign entrepreneurs are eagerly exploring investment opportunities. Culture Smart! Cuba will take you beyond the usual descriptions of Havana nightlife, vintage cars, and hand-rolled cigars and give you an insider's view of an island that is teetering on the brink of historic change. It offers insights into Cuba's fascinating history, national icons, unique food, vibrant cultural scene, and world-renowned music. Practical tips help business travelers gain an edge on the competition. But most of all, this book aims to show you how best to break the ice and get a better understanding of the infinitely resourceful Cuban people, who despite severe hardships and shortages over many years remain optimistic and fiercely proud of their heritage and culture.

Tom Gjelten, "Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause"
English | ISBN: 0143116320 | 2009 | 464 pages | EPUB | 1204 KB
In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.

My Cuba Libre: Bringing Fidel Castro to Justice By George J. Fowler III
2013 | 278 Pages | ISBN: 0989715426 | EPUB | 2 MB
On January 1, 1959, nine-year-old George Fowler was awakened in his ancestral home by the sound of gunshots as Fidel Castro's army approached Havana, Cuba. His family fled to the United States to start new lives as Castro established a brutal regime in their beloved country. As chief legal counsel for the Cuban American National Foundation, Fowler has dedicated his life to the cause of Cuban freedom. My Cuba Libre is the very personal story of his lifelong battle to remove the dictator from power and bring democracy to his homeland. Fowler exposes the monstrous actions of the Communist Party of Cuba and makes a firm case for indicting Castro for crimes against humanity. Fowler also provides a first-hand account of events like the Elián González case, the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, and Cuban embargo negotiations. With boldness and courage, My Cuba Libre attacks the status quo that has allowed Castro to remain on the world stage--and makes a powerful argument for immediate change. "I write to raise awareness of our struggle, to convince the world to take action. Fidel Castro cannot be allowed to spend his final years in luxury and power. Whoever becomes his successor after his death will only continue his legacy of bloodshed, cruelty, and hate. We must act now to bring freedom to the people of Cuba."

Ada Ferrer, "Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution"
English | 2014 | pages: 402 | ISBN: 1107697786, 1107029422 | PDF | 8,0 mb
During the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, arguably the most radical revolution of the modern world, slaves and former slaves succeeded in ending slavery and establishing an independent state. Yet on the Spanish island of Cuba barely fifty miles distant, the events in Haiti helped usher in the antithesis of revolutionary emancipation. When Cuban planters and authorities saw the devastation of the neighboring colony, they rushed to fill the void left in the world market for sugar, to buttress the institutions of slavery and colonial rule, and to prevent "another Haiti" from happening in their own territory. Freedom's Mirror follows the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred at the very moment that the Haitian Revolution provided a powerful and proximate example of slaves destroying slavery. By creatively linking two stories - the story of the Haitian Revolution and that of the rise of Cuban slave society - that are usually told separately, Ada Ferrer sheds fresh light on both of these crucial moments in Caribbean and Atlantic history.

Joanna Swanger, "Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934-1974"
English | ISBN: 1498506593 | 2015 | 324 pages | PDF | 2 MB
The book is a comparative history of twentieth-century Cuban campesinos in two regions in Cuba marked by extreme differences in race, gender, and land tenure: Oriente and Escambray. It explores the ways these differences articulated with state formation from the pre-revolutionary period of 1934-1959 and then 1959-1974 and seeks to explain why campesinos in Escambray, having been active in the insurrection against Batista, later turned to stage a massive counter-revolution against the government headed by Fidel Castro. Although campesinos in both regions had been equally ignored by pre-1959 governments for different reasons, they developed two distinct understandings of what the role of the state should be in response to political neglect. Rich archival sources-many of which have not been accessed previously-document the unique shape of land struggles in each region in the 1930s through the 1950s. The author argues that because of the way race and gender and a collectivist land tenure tradition in Oriente mapped nicely onto the goals of the 1959 Revolution, Oriente became a kind of revolutionary showcase. In Escambray, on the other hand, a construct of white masculinity, tied to private property ownership, directly contravened the goals of the Revolution, which fueled the counter-revolution and also led to brutal state repression in the area.

English | 2022 | ISBN: 1644450909 | 325 pages | True EPUB | 5.07 MB
Teeming with life and compulsively readable, the pieces gathered inThe Tribeaggregate into an extraordinary mosaic of Cuba today. Carlos Manuel Álvarez, one of the most exciting young writers in Latin America, employs thecrónicaform—a genre unique to Latin American writing that blends reportage, narrative nonfiction, and novelistic techniques—to illuminate a particularly turbulent period in Cuban history, from the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States, to the death of Fidel Castro, to the convulsions of the San Isidro Movement.

Karen Y. Morrison, "Cuba's Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750-2000 "
English | ISBN: 0253016460 | 2015 | 372 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Since the 19th century, assertions of a common, racially-mixed Cuban identity based on acceptance of African descent have challenged the view of Cubans as racially white. For the past two centuries, these competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and men make their own racially oriented choices in family formation. Cuba's Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics of Cuban race relations by highlighting the racially selective reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of "race," "nation," and "family," in definitions of Cuban identity. Morrison analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent.

Moon Cuba Christopher P Baker
epub | 21.46 MB | English | Isbn:‎ 978-1612388243 | Author: Christopher P. Baker | Year: 2015