Browsing by Subject "Cuba"
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Item Afro-Cuban movement(s) : performing autonomy in "updating" Havana(2016-05) Berry, Maya Janeen; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Hale, Charles R; Smith, Christen A; Moore, Robin D; Paredez, Deborah; Skurski, JulieThis dissertation is an ethnography of how Afro-Cubans are enacting coordinated movement toward more desirable futures as they face increased marginalization due to Cuba’s current political economic reforms. Yoruba Andabo —a group of dancers, percussionists, and singers— take center stage in this project, as a case study to examine the unexpected ways that Afro-Cubans are practicing collective agency, going against the logics of more conventional registers of black identity politics. I use La Articulación Regional Afrodescendiente de América Latína y el Caribe- Capítulo Cuba (ARAC), as an analytical counterpoint to represent a more conventional pursuit of sociopolitical gains by black identity politics in Cuba today. Of central interest is how the sacred figures within cultural politics, to gain greater sociopolitical and economic autonomy, and how gender operates within their political imaginaries, using a critical race, feminist and performance-oriented lens. The ethnography makes the case for different ways of performing black autonomy in Cuba correlating to particular metrics of politics drawn from collective memories of group struggle. These different forms of self-organization correspond to distinct spheres of influence and distinct limits on their collective reach and agency. Furthermore, the research demonstrates the utility of performance studies for furthering the understanding of social processes by making visible the political horizon of black identity politics in embodied motion. This analysis of black collective agency in the face of political economic marginalization speaks directly to the importance of local practices of self-determination as sources of knowledge production about the limits of cultural politics endorsed by the state, the sacred and gendered valences of black identity politics, and the impact of national development on black lives.Item An exercise in resilience(2023-04-21) Freyre Cuza, Alex; Lucas, Kristin, 1968-; Smith, Michael; Perzynski, Bogdan; Garcia, Scherezade; Mccarthy, Kathryn; McMaster, EricThis report reflects on a body of work that discusses the current migratory circumstances of Cubans. It analyzes the socioeconomic, bureaucratic, and emotional realities associated with migration. This research materializes in four interdisciplinary digital media projects that merge stereoscopic videos, interactive applications, and virtual reality. Seen together, the project creates a looping, immersive, interactive landscape that uses contemporary aesthetics and 3D simulations to trigger a psychophysical dialogue about current migratory events related to Cuba.Item Archival dissonance in the Cuban post-exile historical novel(2009-12) Helmick, Gregory Gierhart; Salgado, Cesar Augusto; Arroyo-Martinez, Jossianna; Lindstrom, Naomi E.; Shumway, Nicolas; Wylie, Harold A.This dissertation investigates a common methodology of staging Cuban and Cuban exile historiography in three novels by Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1950), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005), and Ana Menéndez (b. 1970). This methodology develops a counterpoint between, first, the diagetic (strictly fictional) stories of characters who attempt to research or write Cuban history from exile and, second, the extradiagetic (extra or non-fictional) use of actual sources and tendencies of Cuban, Caribbean, and U.S. historiography structuring the narrative fiction. Reinforcing the density of the discursive field, the authors additionally incorporate works of Spanish, Latin-American, Caribbean, and/or Cuban literatures as constitutive elements of their fictions’ extradiagetic “noise.” I make the case that Fernández’s, Benítez Rojo’s, and Menéndez’s U.S.-produced historical novels develop a critical and investigative approach to the politics of Cuban exile and diaspora historiography. As such, they participate in the emergence of a post-exile Cuban literature, in dialogue with broader Caribbean and Latin American literatures. I analyze what I call archival dissonance in (1) the first, paradigm-setting novel in the body of historical fiction narrated from the frame of a dystopian future by Roberto G. Fernández, La vida es un special; (2) in Ana Menéndez’s use of reader response and archival research methods to critically recast a history of family division under the Cuban Revolution as popular romance fiction in Loving Che and (3) in the only novel Antonio Benítez Rojo lived to write in the United States, Mujer en traje de batalla (about the accidental arrival to New York City of the “first female Cuban physician” Enriqueta Faber, 1791-1827). Departing from the methodology presented with the narrative structure of each of the novels, in which a diagetic process of a character’s reading and/or writing Cuban history from a site of exile is countered by extradiagetic documentary and metaliterary information, I examine each novel’s metacritical approach to the politics of exile and diaspora historiography, as well as toward Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American, and/or U.S. literary textual economies.Item "Are emigrés foreign burdens?" : autonomy, slavery, and loyalist exiles in the dissolution of Spanish Empire in the Americas(2018-05) González Quintero, Nicolás Alejandro; Cañizares-Esguerra, JorgeThis report focuses on how Cuban local and metropolitan authorities handled the mass migration of refugees and loyalist troops arriving in the island from a war-torn American continent in the early 1820s. In a context of growing plantation slavery, the landing of exiles ignited discussions around local autonomies as well as the efforts of local elites and metropolitan authorities to preserve this mode of production in Cuba. Although initially Cuban authorities often acted as independent arbiters concerning the fate of refugees, this report argue that their intentions to preserve slavery and Spanish rule finally superseded any consideration of autonomy and distributive justice. By doing so, this report illustrates the paradoxes the Spanish Empire experienced during the time of its dissolution on the mainland and its simultaneous expansion in the Antilles. While the Monarchy underwent a process of contraction in the continent, local authorities in Cuba enhanced their autonomy to preserve both Spanish rule and slavery within the Caribbean. Nevertheless, this situation generated significant tensions among royalist officers and populations from the Empire’s former colonies. Despite the attempts of émigrés to challenge local autonomy and to enhance previous metropolitan policies on exiles, the Crown continuously favored local decisions over those of refugees. Nonetheless, the arrival of exiles deeply influenced the power of local cabildos and legitimated the growing power of military governors on the island. Fears of a pro-independence movement, or a slave revolt promoted by spies from the continent and Santo Domingo, increased the urgency with which the Crown and local elites worked to secure Spanish rule in Cuba. This situation enhanced the power of the General Captain, augmented surveillance systems in the Caribbean, and legitimized the banning of public associations and freedom of the press. These measures diminished the possibilities of establishing a pro-independent movement within the island and helped to preserve both slavery and Spanish dominion in the CaribbeanItem Building identity : The Miami Freedom Tower and the construction of a Cuban American identity in the post-Mariel era(2012-05) Rafferty, Jennifer Ashley; Cordova, Cary, 1970-; Menchaca, MarthaThe Miami Freedom Tower was built during the 1920s and then used during the 1960s as a processing center for newly arriving Cuban refugees. This report will demonstrate the ways in which a particular, powerful segment of the Cuban American community used the tower as a means to establish for themselves a more positive, Euroamerican identity in the wake of the Mariel boatlift and in the context of national debates over immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. By first looking at the U.S. government’s establishment of Cuban American identity during the early Cold War as positive and ideologically aligned with the United States and then examining the ways in which that identity was challenged in the 1980s and 1990s, this report demonstrates that national and ethnic identities are constantly in flux. Further, it is necessary to break down and fully analyze the ways in which the identities of immigrant groups are framed both externally by the press, popular culture, and the government and internally by their own goals, conceptions, and histories.Item Can UT Austin Play a Role in Cuba's Academic Future? And Vice Versa?(Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, 2008) Brown, Jonathan C.Item Capitalizing on Castro : Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States, 1959-1969(2012-05) Keller, Renata Nicole; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-This dissertation explores the central paradox of Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States in the decade following the Cuban Revolution--why did a government that cooperated with the CIA and practiced conservative domestic policies defend Castro's communist regime? It uses new sources to prove that historians' previous focus on the foreign and ideological influences on Mexico's relations with Cuba was misplaced, and that the most important factor was fear of the domestic Left. It argues that Mexican leaders capitalized upon their country's "special relationship" with Castro as part of their efforts to maintain control over restive leftist sectors of the Mexican population. This project uses new sources to illuminate how perceptions of threat shaped Mexico's foreign and domestic politics. In 2002, the Mexican government declassified the records of the two most important intelligence organizations--the Department of Federal Security and the Department of Political and Social Investigations. The files contain the information that Mexico's presidents received about potential dangers to their regime. They reveal that Mexican leaders overestimated the centralization, organization, and coordination of leftist groups, and in so doing gave them more influence over policy than their actual numbers or resources logically should have afforded. The dissertation uses the concept of threat perception as an analytic and organizational tool. Each chapter considers a different potential source of danger to the Mexican regime in the context of the Cold War and the country's relations with Cuba. For the sake of clarity, it breaks the threats into the categories of individual, national, and international, even though these subjective categories may blend into one another throughout the course of the analysis. The first chapter begins with an individual threat: Lázaro Cárdenas, a powerful former president who became one of Fidel Castro's most dedicated supporters. The next three chapters analyze threats on the national level by looking at the domestic groups that Mexican leaders perceived to be the greatest dangers to their regime. The final two chapters move to the international level and examine the roles of Cuba and the United States. As a whole, this study of the connections between Mexico's foreign and domestic politics makes a significant and timely contribution to the historiographies of modern Mexico, U.S.-Latin American relations, and the Cold War.Item Captive fates : displaced American Indians in the Southwest Borderlands, Mexico, and Cuba, 1500-1800(2011-08) Conrad, Paul Timothy; Sidbury, James; Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge; Bsumek, Erika; Deans-Smith, Susan; Wade, MariaBetween 1500 and 1800, Spaniards and their Native allies captured hundreds of Apache Indians and members of neighboring groups from the Rio Grande River Basin and subjected them to a variety of fates. They bought and sold some captives as slaves, exiled others as prisoners of war to central Mexico and Cuba, and forcibly moved others to mines, towns, and haciendas as paid or unpaid laborers. Though warfare and captive exchange predated the arrival of Europeans to North America, the three centuries following contact witnessed the development of new practices of violence and captivity in the North American West fueled by Euroamericans’ interest in Native territory and labor, on the one hand, and the dispersal of new technologies like horses and guns to American Indian groups, on the other. While at times subject to an enslavement and property status resembling chattel slavery, Native peoples of the Greater Rio Grande often experienced captivities and forced migrations fueled more by the interests of empires and nation-states in their territory and sovereignty than by markets in human labor.Item Caribbean: Some History(2016-08) Chambers, Eddie; Doroba, Mark (photographer)During Fall Semester 2016, the IDEA LAB in GWB Building will be showing This Ground Beneath My Feet – A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands,an exhibit by Annalee Davis, one of Barbados’ leading artists. In recognition of this, the Fine Arts Library (FAL) is showing a display, assembled by Eddie Chambers, of the Department of Art and Art History, Caribbean: Some History, which contains various publications relating to different aspects of the Caribbean, a region of the world that was, until relatively recently, more commonly referred to as the West Indies. It is a region of the world rich in many different histories. Religion, music, literature, art, and sport are amongst the many fascinating subjects of the books and other publications in this display. The largest countries of the region are those such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, followed by comparatively smaller countries such as Jamaica. Caribbean countries such as Haiti and Cuba have renowned and celebrated art histories, and this display includes several publications related to these histories. The display points to some of the ways in which publications related to the Caribbean have changed over the course of a century. Though most people of the region might identify their religion as Christianity, it is perhaps the syncretic belief systems of the region – Santeria, vodũ (voodoo),Rastafari – that the region is better known for. Of the many different types of music emerging from the region, it is perhaps reggae that dominates many people’s associations of the region’s music. Though the Caribbean region is rich in a variety of music traditions, it is certainly reggae that the region is best known for. And within reggae, Bob Marley is the singer whose music is most recognized. A great many books have been written on the late singer, and this display includes several. Despite the extensive scholarship and research coming out of the region and its diaspora, the Caribbean continues to be a misunderstood and somewhat caricatured region of the world, often regarded in the imagination of many as a holiday destination. These publications aim to present a more nuanced understanding of the Caribbean and its fascinating, multiple histories. The pan-Caribbean cricket team of the region is still known as the West Indies cricket team. It has a very distinguished history of cricketing success, particularly during parts of the mid, late 20th and early 21st century. A number of the books and publications in this display are available in FAL, PCL, and in particular, the Benson, which contains extensive material relating to the region. Photos and design by Mark DorobaItem Catalog of Cuban Gulf Oil Co. Data(Institute for Geophysics, 1991) Rosencrantz, Eric; Ganey-Curry, Patricia; Code, Elizabeth; Lewis, Dan'lItem Chinese coolies in Cuba and Peru : race, labor, and immigration, 1839-1886(2010-08) Narvaez, Benjamin Nicolas; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-; Hu-DeHart, Evelyn; Garfield, Seth W.; Gurdiy, Frank A.; Deans-Smith, Susan; Hsu, Madeline Y.This dissertation examines the experience of the tens of thousands of Chinese indentured laborers (colonos asiáticos or “coolies”) who went to Cuba and Peru as replacements for African slaves during the middle of the nineteenth century. Despite major sociopolitical differences (i.e., colonial slave society vs. independent republic without slavery), this comparative project reveals the common nature in the transition from slavery to free labor. Specifically, the indenture system, how the Chinese reacted to their situation, and how they influenced labor relations mirrored each other in the two societies. I contend that colonos asiáticos, while neither slaves nor free laborers, created a foundation for a shift from slavery to free labor. Elites in both places tried to fit the Chinese into competing projects of liberal “progress” and conservative efforts to stem this change, causing them to imagine these immigrant laborers in contradictory ways (i.e., free vs. slave, white vs. non-white, hard-working vs. lazy, cultured vs. morally corrupt). This ambiguity excused treating Asian laborers as if they were slaves, but it also justified treating them as free people. Moreover, Chinese acts of resistance slowly helped undermine this labor regime. Eventually, international pressure, which never would have reached such heights if the Chinese had remained passive, forced an end to the “coolie” trade and left these two societies with little option but to move even closer to free labor. That said, this work also considers the ways in which the differing socio-political contexts altered the Chinese experience. In particular, in contrast to Peru, Cuba’s status as a colonial slave society made it easier for the island’s elites to justify exploiting these workers and to protect themselves from mass rebellion. My dissertation places the histories of Cuba and Peru into a global perspective. It focuses on the transnational migration of the Chinese, on their social integration into their new Latin American host societies, as well as on the international reaction to the situation of immigrant laborers in Latin America.Item Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba: Report to President, 2006(2006-07) Commission for Assistance to a Free CubaItem Constructing Afro-Cuban womanhood : race, gender, and citizenship in Republican-era Cuba, 1902-1958(2011-08) Brunson, Takkara Keosha; Guridy, Frank Andre; Garfield, Seth; Gill, Tiffany; Arroyo, Jossianna; Smith, CheriseThis dissertation explores continuities and transformations in the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood in Cuba between 1902 and 1958. A dynamic and evolving process, the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood encompassed the formal and informal practices that multiple individuals—from lawmakers and professionals to intellectuals and activists to workers and their families—established and challenged through public debates and personal interactions in order to negotiate evolving systems of power. The dissertation argues that Afro-Cuban women were integral to the formation of a modern Cuban identity. Studies of pre-revolutionary Cuba dichotomize race and gender in their analyses of citizenship and national identity formation. As such, they devote insufficient attention to the role of Afro-Cuban women in engendering social transformations. The dissertation’s chapters—on patriarchal discourses of racial progress, photographic representations, la mujer negra (the black woman), and feminist, communist, and labor movements—probe how patriarchy and assumptions of black racial inferiority simultaneously informed discourses of citizenship within a society that sought to project itself as a white masculine nation. Additionally, the dissertation examines how Afro-Cuban women’s writings and social activism shaped legal reforms, perceptions of cubanidad (Cuban identity), and Afro-Cuban community formation. The study utilizes a variety of sources: organizational records, letters from women to politicians, photographic representations, periodicals, literature, and labor and education statistics. Engaging the fields of Latin American history, African diaspora studies, gender studies, and visual culture studies, the dissertation maintains that an intersectional analysis of race, gender, and nation is integral to developing a nuanced understanding of the pre-revolutionary era.Item Cuban Comics in the Castro Era(2019-12) Borrego, GilbertThe publishing industry of Cuba experienced a seismic shift in 1959 when Fidel Castro won a revolutionary war against dictator Fulgencio Batista. With this change, underground and subversive media creators of the Batista era became an important part of the new socialist culture. This helped to mobilize the masses in support of the new Castro government and against U.S. capitalistic ideology. A new world opened up for the creators of comics, who now had the singular purpose of supporting their new government while still appealing to their readers. In this early era, many of these readers were children, who continued to consume U.S.-created comic books and the ideals that went with them. This exhibition examines the art and history of Cuban comics after the successful 1959 revolution. It highlights the creators, characters, heroes, and anti-heroes of Cuba. It also touches on the triumphs and failures of the publishing industry and how Cuban artists today struggle to keep the genre alive. These materials are part of the Caridad Blanco Collection of Cuban Comic Books, acquired in 2018. Blanco, a Havana-based artist and curator, collected over 700 examples of stand-alone comics and newspaper supplements created between 1937 and 2018. This exhibition was curated by Digital Repository Specialist Gilbert Borrego and is part of his fall 2019 Capstone Experience course in partial fulfillment of his MSIS, School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin.Item Cuban tobacco slavery : life, labor and freedom in Pinar del Río, 1817-1886(2013-12) Morgan, William Alan; Falola, Toyin; Brown, Jonathan C; Childs, Matt D; Forgie, George B; Van Norman, William CThis dissertation examines the size and scope of tobacco cultivation in the far western Cuban province of Pinar del Río, from 1817 to 1886, in an effort to detail the impact of tobacco upon Cuban slavery and emancipation. This focus is intended to correct the existing historiography that has traditionally either marginalized or assigned false stereotypes to the role of tobacco slaves in Cuban society. Tobacco cultivation, by virtue of its fundamentally different economic structure and size, its regionally specific location and historical development, and the distinct demographic makeup of its work force, suggests different patterns of slavery that in turn precipitated different meanings of freedom than those recognized in other slave regimes. Of central importance is the recognition of the enhanced degrees of autonomy and spaces for independence that the exigencies of tobacco cultivation produced in slavery and in freedom and that were significantly less possible elsewhere. Emphasizing how different types of labor profoundly affected the different ways that Cuban slaves defined themselves and their environment, this dissertation privileges both the specificity and determinative aspects of crop cultivation, and how the structure of slave society is informed by a culture of labor. Some of the more critical aspects of slave life and culture – work patterns, living arrangements, family formation, mobility, and the existence of informal slave economies – were all uniquely impacted by the particular demands and demographics of tobacco-based labor. Despite the dominant role of sugar in the historiography of Cuban slavery, other slaves existed, other forms of labor were pertinent, and the differences and the varieties among these slave societies, were important. Consequently there remains a need for a method of analysis that distinguishes and differentiates among the multiplicity of experiences for Cuban slaves. By identifying a distinct slave population whose structure differs radically from the accepted norm and whose presence has been largely minimized, this dissertation is an attempt at rendering a more nuanced view of Cuban slavery. As a result, tobacco slavery is promoted as an alternative or competing narrative to the overall understanding of Cuban slaves and the processes they created for freedom.Item Cuerpos resonantes : sonidos y voces en la poesía del Caribe y el Cono Sur 1930-1980(2016-05) Staig Limidoro, James Christian; Cárcamo-Huechante, Luis E.; Arroyo, Jossianna; Borge, Jason; Robbins, JillIn the present research I approach the sonic materiality in the works of poets of the 20th Century from Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. I analize the works of Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), Néstor Perlongher (1949–1992) and Pedro Pietri (1944–2004); all of them presenting particular approaches to the production, consumption, and representation of sound through poetry. This research works with notions of sound studies, performance, animal, sex-gender, and cultural studies, to explore the different forms in which these authors use sound as part of a poetic-politic of the spoken word. I explore also how in their uses of sound they problematize notions of cultural identity, political revolution, nation building, censorship and belonging. In the present study I propose that these four poets—Mistral, Guillén, Perlongher, and Pietri—use their sound production as a tool for a political and aesthetic exercise that materializes notions of identity, agency, and belonging. Also, I claim that each poet presents a sonic conscience, bot in the production of sound and hearing.; that is, from their behalf there is a performatic notion of their work as sound and voice. This allows them to explore topics of gender, race, politics, diasporas, and aesthetics that amplify their “resonance” no only in writing but also in the sono-sphere of language and body. Thus, I explore the recording of their voices and performances as archives in which is possible to practice a critical, material, and bodily listening. Together with that, on methodological terms, I propose mi own reading as part of a escucha profunda, in dialog with the elaborations of close listening by Charles Bernstein and an attention to the effects of “resound” (Jean-Luc Nancy) that leads the poetic phenomenon in a sense level, physical experience and perception (Don Idhe).Item Decentering revolutionary visions : the politics and poetics of representation in Nicolás Guillén Landrián’s Coffea Arabiga(2017-05-09) Ortega Miranda, Patricia; Flaherty, George F., 1978-; Smith, Cherise, 1969-; Chambers, Edward; Arroyo, JossianaIn 1967 Afro-Cuban artist and filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián returned to the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) in Havana after suffering months of confinement; first at a farm—where he was sent on a forced temporary reclusion for “improper conduct”—and later at a psychiatric institution. Upon his return, Landrián was not allowed back at the Documentary Department. Instead, he was assigned to work at the Popular Encyclopedia a section within the Non-Fiction Department responsible for producing State-commissioned didactic documentaries. That year, he was commissioned to create a documentary about the massive agricultural plan Havana Greenbelt designed by the government to increase agricultural production in the island’s capital and promote national unity. The documentary would focus on the production of coffee and the mobilization of thousands of city dwellers to the agricultural fields in the outskirts of the city. The following year Landrián finishes Coffea Arabiga, a documentary that breaks away from the conventions of the institutional didactic documentary to question revolutionary politics of representation and its regime of visibility. This study considers the didactic documentary Coffea Arabiga (1968) as a critical document for understanding Landrián’s vision as a black artist within the sociopolitical context of the 1960s in Cuba and challenges previous approaches to film practices in Cuba established upon the notion that they formed a politically and ideologically discursive unity given that they were created within institutional and genre boundaries. It is my thesis that not only Landrián problematizes the social and political objectivity of revolutionary discourses by revealing the tensions and contradictions behind it, but reclaims the presence of political and social identities that the revolutionary regime of visibility silenced.Item Distances and proximities : Havana and San Juan from the point of view of literature and oral histories(2015-05) Mercado Diaz, Mario Edgardo; Salgado, César Augusto; Merabet, Sofian, 1972-Cuba y Puerto Rico have for long been considered sister islands, fighting together against the influences of the Spanish Empire and the United States. The decade of the 1950s, however, proved to be the splitting point for both islands, sending them into very different trajectories of development. In their shared experience of Spanish colonization and USA interventions, how do San Juan and Havana residents perceive and use space today in their particular socio-political contexts and how does this affect the resident's sense of citizenship? I closely engage with the different urban spaces using ethnographic data and photographs taken during my recent fieldwork, creative texts describing said spaces and case studies examining the formation of racial, gender and class identities. Focusing on a specific place on the Malecón, Havana's iconic esplanade, I examine how practices of leisure, intimacy (e.g. erotic homosexual and heterosexual encounters), and self-expression challenge the revolutionary rhetoric of "sameness" (i.e. absence of race, class, crime or gender violence). As for San Juan, I dissect the layers of significance in public visual representation, as exemplified in the artwork painted over an abandoned house in Santurce, the site for queer, artistic and marginal expression. The scene, two black women drinking on the porch, rescues a sense of citizenship lost to the class and racial polarization, fragmentation, and the "ruination" of San Juan. Finally, I argue that an archipelagic city, composed of the descriptions of specific places in different cities, has been created in the sea, a space of crossing, endurance and death, within these inter-capillary exchanges of people, cultures and habits. This archipelagic city, not spoken about directly but referenced semantically, aids in the construction of trans-national identities and perspectives, specific perceptions on time and space, and the production of media and cultural forms of expression. My goal is to tie together these narrative strands linking trans-oceanic places into an urban map surpassing its own geographical context.Item “Dr. Rice Previews President’s Trip to Mexico”(Office of the Press Secretary, 2004-01-09) U.S. GovernmentItem For blood or for glory : a history of Cuban boxing, 1898-1962(2009-08) Reejhsinghani, Anju Nandlal; Guridy, Frank Andre; Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio, 1962-; Garrard Burnett, Virginia; Hsu, Madeline Y.; Reid, Michele B.“For blood or for glory” examines boxing’s political, social, and cultural impacts in Cuba from the U.S. military intervention in 1898 to the Castro regime’s prohibition on professional sports in 1962. It argues that, although boxing’s early development was strongly influenced by the U.S. presence on the island, over time the sport became “Cubanized” in distinct ways. The establishment of a national commission, the practice of interracial bouts, and the creation of a national academy served to develop Cuban talent. Yet in contrast to baseball, boxing was incompletely integrated into the nationalist project; by midcentury, it was valued more was as a source of state revenue than national pride. The lack of opportunities for Cuban fighters at home led to their exodus abroad, as they formed a transnational citizenry ranging from world champions and contenders to lowly journeymen. After the onset of the Cuban Revolution, the state sought to sustain prizefighting and other professional sports, but ultimately opted to ban them as Cuba’s tourist industry fell apart. Chapter 1 addresses different facets of early pugilism, including the rise of a boxing subculture in late colonial and early republic Cuba, the Havana YMCA’s efforts to encourage amateur boxing among middle-class Cubans and U.S. expatriates, and the construction of new infrastructure for public spectacles. Jack Johnson’s heavyweight title fight with Jess Willard in Havana in April 1915, and Cuban receptions to it, forms the subject of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 details the processes by which boxing spectacles were legalized and regulated and describes the rise of Cuba’s first world champion, Kid Chocolate. Chapter 4 considers the conflicting role of the state in both spurring and limiting boxing’s growth throughout the country during the 1930s and 1940s. Chapter 5 tackles the 1950s, including the impact of television on boxing in the U.S. and Cuba and the career of Kid Gavilán. Chapter 6 explores the decline of prizefighting in revolutionary Cuba and the concurrent establishment of an exiled community of prizefighters in the U.S. The Conclusion analyzes developments in post-1962 amateur boxing in Cuba and speculates as to the sport’s future on the island.