Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971
In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.
Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.
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Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971
In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.
Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.
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Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971

Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971

by Lillian Guerra
Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971

Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971

by Lillian Guerra

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Overview

In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.
Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called "unanimous support" for a revolution whose "moral power" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469618869
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 08/01/2014
Series: Envisioning Cuba
Edition description: 1
Pages: 488
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lillian Guerra is professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida and author of The Myth of Jose Marti: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba and Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction: "Today, Even Fidel is a Counterrevolutionary!" Excavating the Grand Narrative of the Cuban Revolution 1

Chapter 1 The Olive Green Revolution 37

Media, Mass Rallies, Agrarian Reform, and the Birth of the Fidelista State

Chapter 2 Good Cubans, Bad Cubans, and the Trappings of Revolutionary Faith 75

Chapter 3 War of Words 107

Laying the Groundwork for Radicalization

Chapter 4 Turning the World Upside Down 135

Fidelismo as a Cultural Religion and National Crisis as a Way of Life

Chapter 5 Resistance, Repression, and Co-Optation Among the Revolution's Chosen People 170

Chapter 6 Class War and Complicity in a Grassroots Dictatorship 198

Gusanos, Citizen-Spies, and the Early Role of Cuban Youth

Chapter 7 Juventvd Rebelde 227

Nonconformity, Gender, and the Struggle to Control Revolutionary Youth

Chapter 8 Self-Styled Revolutionaries 256

Forgotten Struggles for Social Change and the Problem of Unintended Dissidence

Chapter 9 The Ofensiva Revolucionaria and the Zafra De Los Diez Millones 290

Inducing Popular Euphoria, Fraying Fidelismo

Chapter 10 The Reel, Real, and Hyper-Real Revolution 317

Self-Representation and Political Performance in Everyday Life

Epilogue: The Revolution that Might Have Been and the Revolution that Was 353

Memory, Amnesia, and History

Notes 369

Bibliography 429

Index 445

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An outstanding work — skillfully organized, effectively presented, and fully substantiated. Guerra's fascinating analysis of the revolutionary process in Cuba should be a standard reference work within a short time." —Franklin W. Knight, The Johns Hopkins University

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