Cuba, the United States, and Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975

This book examines the ways in which Cuba's revolutions of 1933 and 1959 became touchstones for border-crossing endeavors of radical politics and cultural experimentation over the mid-twentieth century. It argues that new networks of solidarity building between US and Cuban allies also brought with them perils and pitfalls that could not be separated from the longer history of US empire in Cuba. As US and Cuban subjects struggled together towards common aspirations of racial and gender equality, fairer distribution of wealth, and anti-imperialism, they created a unique index of cultural work that widens our understanding of the transition between hemispheric modernism and postmodernism. Canvassing poetry, music, journalism, photographs, and other cultural expressions around themes of revolution, this book seeks new understanding of how race, gender, and nationhood could shift in meaning and materialization when traveling across the Florida Straits.0 Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title page 5 Copyright information 6 Dedication 7 Table of contents 9 List of figures 10 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 13 1 Remapping “Our America” 33 2 Documenting the “Crime of Cuba” 55 The Transnational Routes of Revolutionary Politics 60 Searching for an Américan Alternative: Revolutionary Exiles in the United States 65 Returning to Martí’s New York City 68 Confronting Gaps in the Transnation: Documenting The Crime of Cuba 80 The Limits of Revolutionary Politics: The Popular Front Realignment 89 3 Good or Bad Neighbors? 95 Pan-American Politics and the 1933 Revolution 98 Exposing Gaps in Pan-Americanism 107 The Ambivalence of Pan-American Tourism 116 Rewriting the Intimate Ties 124 4 Race and Revolution in Verse 127 Left Politics of the Diaspora 130 “I, Too, Am America:” The Poetics of Diaspora 136 Minding the Diasporic Gap 151 Silencing the Maracas? 158 Diaspora on the Antifascist Front 164 5 The Making of Revolutionary Exceptionalism 171 Modernization and the Contest between Exceptionalisms 177 Saying “No” to the American Way of Life: The New Left and Revolutionary Culture 183 Of Mimicry and Monologues: Performing Postmodern Cuba 194 Remixing the Folk, or the Postmodern Logic of “Guantanamera” 198 6 Race and the 1959 Revolution in the Post-Bandung Era 210 Distancing from Scottsboro: Cuba Libre in the Cold War 213 Tricontinental Politics in the Post-Bandung Era 219 “Ser como el Che”: Postcolonial Identity and the US Third World Left 230 Minding the Gaps in Revolutionary Humanism 236 7 From Suffragists to Soldiers 247 The 1933 Revolution and Pan-American Women’s Rights 249 Revolutionary Womanhood and Cold War Modernization 268 Searching for a Feminist Utopia 275 Conclusion 286 Index 293 This book examines how Cuba's revolutions of 1933 and 1959 became touchstones for border-crossing endeavors of radical politics and cultural experimentation over the mid-twentieth century