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Louis A. Pérez

Autor(a) de Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution

36+ Works 430 Membros 2 Reviews 1 Favorited

About the Author

Louis A. Perez Jr. is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Image credit: via UNC

Séries

Obras de Louis A. Pérez

Associated Works

Cuba: A Short History (1993) — Contribuinte, algumas edições37 cópias
Spanish pathways in Florida, 1492-1992 (1991) — Contribuinte — 22 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome padrão
Pérez, Louis A.
Nome de batismo
Pérez, Louis A., Jr.
Data de nascimento
1943-06-05
Sexo
male

Membros

Resenhas

Discussing the importance of history, Louis Pérez writes, “What happened in the nineteenth century mattered because Cubans had expected to make history – and failed to meet their expectations.” Following this disappointment, “the burden of an unfinished history [was] enacted as the moral currency of politics.” After the United States’ intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, the Cuban people found themselves free in name only. The Platt Amendment denied them true sovereignty and served to maintain American hegemony over the island. In order to assert a sense of national identity, Cubans built on the memory of the past to create a path for the future. Pérez writes, “The meaning of the past gained popular currency principally as a morality tale, learned at home and taught at school, given sensory embodiment in aesthetic forms and assigned political meaning as a discourse of dissent.” Building on ideals of the past, “to be a revolutionary as an agent of history was an honorable calling, a purpose amply validated as a matter of a past pending, an ever-presenst and long-standing summons to complete a history begun in the nineteenth century.” When the United States government again interfered, working with Colonel Fulgencio Batista to remove the reform government of Ramón Grau San Martín, it demonstrated a lack of memory for its own history, acting in much the same way as it accused Britain of acting in the eighteenth century in order to maintain dominance over a foreign territory. Anger over Batista’s coup spread and entered the Cuban narrative. Pérez writes, “The possibility that the removal of Batista would provide the means to address larger – that is, historic – issues was very much inscribed within the calculus of resistance all through the 1950s.” This action encouraged revolutionaries and opened the path to power for Fidel Castro.
Louis Pérez writes that, while under Spanish rule in the nineteenth century, “Cubans defined themselves through denial and disavowal; they distanced themselves from Spain and differentiated themselves from Spaniards and strove mightily to discard and otherwise diminish the ways that served to identify themselves as Spanish.” The arts played an pivotal role in this, with novels, dance, music, and poetry all combining to create a unique Cuban voice. Discussing the role of the novel, Pérez writes, “The novel was at once representative and revelatory and served to set in relief the complexities of race relations, class contradictions, and gender hierarchies as a condition of a deepening disquiet of contemporary history, all explicitly situated within those unsettled domains of deepening colony-metropolis tensions.” In this way, “the character of Cuban emerged out of the experience of a people who forged its meaning in the act of defining themselves, under specific historical circumstances, incrementally and over time, in response to the demands of their times and as a function of the requirements of their purpose.” In keeping the past alive in this way, it encouraged Cubans to think of the role they could play, to maintain a certain distance so as to see the larger picture. Remembering the sacrifices of those who fought for independence, Cubans were willing to take their time and wait for the right opportunity so that they could take an active part in their own history.
Describing Cuba at midcentury, Louis Pérez writes that Cubans “continued to live closely with their history.” Displeased with Bastista’s seizure of power and living in a time that coincided with significant anniversaries of the fight for independence, Cubans looked to their history for an answer. Pérez writes, “The master narrative of the nation, loaded as it was with aspirations as anticipation, readily drew Cubans into the plausibility of revolution as remedy, largely as a matter of culturally determined dispositions, for these were the articles of faith from which the normative determinants of nationality were derived.” To this end, “fulfillment of the promise of the future was possible only through the realization of the aspirations of the past, Cubans were certain. It was a way that many came to see Fidel Castro.” Castro’s group, Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio (MR 26-7), grounded itself in Cuba’s history and used the moral superiority that conferred “to summon Cubans to dramatic action as a matter of duty inherent in the meaning of nationality.” In his speech, “History Will Absolve Me,” Castro used this concept of playing a part in a revolutionary history that extended back to the nineteenth century to justify taking revolutionary action as part of what it meant to be Cuban. Pérez argues that “the triumph of the revolution was a defining moment, not only…because it was a historical event in its own right, but also because it lay claim to the purpose of all the history that had preceded it.” In fusing the past with the present, the 1959 revolutionaries carried on the tradition the mambises in the public mind.
… (mais)
 
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DarthDeverell | Dec 20, 2016 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
36
Also by
3
Membros
430
Popularidade
#56,815
Avaliação
½ 3.4
Resenhas
2
ISBNs
82
Idiomas
1
Favorito
1

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