CHRONOLOGY, by Prof. Jorge I. Dominguez

1895

War of independence begins

1898

US beats Spain in war

1901

Cuban Constitution, with Platt amendment, adopted

1902

Cuba "independent"

1903

US‑Cuban Reciprocity Treaty signed

1933

August: President Gerardo Machado overthrown
September 4: Army Sgt. Fulgencio Batista's coup

1934

Platt amendment repealed
New US‑Cuban Reciprocity Treaty signed
US Jones‑Costigan Sugar Act enacted

1937

Cuba's Sugar Coordination Act enacted

1940

New Cuban Constitution approved
Batista elected President

1944

Opposition wins free elections; Batista steps down; Auténtico party's Ramón Grau becomes President

1947

Fidel Castro trains to invade Dominican Republic

1948

Auténtico party's Carlos Prío elected President
Fidel Castro involved in Bogotá, Colombia, riots

1952

March 10: Batista's new coup

1953

July 26: attack on Moncada barracks, city of Santiago

1955

Batista grants amnesty to Fidel Castro
Revolutionary Directorate founded
November‑December: demonstrations + brief general strike

1956

April: Col. Ramón Barquín's coup attempt fails
April 29: attack on Goicuría barracks fails
Fall: Revolutionary Directorate assassinates several key government officers
November 30: uprising in city of Santiago
December 2: "Granma" yacht shipwreck; Castro, associates seek refuge in Sierra Maestra mountains

1957

February 17: Herbert Matthews interviews Castro in Sierra Maestra
March 13: Revolutionary Directorate attacks presidential palace; Batista survives; José Antonio Echeverría killed
May: "Corinthia" yacht expedition fails
June: Earl Smith sworn in as US ambassador to Cuba
July 12: Sierra Maestra Manifesto signed
July 30: Frank País killed
September: Uprising at Navy's base in Cienfuegos fails
September: US Freeport Sulphur announces massive investments to develop Cuban nickel
October: Revolutionary Directorate opens Escambray mountains front
November: Miami Pact signed
December: Fidel Castro denounces Miami Pact

1958

March 14: US cuts off weapons sales to Cuban government
March: Raúl Castro opens Sierra Cristal mountains front
April 9: general strike fails
May 25: Army opens Sierra Maestra general offensive
May: Cuban Air Force planes refueled at US base at Guantánamo; rebels protest
June 27: Raúl Castro takes US citizens as hostages
July: Some US troops from Guantánamo guard installations inside Cuba; rebels protest; US troops return to base
July: In Escambray mountains, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo splits off from Revolutionary Directorate
July 20: Caracas Pact signed
August 18: Army ends general offensive at Sierra Maestra
August: Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos leave Oriente province to begin invasion of Camagüey and Las Villas provinces
September: Castro negotiations with Gen. Eulogio Cantillo
November: National elections; Batista claims win for his candidate, Andrés Rivero Agüero
December 9: William Pawley mission to get Batista to resign
December 28: Castro‑Cantillo agreement
December 30: Armored train surrenders to rebels in Las Villas
December 31: Guevara forces seize city of Santa Clara New Year's eve: Batista flees

1959

January 2: Remainder of old regime disintegrates
January 8: Fidel Castro enters Havana
January: Trials and executions of Batista regime officers begin
April: Castro announces no elections to be held soon
April: Castro visits US; meets Richard Nixon; announces Cuba seeks no US funds
April 25: Castro speaks at Harvard
May: Cuba enacts land reform law
June 11: US note over Cuba's land reform
June: First Cuban Cabinet crisis
June: Chief of Cuba's Air Force, Díaz Lanz, defects to US
July 17: President Manuel Urrutia forced to resign
Fall: Militia created
October 16: Soviet envoy Alexeev meets Fidel Castro
October 18: University students' elections
October 19: Commander of Camagüey province Huber Matos resigns
October 21: Huber Matos arrested
October 21: Díaz Lanz overflies Havana
October 26: F. Castro says Díaz Lanz bombed Havana; blames US
November: Labor union congress
November: Second major Cabinet crisis

1960

January: US recalls Ambassador Bonsal; later re‑opens talks
February : Anastas Mikoyan in Havana; Soviet‑Cuban Treaty signed
March 1: Eisenhower asks Congress for discretion to cut sugar quota
March 4: Belgian weapons ship "La Coubre" explodes in Havana harbor; Castro blames US
March 17: Eisenhower authorizes CIA to begin to train Cuban exiles for military actions
June: Foreign oil refineries refuse to refine Soviet oil; Cuban government seizes them
July 6: US cuts Cuba's sugar quota
July: USSR will purchase all Cuban sugar the US will not buy; offers military support
July: Cuba expropriates all US property
August: Cuban Women's Federation founded
August: US government begins plots to assassinate Fidel Castro
September: Committees for the Defense of the Revolution founded
December 4: Cuban Church publishes first letter against Castro

1961

January: US‑Cuban relations broken
April: Bay of Pigs invasion defeated; revolution proclaimed "socialist"
May: Private schools expropriated
July: ORI (embryonic new communist party founded)
September: 131 Catholic priests deported
September: Cuba pulls out of International Sugar Agreement
Second half: Nationwide literacy campaign
December: Fidel Castro calls himself "Marxist‑Leninist"

1962

January: Organization of American States expels Cuban government
January: tenure abolished at universities
March: National Directorate of ORI announced; Aníbal Escalante dismissed as ORI Organization Secretary; prices frozen and rationing imposed
July: Gen. Raúl Castro travels to Moscow to negotiate more military support
October: missile crisis; migration to US stopped

1963

First half: sharp decline in Cuban sugar output and exports
June: Castro announces renewed emphasis on sugar production
June: Alberto Mora opens "great debate" over economy, attacks Guevara=s views
October: Second agrarian reform law; expropriates rural middle peasant land
October: Cuban troops cross Atlantic ocean to join Algerian troops to fight Morocco
November: compulsory military service required
Fall: Venezuelan government discovers weapons sent from Cuba to Venezuelan guerrillas

1964

January: USSR raises sugar price, and fixes it until 1970
March: Marcos Rodríguez trial (death penalty); PSP embarrassed
July: Organization of American States imposes collective sanctions on Cuba for "aggression" against Venezuela; mandates break in relations and hemispheric trade embargo
Mid‑year: abortion law liberalized
Mid‑year: trade relations improve with Canada, Britain, France, Japan, Spain
December: suicide attempts branded counterrevolutionary

1965

First quarter: "great debate" over economy ends; economic growth resumes; Guevara criticizes nature of Soviet economic aid, resigns all government and party posts, goes to Congo (at one point also called Zaire) to fight alongside guerrillas
Spring: 20,000 US troops land in Dominican Republic to prevent a "second Cuba"
Mid‑year: Castro acknowledges holding 20,000 political prisoners
Mid‑year: last counterrevolutionary insurgencies defeated
October: Political Bureau, Secretariat, and Central Committee of new Communist party appointed
November: founded UMAP military camps for homosexuals and others
Fall: migration to US resumes under agreement
Late: Cubans begin to train Angolan MPLA guerrillas

1966

January: Tricontinental conference to assist revolutions held in Havana; Castro denounces Chinese government over trade and political disputes
November: Guevara arrives in Bolivia to launch guerrilla war
End: Castro endorses primacy of moral incentives and economic centralization

1967

March: Castro denounces Venezuelan Communist party for treason
March: property compensation agreements with Swiss and French
May: Cuban fighters captured in Venezuela, alongside guerrillas
First half: economic growth good
Mid‑year: UMAP abolished
October: Guevara, other Cubans, killed in Bolivia
End: national budget and financial auditing discontinued

1968

January: Oil rationing tightened; "microfaction," led by Aníbal Escalante and linked to USSR, discovered in Cuban communist party, punished by imprisonment
March: "Revolutionary Offensive" launched; grocery stores, street vending, etc., become state firms; bars closed; private sales of peasant produce banned; role of money and profits denounced; emphasis on "voluntary work," mass campaigns
Mid‑year: economic collapse under way
Mid‑year: Labor Ministry announces job segregation by gender
August: Castro endorses Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia
October: Cuba rejoins International Sugar Agreement

1969

Mid‑year: campaign on "idle woman" question
Second half: 1970 harvest begins early; economic situation grave
End: relations improve with Chile, Peru

1970

Giant harvest

1971

March: poet Heberto Padilla arrested, later "confesses"
April: First National Congress on Education and Culture
End: redirection of economic strategy, return to material incentives, financial auditing

Fidel Castro se retrata con su esposa

MAURICIO VICENT - La Habana - 07/01/2010


Las imágenes fueron tomadas en la visita de Daniel Ortega a Cuba

Poco a poco van conociéndose intimidades de la vida de Fidel Castro. Desde que el líder comunista enfermó, en julio de 2006, la política de estricto secreto alrededor de su vida privada se ha relajado, hasta el extremo de que varios medios de prensa han publicado recientemente fotos del ex mandatario en su residencia de La Habana junto a familiares cercanos, algo impensable hace tan sólo unos años. Hace un par de meses, Paris Match dio a conocer imágenes de Castro en su hogar con sus hijos Antonio, Alejandro y Alex; esta semana ha sido la prensa nicaragüense la que ha publicado varias fotos del presidente Daniel Ortega posando con Castro y su esposa, la maestra Dalia Soto del Valle, en su casa habanera.

Se trata de las primeras imágenes oficiales de la pareja publicadas por la prensa extranjera, y reproducidas después por la revista digital cubana Cubadebate. Toda una novedad en un país en el que este tipo de información se administra con cuentagotas.

Castro, de 83 años, convive con Soto del Valle desde los años sesenta y tienen cinco hijos. Prácticamente no existían imágenes públicas de los dos juntos, y mucho menos tomadas en la residencia donde viven, en un complejo custodiado por guarniciones militares al oeste de La Habana que es conocido en el argot de la seguridad cubana como Punto Cero.

El lunes, varios medios de prensa nicaragüenses publicaron 13 fotografías tomadas durante las dos visitas que realizó Ortega a La Habana, en abril y diciembre del pasado año, en compañía de su esposa, Rosario Murillo. La mayor parte fueron hechas en la residencia de Castro y Dalia Soto, y en ellas aparecen los dos matrimonios posando juntos, en la típica imagen de recuerdo. Castro tiene buen semblante y está de pie, vestido con su habitual chándal deportivo. En otras fotos están el presidente cubano Raúl Castro y el canciller Bruno Rodríguez y Castro comparte con ellos sentado en una silla de ruedas.

Otras imágenes muestran a Dalia Soto vestida de chándal, como Castro, y en una de las fotografías aparece la furgoneta en que se mueve ocasionalmente el líder cubano, que posee una rampa con barandilla para facilitar sus desplazamientos.

Fuente: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/agenda/Fidel/Castro/retrata/esposa/elpepigen/20100107elpepiage_2/Tes

Through the Eyes of a Twelve-Year-Old: The Cuban Education System

The following is an excerpt from my diary, written in Spanish when I was 12 years old in 2000. This is the year I started middle school at Simón Bolívar, a small school in one of the oldest municipalities of Havana: Diez de octubre. In Cuba, middle school comprises seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Since it corresponds to the second level of teaching, it is officially termed “secundaria básica.”

For the purposes of this blog, I have chosen to rewrite the selected fragments in English and use past instead of present tense. I have also combined individual fragments into a coherent narrative. No modifications in content have been made.

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Classes began on September 4^th. My uniform consisted of a pleaded mustard-colored skirt and a white blouse with buttons. I was no longer wearing the “pañoleta,” or neckerchief, of elementary school. Instead, an insignia that read “Che” was sown on the only pocket of my blouse.

There were no classes on the first day of school. That day we studied the biography of Simón Bolívar and learned the “reglamento escolar,” or the rules of the school. On that first day a provisional “Jefe de destacamento,” or President of the classroom, was also selected for each of the 12 to 13 groups in each grade. The “guide” teacher assigned to each group would ask those students that had served as “Jefe de destacamento” in elementary school to volunteer to take the new post.

For seventh-graders, classes did not begin until late September, after the period of “aprestamiento” ended. While this introduction period lasted, students spent most of their time in school taking diagnostic tests in all the main subjects (Spanish Language, Mathematics, Ancient and Medieval History, Biology, Geography, Music and English). There were also diagnostic tests on the knowledge of “símbolos patrios,” on spelling, and on physical education. The Math Olympiad was also held during the first week. Three winners would be chosen from the school to compete at the “consejo popular” level, and later at municipal, provincial, national and even international levels.

When classes finally began, they met in the afternoon. In Biology, we were paying special attention to alcoholism and addictions in general, and in Mathematics, we studied Algebra as well as Geometry, especially the properties of angles. I received the most rigorous instruction in Mathematics at the review sessions organized by the municipal board of education for students who had qualified to attend the provincial Math Olympiad. These were intense three-hour drills that included taking exams from past Olympiads.

Aside from classes and Math review sessions, most days of the week I would be required to attend special morning sessions such as the viewing of a weekly audiovisual program about art, national symbols, sexuality in adolescence, and places of interest. Other special sessions were dedicated to the life of José Martí, to the cleaning of the school, or to those classes that did not meet daily such as Physical Education, Library Methodology, Values and Basic Drawing.

The morning was also the time to participate in extracurricular activities. Middle schools had chapters of national “círculos de interés” or pre-professional student organizations that ranged from gastronomy to scientific research to nursing. I was a member of the círculo de interés of pedagogy and in the mornings I would visit my old elementary school to help former teachers with grading. I was also in the school’s track team and during the first weeks of school, I was selected “Jefa de exploración y campismo” of my group. This position required me to prepare my group for participation in “acampadas,” or one-night trips to a nearby camping area where we learned different types of fires and knots and took tests on all skills learned. These tests were serious, as their results could affect our evaluation at the monthly “chequeos de emulación.” But acampadas were also an opportunity to stay up all night dancing and playing domino.

Throughout the year, the school also held numerous essay and drawing contests with topics such as “Aspiring to belong to the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC)” or “Leer a Martí.” There was also a “batallón de ceremonias,” or marching guard, of which I was “Jefa de pelotón,” or Chief of squad in the frequent marching competitions.

Many activities took place outside of the school. On September 28^th, students participated in the annual “guardia pioneril” to commemorate the anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Around eight PM, we would leave our houses wearing our uniforms and join the rest of the block in festivities celebrating the labor of vigilance of the CDR. We also participated in regular demonstrations at the anti-imperialist tribune built in front of the US Interests Section. Marches were organized in response to an event such as the death of two Cubans in the seas as they escaped to Miami, or as a form of national celebration on José Martí’s birthday. On the days these marches were scheduled, we would arrive in school around six AM, and leave in buses sometimes not until a few hours later. Schools of the same municipality would march together, though students usually left early to sit on the seawall of the nearby Malecón. Attendance to guardias pioneriles and demonstrations also counted toward our evaluation at the chequeos de emulación.

Elections for the “colectivo,” or student government, were a long process that began early in the year, with the selection of 13 pre-candidates. The school staff would eliminate five of these, and the autobiographies of the remaining eight would be posted on the school murals. All students were required to participate in the final voting process, and results were announced at the school party in celebration of the National Day of Culture. I was very surprised to be chosen President of Student Government in my first year of middle school. From then on, I had to preside over the daily “matutino,” a ceremony held as soon as students arrived in school. From a platform, I would formally initiate the matutino with the order “colectivo, firme,” followed by the order to raise the flag and sing the national anthem. During the ceremony, a student from a different group each day had to recite the “inmediatez de la noticia,” a brief news report prepared by the school board. Announcements on school activities would follow, before groups left to their respective classrooms in orderly lines.

My responsibilities as President included directing meetings with the rest of the colectivo and with jefes de destacamentos. I then would present the agreements drafted at these meetings to the school administration at the Consejos populares. One agreement, for example, was to have a policeman permanently outside of the school in order to keep the “elemento,” or delinquents, away. I would also receive special invitations to attend meetings with other Presidents of colectivos from other schools in the municipality, to Asambleas del poder popular and to the third national Congreso Pioneril. As President, I also had to supervise the collection of raw materials and of donations to the Milicias de Tropas Territoriales (MTT), and participate in special events like a reunion with the students from the International School of Sports, where I sat next to students from Haiti and Congo.

My responsibilities as President required that I miss class frequently. I could suddenly be called to an extraordinary Consejo de dirección, or a teacher would call me and ask for help with class discipline. In general, however, missing class was normal. Classes were stopped if fumigations were scheduled as part of the campaign to combat the outbreak of dengue fever. Students that participated in “brigadas de rescate” also frequently missed the first class of the day. These brigades were designed to counteract poor attendance and tardiness to school. After the matutino was over, the brigadas de rescate were sent around the neighborhood in search for students who had not been present for this ceremony, with the mission to bring them to school.

That year, for the first time in my life, I was not selected as “destacada,” or outstanding, in a chequeo de emulación. My guide teacher said I was not sufficiently integrated in the colectivo or in the school activities in general. I thought the chequeo had been unfair, and asked my mom to complain to the school. My father could not come, as he had left the country a few weeks before. In the end, the school administration agreed with my mom, and I was finally selected “destacada.” At that time, I decided to quit the presidency of the colectivo, but I was told I was not allowed to quit.

Comment to Valentin's post on Charisma, Fidel, and White Doves

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1) For Weber, Charisma is a type of legitimation of authority—i.e., how citizens or subjects justify their obedience to the ruler. The focus is on the motivations and feelings of the ruled, and not so much on objective features of the leaders (Gonzalez in the readings abuses a bit the Weberian concept, as his focus is on Fidel, not on the Cuban public).

The picture shows the other "barbudo:" less revolutionary, but probably crazier, and as brilliant.

2) For Weber, there are three polar types of legitimacy, which correspond to three different "subjective" motivations for obedience. One is fully rational, and obedience is to the rule of laws, not to persons. People obey because they think that rules (even bad ones!) provide stability to their lives and hence allow for rational calculations for individual plans of action. Modern constitutional governments of the North-Atlantic type (US, Western Europe post WWII), are the prime examples.

Another one is "traditional" legitimacy, which is semi-rational (people obey because they are used to obeying, and do not think too much about authority), and also impersonal (the focus of obedience is a tradition, not a person). Dynastic monarchies, in Medieval Europe, or African/Asian Ancient times, are the key political examples.

Charismatic authority, the third type, is both irrational (based on "love" to the ruler by the ruled, according to its Greek etymology), and personal: the target of the people's affection is a person, the leader, not rules or traditions. Examples? Ancient priests, druids, saints, military leaders, Jeanne d’Arc, Hitler, Ghandi … they were all the object of extraordinary amounts of admiration and love.

3) Is Castro a Charismatic leader? It is OK to say that in a dinner party in order to sound interesting. However, the real issue in Weber’s theory is that Charisma is not something inherent to Castro’s personality, responsibility, or body. Rather, the Cubans created a Charismatic authority by loving Castro ("Fidel, Fidel") and by attributing him supra-human, magical, attributes (pretty much like what progressive Americans did in relation to Obama only a year ago).

4) Does Castro WANT to be a Charismatic leader? Yes, of course. But the question is pertinent because Castro's speeches and policies are directed to a rational (not an irrational) audience: one that will appreciate the rational value of socialism, of a change in property rights, and the subsequent change in civic virtues and the enhancement of social cooperation. Only VERY rational citizens can get that message. Weber would have liked this: he thinks reality "mixes" theoretical ideal types in complicated, context-specific ways. Authority in Cuba is not only Charismatic. Were it so, it would have vanished long time ago.

5) An extension of (4). Castro exploits his Charisma (receives love) but the Revolution has been genuinely involved in creating a new, super-rational man (returns “consciencia”). Pretty unique authority process. The other few super-charismatic leaders, eg., Hitler, generally receive irrational support from their followers, and lead them to more irrationality.

Case Study in Charismatic Authority: Fidel and the Dove

The armed conflict between the 26th of July Movement and the Government of Cuba came to an end in the early morning hours of New Years' Day 1959. Facing limited prospects for success, then-president Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic at 3 AM. The Commanders of the Revolution, as the leaders of the armed movement came to be known, quickly secured control over the provinces in the aftermath of Batista's departure. On January 8, 1959, Fidel Castro Ruz entered the city of Havana. On that very day, he delivered a lengthy victory speech in which he recounted the years that had preceded that occasion and outlined a course of action for the coming year.

At a pivotal moment in the speech, a dove landed on his shoulder and two others hovered around the stage. Over the past 50 years, this landing has been the subject of much speculation, controversy, and worship. Some have claimed that Luis Conte Agüero, at the time a Fidel ally and mentor, had spent the previous week training the dove for this performance. Others have suggested that lead pellets had been placed in the dove's beak prior to its release, weighing it down and forcing it to grasp for the first available... shoulder. Additional explanations have ranged from the random to the pheromonal.


Whatever the reasons for the dove landing, the dove landed. And hundreds of thousands of people watched as it landed on the shoulder of the man who would go on to become the longest serving head of state in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Millions more saw pictures of the seemingly unbelievable occurrence in the nation's newspapers and television channels.

As Fidel assured Cuban mothers that he "would do everything in his power to solve all of the nation's problems without a single drop of blood being shed," the dove (and the community of doves that stood beside it) entrusted the 32-year-old revolutionary with the power to lead them into a differentiated state of affairs. In one totalizing moment, the natural seemed to yield to the discursive, the impossible seemed possible, and the mythic peacefully gave credence to the political. It is this last point, whereby new power structures arose from what, at first glance, may have looked like thin air, that holds particular salience for the course.

How did Castro parlay his victory (or Batista's defeat) into authority with a monopoly on violence? In other words, how did Castro's authority achieve legitimacy? One possible explanation for this process of legitimation rests on the notion of charismatic authority, one of three ideal types (Idealtyp) that German sociologist Max Weber used to classify forms of political domination, best explained in his aptly-titled book, The Three Types of Legitimate Rule.

Richard R. Fagen notes that Weber defines charisma as "a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with superhuman, supernatural, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities." Some who witnessed the dove-on-the-shoulder moment perceived it as nothing short of a miracle, an anointment from the heavens, a moment of spiritual transcendence. This moment, then, corresponds directly with the formation (or at least, the concretization) of Fidel's authority-cum-charisma. Whether a symbol of divine kingmaking or a happenstance call to peace, the dove created (or contributed to) a visual narrative of Fidel's legitimacy. Please refer to Fagen's article, "Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro," originally published in the June 1965 Western Political Quarterly, for an overview of the relationship between charisma and authority vis-à-vis 1959-1965 Fidel Castro. (The article is one of the readings for Week 8.) Alternatively, turn to Alejo Carpentier's El Reino de Este Mundo for a literary take on charismatic authority in the context of the Haitian Revolution.



An editorial on the front page of the January 9, 1959 edition of Diario de la Marina, one of Cuba's leading center-right newspapers at the time, declared:

Cuando todo el pueblo de Cuba escuchaba ayer las palabras del supremo adalid del movimiento revolucionario, comandante doctor Fidel Castro, pronunciadas desde el polígono de la Ciudad Militar de Columbia, una paloma blanca, una de las muchas que soltó al vuelo la mano limpia de nuestro pueblo, vino a posarse sobre el hombro del Comandante en Jefe del Ejército Rebelde. Nosotros, junto a la mayoría abrumadora de todos los cubanos, no podemos creer que tal suceso haya sido una simple incidencia, una anécdota sin importancia.

No; en la paloma blanca sobre la mano diestra de Fidel Castro vimos un claro signo del Altísimo, porque ese signo universal de la paz traduce e interpreta cabalmente el gran deseo, la voluntad entera, de todo el pueblo cubano.

The editorial affirms that it saw "a clear sign of Providence" in the white dove, "the universal sign of peace that fully translates and interprets the grand wish, the entire will, of the Cuban people." (The newspaper would go on to cease publication in May 1960 in response to government pressure and organized acts of violence and vandalism.)

The first minute of the following clip from Estela Bravo's 2001 documentary, Fidel: The Untold Story, shows video evidence of the landing and delves into its perceived religious significance:



The dove landing continues to hold currency in Cuban politics. A January 2008 Reuters article, in which a Cuban babalao (high priest in the Santería religion) asserts that Fidel is "untouchable," includes the following:

Santería followers have believed their gods were on Fidel Castro's side ever since a white dove landed on his shoulder during a victory speech in Havana after his 1959 revolution.

The following video shows a March 2009 performance-art piece assembled by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, in which members of the audience were given the opportunity to speak for one minute in front of a microphone as two actors placed a dove atop their shoulder, evoking (arguably, parodying and subverting) Fidel's 1959 speech:



The story of Fidel's dove and its many photographic iterations serve as a reminder of the continued interplay between charisma and the reified power relations of the Cuban Revolution.

Voluntary Work -- The Official Story

Contemporary narrative of Moral Incentives: Bohemia 2009

Key Points on the Literacy Campaign

Key Events of the Literacy Campaign:

• Summer 1957: Sierra Manifesto decreed that upon victory there would be an “immediate start of an intensive campaign against illiteracy”
• April 1959: Literacy Commission established to lay the groundwork for an eventual campaign
• September 26, 1960: Fidel Castro announces Literacy Initiative at the General Assembly of the United Nations
• October 1960: Literacy Commission replaced by National Literacy Commission to prepare for the broad effort in 1961
• Late 1960: National Literacy Commission produces major teaching materials (Alfabeticemos, Let’s Alphabetize, and Venceremos, We Shall Triumph). Both had significant political content
• November 1960-August 1961: Census to locate illiterates was conducted on an ongoing basis. 985,000 were located by August ‘61
• January 23, 1961: Castro announces that Conrado Benitez was assassinated by counterrevolutionaries while teaching in Las Villas
• January 28, 1961: Castro announces that all secondary and pre-university schools would close on April 15. This freed 100,000 literacy workers from the ranks of students older than 13 years. // Same time that “Conrado Benitez Brigades” were formed
• April 1961: Bay of Pigs invasion. Distracted Fidel for a few days, but gave more impetus to the literacy campaign as a tool to combat hostility from outside by strengthening the Revolution
• May 1961-August 1961: Members of Conrado Benitez Brigades are trained at Varadero beach.
• August 1961: Fidel Castro calls up 30,000 brigadistas obreros from the Confederation of Cuban Workers
• September 1961: National Literacy Congress convened to celebrate, criticize, and plan improvemenets in the literacy campaign
• September 18, 1961: Fidel Castro says that teachers would be required to work on the literacy campaign for the last three months of the year (no longer a voluntary program)
• Late November, 1961: Manuel Asunce (literacy worker) killed by counterrevolutionaries. Gives impetus to the final few weeks of the campaign much like the Conrado Benitez’s murder gave impetus to the start of the movement.
• December 15, 1961: Trains with literacy workers pour into Havana celebrating success (similar to entrance of victorious guerillas in 1959- Fagan, 53)
• December 22, 1961: Grand finale of the illiteracy campaign // In his speech Castro emphasized the theme that “while the mercenary [US-backed] army had been drawing up battle plans to attack Cuba, the Cubans had been drawing up battle plans to eradicate illiteracy” (Fagan 54) // At the end, one out of four eligible Cubans had participated as volunteers in the literacy campaign

Analysis:

One of the literacy campaign’s successes was the mobilization of both the literacy workers and the illiterate towards political ends. Parts of this analysis stems from Fagan and part stems from course lectures.

Facing the end of guerilla warfare, which had defined the very existence of the revolutionaries, there needed to be some cause, some mechanism to make revolutionaries out of young people who had not had a chance to fight in the Sierra Maestra. To crystallize commitment to the revolution, according to Castro, young people and teachers had to go out and spread its work to the masses. The youth involved in the literacy campaign were agents of social change, but, perhaps more importantly, their political fervor was galvanized by the transformative experience of bringing the Revolution to the masses.

The goal of teaching those who were illiterate to read was a noble one; however, literacy can also be seen as a proxy to political participation and support of the Castro regime. As Professor Dominguez said in one of the Q&A sessions, many were taught that “F is for Fidel” and “I is for Imperialism.” Those who were taught to read had their eyes opened to the written word at a time when only government-run newspapers or approved books were legally available. Was the goal of the Castro regime social justice or political consolidation and loyalty? It is difficult to tell for sure, but the answer is probably a combination of both. They were creating a revolution in the name of improving the situation of the lowest classes, but they also had to ensure that they maintained the support of the lower classes through political mobilization.