The Vanguard Will Be the Guerrilla Movement, 1968–1979

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-105
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Guerrilla Movement ◽  
Formative Years ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter explores how guerrilla motifs were still readily discernible in the official discourse of the 1970s. Scholarly studies have often overlooked this period in the Revolution’s trajectory, designating it simply as a decade of “Sovietization,” or, to use the Cuban term, increased “institutionalization.” What the evidence in this chapter reveals is that, though the Revolution underwent a profound structural change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of the beliefs and values which underpinned the revolutionary project in its formative years—that is, those linked to a guerrilla ethos—were still being promoted well into the Revolution’s second decade in power.

Consolidating the Revolution, 1959–1968

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-69
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter comprises an in-depth analysis of the revolutionary leadership’s discourse between 1959 and 1968, a year often pinpointed by external observers as heralding a move away from the guerrilla-style, empirical management of the Revolution towards a more structured, Soviet-inspired approach. The chapter also charts the way in which the leaders of the Revolution employed guerrilla rhetoric from their very first days in power, thus gradually embedding guerrilla-related motifs into the official discourse. In turn, this language helped to shape a new political culture that not only reinforced the legitimacy of the revolutionary project but also gave the impression of conferring ownership for its development onto the Cuban people.

scholarly journals Quakes and aftershocks

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Masashi Yui ◽  
Robert Gregory
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Peak Period ◽  
State Sector ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Revolution

This article draws upon co-author Masashi Yui’s unique database on state sector organisational restructuring in New Zealand from 1960 to 2017. It shows that if the peak years of structural change, 1986–92 – the ‘revolution’ which saw New Zealand as a world leader in what became known as New Public Management – were seismic shocks, then they have been followed by an apparently endless number of aftershocks, which distinguish the post-peak period from the 25 years preceding it. The article speculates as to whether there could be links between the amount of organisational restructuring, unsatisfactory productivity rates in the New Zealand state sector, and the embedding of the ‘managerialist’ culture that was introduced by the ‘revolution’.

“They Committed No Crime”

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Indigenous Politics ◽  
San Pedro ◽  
The Town ◽  
Guerrilla Movement ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter provides a summary overview of indigenous politics in the town of San Pedro Necta from the 1940s to the early 1980s, focused on experiences with the dictatorship, armed rebellion, and state violence. The rest of the chapter explores how Sampedranos narrated this past after years of army efforts to promote official memories and subsequent truth commissions. I focus particularly on how they narrated themselves as uninvolved with the guerrilla movement, and as being caught “between two armies” during the armed conflict. It also examines how these frames were rooted in identities predicated on the failure of the revolution that took hold on a post-genocidal landscape of memory. I examine how these frames open and close spaces for indigenous agency in neoliberal democracy.

Guerrillerismo in the Shadows, 1980–1989

2019 ◽  
pp. 106-127
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Soviet Model ◽  
The Revolution

By examining the official discourse of the Cuban Revolution in the 1980s, this chapter paints a more complex picture of the decade than has commonly been portrayed in the literature. Far from being a time in which the Revolution was subsumed by its adherence to the Soviet model, the tracing of the relative absence or presence of guerrillerismo demonstrates that the 1980s was a decade of shifting ideological currents, a decade in which the use of a guerrilla rhetoric served different functions at different points. This chapter argues that one such function in the late 1980s (as well as in other decades), was to undermine the proliferation of a “siege mentality.”

The Guerrilla Legacy of the Cuban Revolution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Extensive Analysis ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
The One ◽  
Che Guevara

The Guerrilla Legacy of the Cuban Revolution examines the way in which the guerrilla origins of the Cuban Revolution have shaped the beliefs and values that have underpinned it since 1959. It argues that these beliefs and values comprise a political culture in which the figure of the guerrillero (guerrilla fighter) is revered and the past struggles are presented in the revolutionary historical narrative as both unfinished and guerrilla in their nature. Drawing on extensive analysis of official discourse across six decades, the book outlines a consistent, conscious promotion of a guerrilla ethos throughout the Revolution’s trajectory. On the one hand, it demonstrates how this promotion has contributed to garnering legitimacy for the decades-long political authority of former guerrilleros, even long after the end of the armed struggle that brought them to power. On the other hand, it reveals how, as part of the Revolution’s many mobilization drives since 1959, Cuban citizens have been encouraged to emulate the attributes embodied by guerrilleros heroicos such as Che Guevara and Antonio Maceo. Ultimately, the book proposes that it is this guerrilla discourse that holds the key to understanding not only the survival of the Revolution but also the longevity of its leadership.

Cuban Photography after 1959

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-154
Author(s):  
Iliana Cepero
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Visual Phenomenon ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Material Scarcity ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The Revolution

Art historian and curator Iliana Cepero analyzes how some photographers deviated from the official discourse of the 1959 Revolution as an epic and messianic process of liberation from imperialism and class oppression. Instead, as Cepero highlights, several artists (such as the 1960s artists María Eugenia Haya, aka Marucha, and José Alberto Figueroa) used photography both as a medium of self-expression and as a way to explore alternative narratives of daily life in Cuba. More recently, a new generation of photographers—among them, Eduardo García—has documented the material scarcity, poverty, marginalization, racial discrimination, and other intractable problems of contemporary Cuban society. Cepero concludes: “Cuban photography today, both in its documentary and conceptual approaches, aspires to dismantle the epic paradigm with which the Revolution came to be known as a visual phenomenon.”

Surviving the Special Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-150
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Special Period ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter focuses on the so-called Special Period in Cuba, a time of heightened instability and a profound economic crisis that, in 1991, resulted in the collapse of the country’s principal political and economic ally: The Soviet Union. It makes the case that the guerrilla code is a recourse the Cuban leadership turns to when trying to steel the population to face a series of unprecedented challenges. It also argues that, to the Cuban people, guerrillerismo was a guide for how to move the Revolution forward; evidence for this is found in this chapter’s examination of the official discourse during the “Battle of Ideas” moment at the turn of the millennium.

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