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161-415: The dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by an armed guerrilla movement known as the 26th of July Movement ( Movimiento 26 de Julio ) on January 1, 1959. The new revolutionary government, led by Fidel Castro , immediately began a series of social and economic reforms. Among these were agrarian reform, health care reform, and education reform, all of which dramatically improved the quality of life among

322-636: A 'style of thought' based on the antinomy of East and West in their world-views, and also as a 'corporate institution' for dealing with the Orient." In concordance with philosopher Michel Foucault , Said established that power and knowledge are the inseparable components of the intellectual binary relationship with which Occidentals claim "knowledge of the Orient." That the applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby control Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies. The power-knowledge binary relation

483-562: A 10-year tax exemption, and waive duties on imported equipment and furnishings for new hotels. Each casino would pay the government $ 250,000 for the license, plus a percentage of the profits. The policy omitted background checks, as required for casino operations in the United States, which opened the door for casino investors with illegally obtained funds. Cuban contractors with the right connections made windfalls by importing, duty-free, more materials than needed for new hotels and selling

644-455: A Batista. In the registration records of the Banes courthouse, he was legally Rubén Zaldívar until 1939, when he tried to register as a presidential candidate under the name Fulgencio Batista. When it was discovered that no birth certificate existed for a "Fulgencio Batista", he had to postpone his candidacy registration and pay 15,000 pesos to the local judge. Batista was initially educated at

805-408: A clear or complete description of the area it supposedly refers to, it instead erases distinctions and identities of the groups it claims to represent. A postcolonial critique of this term would analyze the self-justifying usage of such a term, the discourse it occurs within, as well as the philosophical and political functions the language may have. Postcolonial critiques of homogeneous concepts such as

966-540: A combination of peaceful protests and guerrilla warfare in both rural and urban areas of Cuba between 1956 and 1958. After almost two years of fighting, rebel forces led by Guevara successfully defeated Batista's forces at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Eve, 1958, effectively collapsing the regime. On January 1, 1959, Batista announced his resignation, fleeing the country to the Dominican Republic under

1127-615: A common goal, increasing solidarity. The first whispers of the Cuban Literacy Campaign came about in the form of a preparatory period that lasted between September and December 1960. The efforts to prepare for the Literacy Campaign were vast and complicated while demanding the inclusion of many departments of government to ensure the success of educating and locating brigadistas, providing oversight to them, and ensuring their successful return home. Additionally,

1288-553: A cultural Other is salving your conscience...allowing you not to do any homework." Moreover, postcolonial studies also reject the colonial cultural depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics of the European colonists and their Western ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern peoples as the passive recipient-vessels of the imperial and colonial power of the Mother Country. Consequent to Foucault's philosophic model of

1449-486: A deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism , including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history , and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography , political science , philosophy , sociology , and human geography . Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine

1610-671: A friendship and business relationship that flourished for a decade. During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed that, in return for kickbacks, Batista would give Lansky and the Mafia control of Havana's racetracks and casinos. After World War II, Luciano was paroled from prison on the condition that he permanently return to Sicily. Luciano secretly moved to Cuba, where he worked to resume control over American Mafia operations. Luciano also ran

1771-402: A hardline communist and fierce friend to Fidel Castro – completely fabricated this figure, among many other fabrications he wrote in the famous section of Bohemia he directed that was called " En Cuba." Fidel Castro later positioned Enrique de la Osa to become director of Bohemia, and forced Miguel Ángel Quevedo into exile. These tactics ultimately failed to quell unrest and instead were

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1932-589: A heart attack in 1973. Batista was born in the town of Veguita , located in the municipality of Banes , Cuba, in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo and Carmela Zaldívar González, who had fought in the Cuban War of Independence . He was of Spanish, African, Chinese, and possibly some Taíno descent. Both Batista's parents are believed to have been of mixed race and one may have had Indigenous Caribbean blood. His mother named him Rubén and gave him her last name, Zaldívar. His father did not want to register him as

2093-484: A higher purpose in life, whereby the more powerful, more developed, and more civilized races have the right to colonize other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilization" and its economic benefits. Postcolonial theory holds that decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity that is based on cultural interactions between different identities (cultural, national, and ethnic as well as gender and class based) which are assigned varying degrees of social power by

2254-539: A mentally cathartic practise, which purges colonial servility from the native psyche , and restores self-respect to the subjugated. Thus, Fanon actively supported and participated in the Algerian Revolution (1954–62) for independence from France as a member and representative of the Front de Libération Nationale . As postcolonial praxis , Fanon's mental health analyses of colonialism and imperialism, and

2415-652: A number of casinos in Cuba with the sanction of Batista, though the American government eventually succeeded in pressuring the Batista government to deport him. Batista encouraged large-scale gambling in Havana. In 1955, he announced that Cuba would grant a gaming license to anyone who invested US$ 1 million in a hotel or $ 200,000 in a new nightclub—and that the government would provide matching public funds for construction,

2576-549: A problem as graduates entering the workforce could not find jobs. These were dealt with through increasing repression. All youth were seen as suspected revolutionaries. Due to its continued opposition to Batista and the large amount of revolutionary activity taking place on its campus, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956 (it did not reopen until 1959 under the first revolutionary government). On March 13, 1957, student leader José Antonio Echeverría

2737-494: A public school in Banes and later attended night classes at an American Quaker school . He left home at age 14, after the death of his mother. Coming from a humble background, he earned a living as a laborer in the cane fields, docks, and railroads. He was a tailor, mechanic, charcoal vendor and fruit peddler. In 1921, he traveled to Havana, and in April joined the army as a private. After learning shorthand and typing, Batista left

2898-519: A race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity, and almost no sense of honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers,

3059-577: A result, the playwright Arthur Miller described Batista's Cuba in The Nation as "hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, (and) a bordello for Americans and other foreigners." In a bid to profit from such an environment, Batista established lasting relationships with organized crime , notably with American mobsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano , and under his rule Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas ". Batista and Lansky formed

3220-545: A specific area, demonstrate the interdependence of movements and the shared pursuit of justice and emancipation. Colonialism was presented as "the extension of civilization," which ideologically justified the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-Western world. This concept was espoused by Ernest Renan in La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship

3381-422: A standard grey uniform, a warm blanket, a hammock, two textbooks — Alfabeticemos and Venceremos — and a gas-powered lantern, so that lessons could be given at night after work ended. The campaign aimed to bring Cubans up to a standard reading level. The benchmark was set at achieving the reading ability of a first grader, a limit that allowed the organization to be more efficient and effective. Pre-revolution,

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3542-492: A subaltern woman, she applied to her voice the Spanish cultural filters of sexism , Christian monotheism, and servile language, in addressing her colonial master: I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour, declare that I have, in the city of Cartagena, a daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she has written, to call for me, in order to help me. I will take with me, in my company, a daughter of mine, her sister, named María, of

3703-412: A system that comes after colonialism , as the prefix post- may suggest. As such, postcolonialism may be thought of as a reaction to or departure from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism ; the term postcolonialism itself is modeled on postmodernism, with which it shares certain concepts and methods. A clear reflection of the continuous fights for independence around

3864-573: A team of Cubans led by Leonela Relys, a former brigadista, entitled Yo sí puedo (Yes I can) which gained momentum with each successful country adaption including Nicaragua's literacy campaign in the 1980s. The literacy campaigns were even further propelled into the international stage by the 2004 creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America, ALBA). Now,

4025-485: A triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms." In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty charts the subaltern history of the Indian struggle for independence, and counters Eurocentric , Western scholarship about non-Western peoples and cultures, by proposing that Western Europe simply be considered as culturally equal to

4186-567: A warning to others who were considering joining the insurgency. Additionally, "Hundreds of mangled bodies were left hanging from lamp posts or dumped in the streets in a grotesque variation of the Spanish colonial practice of public executions." The brutal behavior backfired and increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958, 45 organizations signed an open letter supporting July 26 Movement, among them national bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants, and social workers. The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships, tanks and

4347-856: A week, 15% to 20% of the labor force was chronically unemployed, and only a third of the homes had running water. Despite this, according to the International Labour Organization , the average industrial salary in Cuba became the world's eighth-highest in 1958, and the average agricultural wage was higher than some European nations (although, according to one sample from 1956 to 1957, agricultural workers could only find employment for an average of 123 days per year while farm owners, rural tenants and sharecroppers worked an average of only 135 days per year). Brothels flourished. A major industry grew up around them; government officials received bribes, policemen collected protection money. Prostitutes could be seen standing in doorways, strolling

4508-425: Is Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks . In this book, Fanon discusses the logic of colonial rule from the perspective of the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. Fanon treats colonialism as a total project which rules every aspect of colonized peoples and their reality. Fanon reflects on colonialism, language, and racism and asserts that to speak a language is to adopt a civilization and to participate in

4669-439: Is a more suited term because "the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority. Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism. Those European modernities, projected through

4830-553: Is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear. On July 26, 1953, just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago . Government forces easily defeated

4991-407: Is believed to be a problematic application of the term, as the immediate, historical, political time is not included in the categories of critical identity-discourse, which deals with over-inclusive terms of cultural representation, which are abrogated and replaced by postcolonial criticism. As such, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism denote aspects of the subject matter that indicate that

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5152-406: Is better known by its title, Venceremos (English: We Shall Conquer ). This training time ran from January until late April in 1961. Beginning in April, Fidel elected to close schools down early for the summer. He did so in order to allow students to supplement their missed class time by joining the literacy campaign and teach illiterate adults. This plan saw a number of students encouraged to join

5313-422: Is conceptually essential to identify and understand colonialism in general, and European colonialism in particular. Hence, To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the orientalist, brought into reality by them or as a kind of cultural and international proletariat useful for

5474-427: Is considered by E. San Juan, Jr. as "the originator and inspiring patron-saint of postcolonial theory and discourse" due to his interpretation of the theory of orientalism explained in his 1978 book, Orientalism . To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the " Occident " and the " Orient "—Said developed the denotations and connotations of

5635-470: Is necessary to thoroughly reconsider historical narratives, acknowledge a variety of viewpoints, and work to create inclusive and equitable societies that enable people to affirm and reclaim their distinct cultural identities in the post-colonial era. As a term in contemporary history , postcolonialism occasionally is applied, temporally, to denote the immediate time after the period during which imperial powers retreated from their colonial territories. Such

5796-418: Is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie... In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern .... Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and

5957-414: Is owed in part to the fact that it brought the systematic issues in the country to the attention of the government. Major issues like health and healthcare in Cuba , as well the lack of accessibility for child care, and other disadvantages largely determined by class, were proving to be barriers to education in Cuba . This enlightenment allowed them to alter some of the structural issues that were inhibiting

6118-406: Is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism , focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of

6279-508: The Isle of Pines , while some officers were sentenced to death for treason. Many others were allowed to remain in the military without reprimand. The purge of the officer corps contributed to the inability of the Cuban army to successfully combat Castro and his guerrillas. Batista's police responded to increasing popular unrest by torturing and killing young men in the cities. However, his army

6440-524: The Sergeants' Revolt , as part of the coup that overthrew the government of Gerardo Machado . Machado was succeeded by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada , who lacked a political coalition that could sustain him and was soon replaced. A short-lived five-member presidency, known as the Pentarchy of 1933 , was established. The Pentarchy included a representative from each anti-Machado faction. Batista

6601-924: The Third World concept, it ignores the why those regions or countries are considered Third World and who is responsible. One of the ongoing struggles is balancing the cultural heritage of the indigenous people with the norms and values imposed by colonizers. This can cause identity fracture and a sense of displacement in people as well as communities.  In addition, the hierarchical social structures that were created during colonial control have continued to support inequalities in power and injustice, which contributed to identity conflicts based on gender, class, and ethnicity. These problems are not just historical artifacts; rather, they are fundamental components of society and are expressed in current discussions about government, language, education, and cultural representation. In order to address these persistent identity problems, it

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6762-504: The decolonized world is an intellectual space "of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity , and of liminalities." As in most critical theory-based research, the lack of clarity in the definition of the subject matter coupled with an open claim to normativity makes criticism of postcolonial discourse problematic, reasserting its dogmatic or ideological status. In Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins clarify

6923-421: The " Arabs ," the " First World ," " Christendom ," and the " Ummah ", often aim to show how such language actually does not represent the groups supposedly identified. Such terminology often fails to adequately describe the heterogeneous peoples, cultures, and geography that make them up. Accurate descriptions of the world's peoples, places, and things require nuanced and accurate terms. By including everyone under

7084-593: The 'us-and-them' binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by ' the other '. As an example, consider how neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity often includes the relegating of decolonized peoples, their cultures, and their countries, to an imaginary place, such as "the Third World ." Oftentimes the term "the third World" is over-inclusive: it refers vaguely to large geographic areas comprising several continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Rather than providing

7245-515: The Batista dictatorship" and "completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people". Such actions later "enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life." According to historian and author James S. Olson , the U.S. government essentially became a "co-conspirator" in the arrangement because of Batista's strong opposition to communism, which, in

7406-613: The Chicago meeting in 1932. Lansky set about cleaning up the games at the Montmartre Club, which soon became the "place to be" in Havana. He also wanted to open a casino in the Hotel Nacional, the most elegant hotel in Havana. Batista endorsed Lansky's idea over the objections of American expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway , and the renovated casino wing opened for business in 1955 with a show by Eartha Kitt . The casino

7567-561: The Cuban Revolutionary Party, participated through the political campaign but withdrew from the campaign days before election day, charging that his supporters had been terrorized. Thus Batista was elected president with the support of 45.6% of registered voters. Despite the boycott, Grau received the support of 6.8% of those who voted. The remaining voters abstained. By late 1955, student riots and anti-Batista demonstrations had become frequent, and unemployment became

7728-511: The Eisenhower administration for supporting him. “I loved Havana and was horrified by the way this lovely city had unfortunately been transformed into a huge casino and brothel for American businessmen […]. My fellow countrymen walked the streets, picked up fourteen-year-old Cuban girls and threw coins just for the pleasure of watching men roll around in the sewers and picking them up. One wondered how Cubans – seeing this reality – could regard

7889-488: The European race.... Let each do what he is made for, and all will be well. From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity language was the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical competition amongst the European and American empires and meant to protect their over-extended economies. Especially in the colonization of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth century Scramble for Africa ,

8050-601: The First Grade. The end of the literacy battles was the success of the Battle for the Ninth Grade waged in the early 1980s and by 1989 the literacy level of the island was above the ninth grade level. However, by 1980 1.5 million participating adults had already achieved the sixth grade reading level and were already in the planning to continue a path of permanent education for all. Cuban literacy educators trained during

8211-405: The Hotel Nacional, the Montmartre Club, and others—was said to be 30%. Lansky was said to have personally contributed millions of dollars per year to Batista's Swiss bank accounts. At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands—almost all the cattle ranches—90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions—80 percent of the utilities—practically all

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8372-448: The Orient for its own subjective purposes, one that lacks a native and intimate understanding. Such industries become institutionalized and eventually become a resource for manifest Orientalism, or for compiling misinformation about the Orient. The ideology of Empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made subtle use of reason and recruited science and history to serve its ends. These subjective fields of academia now synthesize

8533-622: The Progressive Action Party, but he never regained his former popular support, though the unions supported him until the end. In 1952, Batista again ran for president. In a three-way race, Roberto Agramonte of the Orthodox Party led in all the polls, followed by Carlos Hevia of the Authentic Party . Batista's United Action coalition was running a distant third. On March 10, 1952, three months before

8694-481: The Revolution and had strong political messages, which made the movement a target of opposition. Some parents who were fearful of their children being put under military supervision and made to leave their homes to teach, had their children leave Cuba through Operation Peter Pan . "Before 1959 it was the countryside versus the city. The literacy campaign united the country because, for the first time, people from

8855-585: The Treasury is in full swing with the result that Dr. Grau will probably find empty coffers when he takes office on October 10. It is blatant that President Batista desires that Dr. Grau San Martin should assume obligations which in fairness and equity should be a matter of settlement by the present Administration. Shortly after, Batista left Cuba for the United States. "I just felt safer there," he said. He divorced his wife, Elisa Godínez , and married Marta Fernández in 1945. Two of their four children were born in

9016-602: The U.S. envoy Sumner Welles , forced him to resign in January 1934. Grau was replaced by Carlos Mendieta , and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted eleven months. Batista then became the strongman behind a succession of puppet presidents until he was elected president in 1940. After Mendieta, succeeding governments were led by José Agripino Barnet (five months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (seven months) before Federico Laredo Brú ruled from December 1936 to October 1940. Batista defeated Grau in

9177-476: The United States Government. Supporters of the revolution who were too young or otherwise unable to participate in the downfall of Fulgencio Batista saw the campaign as an opportunity to contribute to the success of the new government and hoped to instill a revolutionary consciousness in their students. Many of the instructional texts used during the Literacy Campaign focused on the history of

9338-584: The United States in any other way than with hatred.” I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it

9499-708: The United States. For the next eight years, Batista remained in the background, spending time in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and a home in Daytona Beach, Florida. He continued to participate in Cuban politics and was elected to the Cuban Senate in absentia in 1948. Returning to Cuba, he decided to run for president and received permission from President Grau, whereupon he formed the United Action Party. On taking power he founded

9660-486: The United States. Believing Barquín would support his rule, Batista promoted him to General. However, Barquín's Conspiración de los Puros (Conspiracy of the Pure) was already underway and had already progressed too far. On April 6, 1956, Barquín led hundreds of career officers in a coup attempt, but was frustrated by Lieutenant Ríos Morejón, who betrayed the plan. Barquín was sentenced to solitary confinement for eight years on

9821-593: The West could progress—beyond the colonial perspective—by means of introspective self-criticism of the basic ideas and investigative methods that establish a culturally superior West studying the culturally inferior non–Western peoples. Hence, the integration of the subaltern voice to the intellectual spaces of social studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic opposition to the idea of studying "Others"; Spivak rejected such an anti-intellectual stance by social scientists, and about them said that "to refuse to represent

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9982-400: The West's alter ego. It should be understood that this process draws creativity, amounting to an entire domain and discourse. In Orientalism (p. 6), Said mentions the production of "philology [the study of the history of languages], lexicography [dictionary making], history, biology, political and economic theory, novel-writing and lyric poetry." There is an entire industry that exploits

10143-546: The army in 1923, working briefly as a teacher of stenography before enlisting in the Guardia Rural ( rural police ). He transferred back to the army as a corporal, becoming secretary to a regimental colonel. In September 1933, he held the rank of sergeant stenographer and as such acted as the secretary of a group of non-commissioned officers who led a "sergeants' conspiracy" for better conditions and improved prospects of promotion. In 1933, Batista led an uprising called

10304-557: The assault and jailed its leaders, while many others fled the country. The primary leader of the attack, Fidel Castro , was a young attorney who had run for parliament in the canceled 1952 elections. Although Castro was never officially nominated, he felt that Batista's coup had sidetracked what would have been a promising political career for him. In the wake of the Moncada assault, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and increasingly relied on police tactics in an attempt to "frighten

10465-503: The assessment of the Cuban-American historian Louis Perez, "Havana was then what Las Vegas has become." Relatedly, it is estimated that by the end of the 1950s the city of Havana had 270 brothels. In addition, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum. And only slightly more expensive." As

10626-487: The binary relationship of power and knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective , proposed that anti-colonial resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power. In The Location of Culture (1994), theoretician Homi K. Bhabha argues that viewing the human world as composed of separate and unequal cultures, rather than as an integral human world, perpetuates the belief in

10787-497: The book On Becoming Cuban , "Daily life had developed into a relentless degradation, with the complicity of political leaders and public officials who operated at the behest of American interests." As a symbol of this relationship, ITT Corporation , an American-owned multinational telephone company, presented Batista with a Golden Telephone , as an "expression of gratitude" for the "excessive telephone rate increase", at least according to Senator John F. Kennedy, that Batista granted at

10948-407: The brutality of the police, the government's indifference to the needs of the people for education, medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice ... is an open invitation to revolution. Upon his seizure of power, Batista inherited a country that was relatively prosperous for Latin America. According to Batista's government, although a third of Cubans still lived in poverty, Cuba

11109-415: The campaign aimed to create a collective identity of “unity, [an] attitude of combat, courage, intelligence, and a sense of history.” Politicized educational materials were used to further these ideals. Furthermore, Castro went as far as to state the need for the rural populations to take on the role of teacher, educating the urban populations. The effort was labeled a movement of “the people” and gave citizens

11270-587: The campaign in 1964, are kept with photographs and details of all 100,000 volunteers in a museum in La Ciudad Libertad (City of Liberty), which is in Fulgencio Batista 's vast former headquarters in the western suburbs of Havana . Among the other prized possessions of the museum are samples of the manuals for brigadistas and the books meant for their students, the UNESCO report that cemented

11431-494: The campaign went on to assist in literacy campaigns in 15 other countries, for which a Cuban organization was awarded the King Sejong Literacy Prize by UNESCO . Additionally, over the past 50 years, thousands of Cuban literacy teachers have volunteered in countries such as Haiti , Nicaragua and Mozambique . The success of international literacy campaigns can be attributed to a flexible model developed by

11592-561: The campaign, approximately 105,664, and together they formed the Conrado Benitez Brigadistas. These students were put through a week-long intensive training to prepare them for the challenge ahead. In an effort to intensify the campaign, and ensure its success before the end of the year, Castro began to recruit more "educators" from the factories, and those who enlisted formed the Patria o Muerte worker's brigade. This

11753-402: The campaigns are present in 26 countries around the world and proof of the successful campaigns continues to be verified by UNESCO , which declared five Latin American countries free of illiteracy ( Cuba , Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia , Nicaragua ). However, not all exported programs are as successful such as the case of Timor-Leste in which changes in government, several spoken languages and

11914-408: The catalyst for more widespread resistance. For two years (December 1956 – December 1958) Fidel Castro 's 26th of July Movement and other rebelling elements led an urban- and rural-based guerrilla uprising against Batista's government, which culminated in his eventual defeat by rebels under the command of Che Guevara at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Day 1959. Batista immediately fled

12075-565: The citizenry), the field of postcolonialism addresses the matters that constitute the postcolonial identity of a decolonized people, which derives from: Postcolonialism is aimed at disempowering such theories (intellectual and linguistic, social and economic) by means of which colonialists "perceive," "understand," and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, and thus produce cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society, and economy, balancing

12236-571: The city understood how hard life was for people before the revolution, that they survived on their own, and that as people they had much in common. This was very important for the new government." Many of the Literacy Campaign's volunteers went on to pursue teaching careers, and the rate of teachers is now 11 times higher than it was before the revolution. Before the revolutionary government nationalized schools, private institutions often excluded large segments of society; wealthy Cubans often received exemplary instruction in private schools, while children of

12397-449: The collective head of state. He maintained control through a series of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was elected president on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944. After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted

12558-708: The colonial behavior happening due to the War on Terror. Acheraiou argues that colonialism was a capitalist venture moved by appropriation and plundering of foreign lands and was supported by military force and a discourse that legitimized violence in the name of progress and a universal civilizing mission. This discourse is complex and multi-faceted. It was elaborated in the 19th century by colonial ideologues such as Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau , but its roots reach far back in history. In Rethinking Postcolonialism: Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literature and

12719-439: The colonial society. In postcolonial literature , the anti-conquest narrative analyzes the identity politics that are the social and cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjects—their creative resistance to the culture of the colonizer ; how such cultural resistance complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the colonizers developed their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs

12880-407: The colonized. This language results from centuries of colonial domination which is aimed at eliminating other expressive forms in order to reflect the world of the colonizer. As a consequence, when colonial beings speak as the colonized, they participate in their own oppression and the very structures of alienation are reflected in all aspects of their adopted language. Cultural critic Edward Said

13041-525: The country from 1952 until his overthrow in the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants , which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada . Batista then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as

13202-401: The country's literacy rate was 96%, one of the highest in the world. With a surge in educated students, there was also an increased demand for teachers to fill schools and continue educating the masses that were now literate. The students were meant to continue their education as the government made it more accessible to achieve higher learning in the following years. The success of the campaign

13363-438: The course of inter-group discourse. The important distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but that, in its practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to pragmatically support the essential group-identity. Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe

13524-669: The cultural concept of "the East," which according to Said allowed the Europeans to suppress the peoples of the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and of Asia in general, from expressing and representing themselves as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the non-Western world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East." Therefore, in service to the colonial type of imperialism,

13685-610: The denotational functions, among which: The term post-colonialism —according to a too-rigid etymology—is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state. Not a naïve teleological sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and contestation of, colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies... A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than

13846-462: The destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world. Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself," because the colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non–Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing

14007-494: The effects of colonial rule on the practice of feminism , anarchism , literature , and Christian thought . At times, the term postcolonial studies may be preferred to postcolonialism , as the ambiguous term colonialism could refer either to a system of government, or to an ideology or world view underlying that system. However, postcolonialism (i.e., postcolonial studies) generally represents an ideological response to colonialist thought, rather than simply describing

14168-571: The effort under the guise of "masculine ideals". Hundreds of thousands of alfabetizadores marched to the Plaza de la Revolucion on December 22nd 1961, carrying giant pencils, chanting, "Fidel Fidel tell us what else we can do". "Study, study, study!" came the reply. Young teachers were sometimes murdered by insurgents in the Escambray rebellion due to their ties to the Cuban government. There are numerous accusations that these militants were backed by

14329-501: The election. Back in power and receiving financial, military and logistical support from the United States government , Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike . He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. Eventually, it reached

14490-464: The elections, Batista, with army backing, staged a coup and seized power . He ousted outgoing President Carlos Prío Socarrás , canceled the elections and took control of the government as a provisional president. The United States recognized his government on March 27. When asked by the U.S. government to analyze Batista's Cuba, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said: The corruption of the Government,

14651-408: The electoralists sought certain rights and guarantees to participate. The CIA had predicted that Batista would use any means necessary to ensure he won the election. Batista lived up to their expectations, utilizing fraud and intimidation to secure his presidency. This led most of the other parties to boycott the elections. Former President Ramón Grau San Martín , leading the electoralist factions of

14812-423: The elimination of indigenous knowledge and customs. Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life—based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators —from the point of view of the colonized people. On

14973-450: The exact numbers are unclear, it's believed the death toll is ranged between hundreds to up to 20,000. Batista's efforts to quell the unrest proved not only ineffective, but his tactics were the catalyst to even wider resistance against his regime. During this time, revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Che Guevara , founders of the July 26th Movement began a resistance campaign that saw

15134-434: The existence of imaginary peoples and places—" Christendom " and the " Islamic World ", " First World ," " Second World ," and the " Third World ." To counter such linguistic and sociological reductionism , postcolonial praxis establishes the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth and authenticity; thereby, hybridity is the philosophic condition that most substantively challenges

15295-597: The first presidential election (1940) under the new Cuban constitution , and served a four-year term as President of Cuba, the first and to this day only non-white Cuban in that office. Batista was endorsed by the Democratic Socialist Coalition and the original Cuban Communist Party (later known as the Popular Socialist Party ), which at the time had little significance and no probability of an electoral victory. This support

15456-501: The formation of the cohesive, collective European cultural identity denoted by the term "The West." With this described binary logic, the West generally constructs the Orient subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore, descriptions of the Orient by the Occident lack material attributes, grounded within the land. This imaginative interpretation ascribes female characteristics to the Orient and plays into fantasies that are inherent within

15617-431: The foundational aspects of art necessitated by changes in one's unique historical position. In the post-colonial history of art, this marked the departure from Eurocentric unilateral idea of modernism to alternative context sensitive modernisms . The brief survey of the individual works of the core Santiniketan artists and the thought perspectives they open up makes clear that though there were various contact points in

15778-423: The generation, production, and distribution of knowledge) about the colonized peoples of the non-Western world. The cultural and religious assumptions of colonialist logic remain active practices in contemporary society and are the basis of the Mother Country's neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial subjects—an economical source of labour and raw materials. It acts as a non interchangeable term that links

15939-405: The government placed urban teachers in rural environments, where they were pushed to become like the peasants in order to break down social barriers. As Fidel Castro put it in 1961 while addressing literacy teachers, “You will teach, and you will learn.” Volunteers from the city were often ignorant of the poor conditions of rural citizens until their experiences during this campaign. Besides literacy,

16100-481: The growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions. These murders mounted in 1957, as socialist ideas became more influential. While

16261-437: The history of the literacy campaign as it spreads to other parts of the world. In 2011, producer and director Catherine Murphy released the 33-minute documentary Maestra about the Cuban literacy campaign. The film includes interviews with volunteers who taught during the campaign and archival footage from 1961. Catherine Murphy documents the transgressions of gender roles by young female volunteers against their families and

16422-423: The history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European) imperial power. Postcolonial, as in the postcolonial condition, is to be understood, as Mahmood Mamdani puts it, as a reversal of colonialism but not as superseding it. As an epistemology (i.e., a study of knowledge , its nature, and verifiability), ethics ( moral philosophy ), and as a political science (i.e., in its concern with affairs of

16583-510: The ideological validity of colonialism. In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence, " Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism " was an important exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of Modern Art . In his catalogue essay, Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism, which later emerged as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art , specifically

16744-558: The imbalanced us-and-them binary power-relationship between the colonist and the colonial subjects. Understanding the complex chain of political and social, economic, and cultural impacts left in the aftermath of colonial control is essential to understanding post-colonialism. A wide range of experiences are included in post-colonial discourse, from ongoing battles against colonialism and globalization to struggles for independence. The long-lasting effects of colonialism will be faced by them, such as identity issues, structural injustices, and

16905-471: The independent country to its colonizer, depriving countries of their Independence , decades after building their own identities. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon analyzes and medically describes the nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity —is harmful to the mental health of

17066-658: The island with an amassed personal fortune to the Dominican Republic , where strongman and previous military ally Rafael Trujillo held power. Batista eventually found political asylum in António Salazar 's Portugal , where he first lived on the island of Madeira and then in Estoril . He was involved in business activities in Francoist Spain and was staying there in Marbella at the time of his death from

17227-547: The lack of a post-literacy program all unite to create dangerous circumstances in which literacy campaign students might revert to illiteracy. The Museum for the National Literacy Campaign (Museo Nacional de la Campaña de Alfabetización) is located in Escolar Libertad city and was inaugurated December 29, 1964. The thank-you letters to Fidel Castro , used by UNESCO to evaluate the success of

17388-487: The latest technology, such as napalm , which he used against the insurgency. However, in March 1958, the U.S. announced it would stop selling arms to the Cuban government. Soon after, the U.S. imposed an arms embargo, further weakening the government's position, although landowners and others who benefited from the government continued to support Batista. Post-colonial Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory )

17549-487: The literacy brigade — known as the Alfabetizadores populares — the curriculum and familiarizing them with the text that would be used to teach their students. This book, which had been written specifically for the purposes of the campaign was titled, Alfabeticemos (English: Let's Teach Literacy ), brigaders were also exposed to the student primer, which would help them to better educate their students. This primer

17710-509: The lowest sectors of Cuban society. During the turmoil of the first several years of the revolution, the flight of many skilled workers caused a “ brain drain .” This loss of human capital sparked a renovation of the Cuban education system to accommodate the instruction of new workers, who would take the place of those who had emigrated from the country. In addition to the renewal of Cuba's infrastructure , there were strong ideological reasons for education reform. In pre-Revolutionary Cuba, there

17871-476: The merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism. The term post-colonialism is also applied to denote the Mother Country 's neocolonial control of the decolonized country, affected by the legalistic continuation of the economic, cultural, and linguistic power relationships that controlled the colonial politics of knowledge (i.e.,

18032-408: The most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern'... They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern. Spivak also introduced

18193-472: The native peoples who were subjugated into colonies. Fanon writes that the ideological essence of colonialism is the systematic denial of "all attributes of humanity" of the colonized people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives. For Fanon, the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. Hence, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as

18354-656: The new culture emerging in a post-Revolutionary socialist Cuba. Women taking up the role of educators was not a new occurrence in Cuba, but the militarization of the role came about in conjunction with the Cuban Literacy Campaign. Castro himself claimed in a speech given in May 1961, that the Cuban Revolution had two armies, the militias commonly associated with the revolution, and his "army of literacy teachers" or alfabetizadores who were responsible for waging war against illiteracy. A traditional responsibility of women

18515-532: The oil industry—and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports. In a manner that antagonized the Cuban people, the U.S. government used its influence to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which "dominated the island's economy". By the late 1950s, U.S. financial interests owned 90% of Cuban mines, 80% of its public utilities, 50% of its railways, 40% of its sugar production and 25% of its bank deposits—some $ 1 billion in total. According to historian Louis A. Pérez Jr., author of

18676-501: The orientalist's grander interpretive activity. Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "Occident–Orient" binary social relation, say that Orientalism is of limited descriptive capability and practical application, and propose instead that there are variants of Orientalism that apply to Africa and to Latin America. Said responds that the European West applied Orientalism as a homogeneous form of The Other , in order to facilitate

18837-403: The other cultures of the world; that is, as "one region among many" in human geography. Derek Gregory argues the long trajectory through history of British and American colonization is an ongoing process still happening today. In The Colonial Present , Gregory traces connections between the geopolitics of events happening in modern-day Afghanistan, Palestine , and Iraq and links it back to

18998-416: The other hand, denotes a temporary, essential group-identity used in the praxis of discourse among peoples. Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally be applied—by the so-described people—to facilitate the subaltern's communication in being heeded, heard, and understood, because strategic essentialism (a fixed and established subaltern identity) is more readily grasped, and accepted, by the popular majority, in

19159-405: The overall education level of Cubans. Additionally, medicine and education became primary pieces of the new society post- Revolution , they were to exemplify the rhetoric of the "New Man" set forth by Che Guevara , a former doctor. The original literacy campaign of 1961 was part of a broader plan for educating the population beyond simple literacy at a 1st grade level which was named the Battle for

19320-529: The passion of youth that were too young to participate in the Revolution but eager to participate in the Literacy Campaign. Fulgencio Batista President of Cuba Government First Second Legacy Political Career Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (born Rubén Zaldívar ; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who was the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and military dictator of

19481-547: The point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land. As such, Batista's repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships both with the American Mafia , who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts. To quell

19642-542: The political resources and think-tanks that are so common in the West today. Orientalism is self-perpetuating to the extent that it becomes normalized within common discourse, making people say things that are latent, impulsive, or not fully conscious of it. In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term subaltern , the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation. She argues: ... subaltern

19803-546: The population through open displays of brutality." Batista held an election in 1954 , running as the candidate of a political coalition that included the Progressive Action Party, the Radical Union Party and the Liberal Party. The opposition divided into abstentionists and electoralists. The abstentionists favored boycotting the elections regardless of the circumstances in which they were held, whereas

19964-744: The population, and the Soviet Union began to secretly support Castro. Some of Batista's generals also criticized him in later years, saying that Batista's excessive interference in his generals' military plans to defeat the rebels hampered Army morale and rendered all operations ineffective. It is clear that counter-terror became the strategy of the Batista government. It has been estimated that perhaps as many as 20,000 civilians were killed. In an effort to gather information about Castro's army, Batista's secret police pulled in people for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured by Batista's police, while suspects, including youth, were publicly executed as

20125-524: The protection of Rafael Trujillo , before settling in Spain , spending the rest of his life in exile until his death in 1973. People were killed, with estimates ranging from hundreds to a maximum of 20,000, although this high figure is disputed. The figure of 20,000 was first written in Bohemia – the most popular magazine in Cuba – by Enrique de la Osa . Historical consensus maintains that De la Osa –

20286-470: The representation of a homogeneous European identity justified colonization. Hence, Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified colonialism as delivering the light of civilization to unenlightened peoples. Notably, la mission civilisatrice , the self-ascribed 'civilizing mission' of the French Empire, proposed that some races and cultures have

20447-461: The rhetoric of the Cold War , seemed to maintain business stability and a pro-U.S. posture on the island. Thus, in the view of Olson, "The U.S. government had no difficulty in dealing with him, even if he was a hopeless despot ." On October 6, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy , in the midst of his campaign for the U.S. presidency, decried Batista's relationship with the U.S. government and criticized

20608-458: The role of women fit the patriarchal notions of a post-colonial nation, in which women were meant to remain in the cult of domesticity , rarely allowed outside without an escort, and had very limited access to educational or professional opportunities. While much of the rhetoric surrounding the Cuban Literacy Campaign was focused on the creation of a new and better kind of man, it is important to recognize that with this came revolutionary changes in

20769-417: The roles of women in Cuba . While the campaign was mostly targeted towards men, over half of the educators who volunteered to further the effort were women. Many women also acted as beneficiaries, making them essential to the success of the program and contributors in a number of aspects. The narrative set forth by Castro himself and the campaign as transforming education, a typically female space, into one that

20930-494: The said colour, and of medium size. Once given, I attest to this. I beg your Lordship to approve and order it done. I ask for justice in this. [On the twenty-first day of the month of June 1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and Official Judges of this House of Contract Employment order that the account she offers be received, and that testimony for the purpose she requests given.] Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural Others", and said that

21091-451: The said colour; and for this, I must write to Our Lord the King to petition that he favour me with a licence, so that I, and my said daughter, can go and reside in the said city of Cartagena. For this, I will give an account of what is put down in this report; and of how I, Francisca de Figueroa, am a woman of sound body, and mulatta in colour.... And my daughter María is twenty-years-old, and of

21252-581: The side of the Allies on December 9, 1941, declaring war on Japan two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 11, the Batista government declared war on Germany and Italy. In December 1942, after a friendly visit to Washington, Batista said Latin America would applaud if the Declaration by United Nations called for war with Francisco Franco 's Spain , calling the regime fascist. In 1944, Batista's handpicked successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas ,

21413-554: The streets, or leaning from windows. One report estimated that 11,500 of them worked their trade in Havana. Beyond the outskirts of the capital, beyond the slot machines, was one of the poorest, and most beautiful countries in the Western world. Throughout the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for the American mafia , corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies . In

21574-428: The success of the literacy campaign, and newspapers from the time as well as video footage of the volunteers work. The Museum's goal, like the goal of many other museums across the world is to preserve, conserve, and publicize the formation of a heritage, ideology, society, or feat. The efforts of the museum go beyond conservation and is open to the community, researchers, schools, with a commitment to continue educating on

21735-566: The success of the pedagogical tools and theory can be credited to Dr. Ana Echegoyen de Cañizares, a feminist Afro-Cuban scholar credited for leading the pedagogical efforts of the Campaign in Cuba and in Latin America . Following this period, the campaign was set to be implemented through a 3-stage program. This occurred in 1961, a time also known as the 'Year of Education'. The first stage consisted of professional educators training

21896-590: The superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity.... Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum , a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made

22057-540: The supporting economic theories, were partly derived from the essay " Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism " (1916), wherein Vladimir Lenin described colonial imperialism as an advanced form of capitalism , desperate for growth at all costs, and so requires more and more human exploitation to ensure continually consistent profit-for-investment. Another key book that predates postcolonial theories

22218-501: The surplus to others. It was rumored that, besides the $ 250,000 to obtain a license, an additional "under the table" fee was sometimes required. Lansky became a prominent figure in Cuba's gambling operations, and exerted influence over Batista's casino policies. The Mafia's Havana Conference was held on December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba ; this was the first full-scale meeting of American underworld leaders since

22379-470: The term orientalism (an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient). Said's concept (which he also termed "orientalism") is that the cultural representations generated with the us-and-them binary relation are social constructs , which are mutually constitutive and cannot exist independent of each other, because each exists on account of and for the other. Notably, "the West" created

22540-438: The terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism. Essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to reviving subaltern voices in ways that might (over) simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups and, thereby, create stereotyped representations of the different identities of the people who compose a given social group. Strategic essentialism , on

22701-456: The urging of the U.S. government. Earl E.T. Smith , former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, testified to the U.S. Senate in 1960 that, "Until Castro, the U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president." In addition, nearly "all aid" from the U.S. to Batista's government was in the "form of weapons assistance", which "merely strengthened

22862-500: The us-and-them binary relation between the Western and Eastern world. Building upon the ideas of the other and Said's work on orientalism, Gregory critiques the economic policy, military apparatus, and transnational corporations as vehicles driving present-day colonialism. Emphasizing discussion of ideas around colonialism in the present tense, Gregory utilizes modern events such as the September 11 attacks to tell spatial stories around

23023-562: The us-and-them orientalist paradigm allowed European scholars to represent the Oriental World as inferior and backward, irrational and wild, as opposed to a Western Europe that was superior and progressive, rational and civil—the opposite of the Oriental Other. Reviewing Said's Orientalism (1978), A. Madhavan (1993) says that "Said's passionate thesis in that book, now an 'almost canonical study', represented Orientalism as

23184-468: The work they were not bound by a continuity of style but by a community of ideas. Which they not only shared but also interpreted and carried forward. Thus they do not represent a school but a movement. Several terms including Paul Gilroy 's counterculture of modernity and Tani E. Barlow 's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues that 'Contextual Modernism'

23345-492: The working class received low-quality education or did not attend school at all. Education became accessible to a much larger segment of the population after 1959. The percentage of children enrolled in school in Cuba (ages 6–12) increased dramatically over the years: It is estimated that 268,000 Cubans worked to eliminate illiteracy during the Year of Education, and around 707,000 Cubans became literate by December 22, 1961. By 1962,

23506-425: The works of Nandalal Bose , Rabindranath Tagore , Ramkinkar Baij , and Benode Behari Mukherjee . Santiniketan artists did not believe that to be indigenous one has to be historicist either in theme or in style, and similarly to be modern one has to adopt a particular trans-national formal language or technique. Modernism was to them neither a style nor a form of internationalism. It was critical re-engagement with

23667-564: The world is provided by the ongoing struggles against colonialism and globalization. The harsh effects of colonial rule and the homogenizing effects of globalization have development to movements in recent years. The opposition to colonialism and globalization represents a complex battle for liberty and independence, ranging from community organizations calling for economic sovereignty and self-determination to indigenous people defending their land and culture against corporate exploitation. These initiatives, which cross continents rather than stay inside

23828-415: The world of that language. His ideas show the influence of French and German philosophy, since existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics claim that language, subjectivity, and reality are interrelated. However, the colonial situation presents a paradox: when colonial beings are forced to adopt and speak an imposed language which is not their own, they adopt and participate in the world and civilization of

23989-576: The world. In June of the year 1600, the Afro–Iberian woman Francisca de Figueroa requested from the King of Spain his permission for her to emigrate from Europe to New Granada, and reunite with her daughter, Juana de Figueroa. As a subaltern woman, Francisca repressed her native African language, and spoke her request in Peninsular Spanish, the official language of Colonial Latin America . As

24150-428: Was a dichotomy between urban citizens and rural citizens (who were often agricultural workers). The Cuban Revolution was driven by the need for equality, particularly among these classes. Before the campaign, the rate of illiteracy among city dwellers was 11% compared to 41.7% in the countryside. The Literacy Campaign was designed to force contact between sectors of society that would not usually interact. So much so that

24311-542: Was an immediate success. As the new hotels, nightclubs, and casinos opened, Batista collected his share of the profits. Nightly, the "bagman" for his wife collected 10% of the profits at Santo Trafficante's casinos, the Sans Souci cabaret, and the casinos in the hotels Sevilla-Biltmore, Commodoro, Deauville, and Capri (partly owned by the actor George Raft ). His take from the Lansky casinos—his prized Habana Riviera ,

24472-404: Was defeated by Grau. In the final months of his presidency, Batista sought to handicap the incoming Grau administration. In a July 17, 1944, dispatch to the U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden wrote: It is becoming increasingly apparent that President Batista intends to discomfit the incoming Administration in every way possible, particularly financially. A systematic raid on

24633-553: Was ineffective against the rebels based in the Sierra Maestra and Escambray Mountains . Another possible explanation for the failure to crush the rebellion was offered by author Carlos Alberto Montaner : "Batista does not finish Fidel out of greed ... His is a government of thieves. To have this small guerrilla band in the mountains is to his advantage, so that he can order special defense expenditures that they can steal." Batista's rule became increasingly unpopular among

24794-781: Was killed by police outside Radio Reloj in Havana after announcing that Batista had been killed in a student attack on the Presidential Palace. In reality, Batista survived, and the students of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and the Directorio Revolucionario (DR) who led the attack were killed in the response by the military and police. Castro quickly condemned the attack, since July 26 Movement had not participated in it. In April 1956, Batista called popular military leader Col. Ramón Barquín back to Cuba from his post as military attaché to

24955-408: Was made to fit the Cuban ideals of heroism and service through means of militarization. The volunteers of the campaign were treated much like soldiers, organized into the aforementioned brigades, and were provided clothing resembling military fatigues regardless of their gender. From such a perspective the campaign is shrouded in hyper-masculinity, hiding the fact that women were a large driving force of

25116-421: Was militarized offered the framework for women to be defiant and participate in the movement. Ultimately, women were empowered by leaving home, with or without support from their families, able to reach further education opportunities after the campaign, and contribute to the changing Cuban culture. Despite the persisting presence of patriarchy in Cuba, these young women and brigadistas made contributions to change

25277-620: Was not a member, but controlled Cuba's armed forces. Within days, the representative for the students and professors of the University of Havana , Ramón Grau San Martín , was made president—and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, effectively putting him in control of the presidency. The majority of the commissioned officer corps were forced to retire or, some speculate, were killed. Grau remained president for just over 100 days before Batista, conspiring with

25438-414: Was one of the five most developed countries in the region. In the 1950s, Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was roughly equal to that of Italy at the time, although still only a sixth of that of the United States. Moreover, although corruption and inequality were rife under Batista, Cuban industrial workers' wages rose significantly. In 1953, the average Cuban family only had an income of $ 6.00

25599-558: Was primarily due to Batista's early advocacy of strengthening labor laws and his support for labor unions , with which the Communists had close ties, as well as the pro-Allied stance in World War II. In fact, Communists attacked the anti-Batista opposition, saying Grau and others were "fascists" and " reactionaries ." During this term in office, Batista carried out major social reforms and established numerous economic regulations and pro-union policies. Cuba entered World War II on

25760-625: Was the final effort to identify the remaining members of the population who were still illiterate, and find those who were struggling the most. Those who were unsuccessful in the traditional program were placed in acceleration camps to help them overcome illiteracy within Castro's one year timeline. It is estimated that 1,000,000 Cubans were directly involved (as teachers or students) in the Literacy Campaign. There were four categories of workers: The government provided teaching supplies to volunteers. Workers who traveled to rural locations to teach received

25921-409: Was thought to affect the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures of the world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the world would be possible, because everyone has an assigned cultural identity , a social place, and an economic role within an imperial colony. Thus: The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by

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