In November 1974, the Working Peoples Alliance(WPA), a political organization, was formally launched in Guyana. Several independent Guyanese organizations including WPVP(Working Peoples Vanguard Party), IPRA( Indian Political Revolutionary Associates), RATOON, the ASCRIA( African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa) , and independent people constituted the ‘alliance’. The founding statement, representing of the new politics, cited the stand against race based election politics, violent political repression, the worsening economic conditions of the masses, cancerous corruption and denial of academic and press freedom, as factors in its formation. The coalition that comprised WPA also addressed regional and international concerns. It pledged to strengthen the unity of the Caribbean masses and identified itself with the suffering masses everywhere with the maxim that it stood for the “destruction of imperialism and its neocolonial systems and for the revolutionary unity of all subject and liberated peoples.” More importantly, the critical representation of the “new politics” embodied in the alliance was its multiracial appearance and programmatic declaration of promoting racial unity. This was not incidental. The disparate organizations that constituted the alliance and the new politics it embraced all emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and were emblematic of the convulsions and shifts in the political culture embodied in the ‘long sixties’
The complex nature of ‘agency(or agencies) of change’ in Guyana in the 1960s must be underscored. The new forces that were emerging and stimulating breaches with the past arose out of earlier divisions and pre-independence deformations whose origins are located in t...
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...al wedge in the society at large. Shortly after the American and British intervention that propelled critical changes in the electoral system, the PNC regime, facilitated by an alliance with the conservative United Force political party procured power in the 1964 elections .
In this regard, Cuba's alleged disavowal of its revolutionary commitment to subversion of governments in Latin America and the Caribbean enabled Guyana to place itself in a radical posture without seeming unfriendly to the USA. * This duality of good relations with Washington on the one hand, and with Cuba and the Third World, would be successfully 'balanced' by the Burnham regime right up to 1985. In short, despite the diplomatic radicalization of the PNC's foreign policy in the 1970s, it was true that Guyana’s United Nations voting record between “1966-69 was identical to the US position.”
In his book Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban, Thomas G. Patterson explores Cuban relationships with the United States during the Batista and Castro regimes. In the 1950’s, when Fulgencio Batista was in power, the United States had an almost imperialistic dominance over Cuba. Patterson uses the word “Hegemony” to describe this dominance. He defines hegemony as “the dominance or preponderant influence that permitted U.S. decisions to condition Cuba’s politics, economy, culture, society, and military. U.S. hegemony empowered North Americans to set and maintain most of the rules by which Cubans lived and by which the Cuban – American relationship was governed” (7). At this time, the U.S. was imposing it self on Cuba without really understanding the people or the culture. The U.S. viewed Cubans as an “emotional, romantic, and childish people suffering from excessive pride” (6). There was obviously little respect for Cubans from the U.S. Moreover, Cubans felt that the strong, multifaceted U.S. influence was causing Cuba to loose its “independent identity” (8).
Within Aline Helg’s book titled, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912, she includes many historical events that serve as a foundation for her arguments in order to emphasize the "black struggle for equality" starting in the late 19th century and according to her, still transpiring today. These events are, the formation of the first black independent political party called the, Partido Independiente de Color (146), the United States’ role during intervention and the black struggle to overcome the system of racial hierarchies that had developed in Cuba. Blacks had to fight for equality while simultaneously being, "…accused of racism and antinationalism". (145) According to Helg, this placed an undue burden on the black groups that were organizing to demand their "rightful share" because it made divided the goals of their plight into many different facets, thus yielding a lack of unity necessary for their success. During the United States’ intervention, Cuban nationalism as a whole was threatened which also served to downplay the importance of demands being made by the Partido’s leader, Estenoz. The United States displayed a greater concern on the affirmation of its power as an international police, rather than allying its resources to help the indignant and discriminated Afro-Cubans. All of these circumstances illustrate the extremities of the political and social institutions that the Afro-Cubans attempted to defeat but could not. They also exemplify the perpetuation of the black struggle, and how it affected and continues to affect the lives of Afro-Cubans in present-day Cuba.
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
Cuba and the U.S.: The Tangled Relationship. New York: The Foreign Policy Association, 1971. Flaherty, Tom.
The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
This political shift was materialized with the advent of the Southern Strategy in which Democrat president Lyndon Johnson’s support of Civil Rights harmed his political power in the South, Nixon and the republican party picked up on these formerly blue states and promoted conservative politics in order to gain a larger voter representation. Nixon was elected in a year drenched in social and political unrest as race riots occurred in 118 U.S cities at the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, as well as overall American bitterness due to the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the extensive student-led activist opposition to the Vietnam War.
Chester, Eric Thomas. The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-66: Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001
The United States embargo of Cuba has its roots planted in 1960, 53 years ago, when “the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar act of 1948… by 95 percent” (Hass 1998, 37). This was done in response to a growing number of anti-American developments during the height of the cold war, including the “expropriation of United States-owned properties on the island… [and] the Soviet Union [agreeing] to purchase sugar from Cuba and to supply Cuba with crude oil” (Hass 1998, 37). Bad sentiments continued to pile up as Cuba imposed restrictions on the United States Embassy and especially when, after the United States “officially broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba, and travel by United States citizens to Cuba was forbidden ... Castro openly proclaimed his revolution to be ‘socialist’” (Hass 1998, 38). The day after this, the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred, but it failed in its job to topple Castro (Hass 1998, 38). Left with no diplomatic options and a failed military attempt, the United States decided that the only way to end Castro’s socialist regime was to sever all ties, and from 1961 to 1996, a series of acts were passed prohibiting the majority of trade and interaction with Cuba. (Hass 1998, 38).
“the Haitian Revolution forever transformed the world. It was a central part of the destruction of slavery in the Americas, and therefore a crucial moment in the history of democracy, one that laid the foundation for the continuing struggles for human rights everywhere. In this sense we are all descendants of the Haitian Revolution, and responsible to these ancestors.” (Dubois,
On this day 191 years ago John Quincy Adams expressed his prediction for the future of Cuban-American contact. The Cuban wars of independence were only 15 years away from his prediction when he estimated. These independence wars continue to influence Cuba’s cultural and political attitude toward Europe and the United States; This in part due to the externalities involved in the remodeling of social structure in the aftermath of the revolution. The intentions and motives of each faction: rebels, United States government, Spanish government, United States public, and the Cuban public, varied widely to an extend that caused even more concern in the future. Depending on the point of view of an outsider the situation in Cuba seemed to be a continuation of revolution...
All throughout the 20th century we can observe the marked presence of totalitarian regimes and governments in Latin America. Countries like Cuba, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic all suffered under the merciless rule of dictators and military leaders. Yet the latter country, the Dominican Republic, experienced a unique variation of these popular dictatorships, one that in the eyes of the world of those times was great, but in the eyes of the Dominicans, was nothing short of deadly.
Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus. "Slave Revolution in the Caribbean 1789-1804: A Brief History of Documents.” Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
In the wake of WWII, the western world was in a state of perpetual fear. After seeing Marxist influence make a shocking impact wherever it landed, the rise of the Soviet Union, the 26rd of July movement in Cuba, and numerous other revolutions with the goal of radical social and political reforms, the world was divided by two mutually exclusive and hostile ideologies: capitalism and Marxism. The two major superpowers of the time, the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union were at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Marxist revolutions of Europe and Russia gave inspiration to many Latin American revolutionaries. The U.S. wanted to ensure that communism and leftist regimes did not spread, particularly in Latin America, where leftist regimes would especially threaten U.S. business interest. The U.S. for over a century had been imperializing Latin America under a series of façades and in the mid-20th century, McCarthyism became the new catch-all excuse to interfere with the affairs of a sovereign nation. Under the guise of containing the spread of communism, many Latin American governments that tried to deviate from the practice of serving U.S. interest were overthrown with the funding and instruction of the U.S. It was with the watchful and accusing eye of Uncle Sam looming over Latin America that in 1970, that Unidad Popular candidate, Salvador Allende, was democratically elected President of Chile. Even before Allende assumed the presidency, oppositional forces were conspiring to destroy him, everything he was to accomplish, and the pro-working class ideology that he represented. The events that occurred in the three years that his presidency endured and which lead to the coup d’état of Pinochet were the product of U.S. hostility towards any t...
The way in which Benítez-Rojo and Mintz tackle the question of Caribbean identity in their articles, is a removed, objective ideal, in contrast to Michelle Cliff’s portrayal of Jamaican identity. Cliff’s portrayal touches the heart and soul of Caribbean identity. While Mintz and Benítez-Rojo are investigating trends in the Caribbean as a whole, from an outside perspective, Cliff offers the personal, tactile imagery of what it is to live in the Caribbean, utilizing the objective account of history as a background. Furthermore, Cliff deals with Jamaica, one island in the Caribbean, while Mintz and Benítez-Rojo are dealing with the Caribbean on a grand scaled overview. The fact is neither article can be taken as complete truth. In fact, although Cliff uses history in her novel, I believe the account of history from someone who has completely accessed the interior of a place, is always going to be biased. Likewise, Mintz and Benítez-Rojo in making their hypotheses, are lacking an insider’s view. It is the difference between a Caribbean person and Caribbeanist, respectively. Therefore, while on a logical level, an analytical level, Benítez-Rojo and Mintz’s, conclusions as to Caribbean identity could rightly be accepted, these two authors do not possess the experience and intensity to make me as a reader, convinced of their conclusions.
Life made into a commodity to be bought and sold as an animal or machine, born to serve the dominant humans marked by white skin. In this way colonialism as a political entity was created to exploit the earth and its people in order to profit white Europeans. The economic dependency established by the slave trade established a stratified socio-economic hierarchy based on racism. The inequities inherent in this system caused the exploitation of less powerful resources to be established as the means of economic growth and prosperity throughout colonialism. The lack of representation of the oppressed black majority brought about a series of uprisings against colonialism. In Jamaica the Rastafarian movement brought to the forefront the pressing issues of deprivation upheld by the socio-economic structure of the island. The ideology of Rastafarians instilled personal liberation and autonomy at the time of Jamaican Independence, helping the population deal with decolonization. This paper will deal with the implications of this thesis throughout the history of Jamaica from the colonial to post Independence years (1962-1980). The rise of Rastafarianism can be seen in response to the history of inequity of colonialism. The mentality of humanization upheld in Rasta acted as force of mental liberation. The influence of this ideology upon society around the time of Independence was reflected in politics of the time. At the time of Independence serious historical issues of lack of representation of the black majority were articulated in the words and works of Rastafarians and their liberating ideology.