The year is 1959, the Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, is overthrown. A young Fidel Castro takes office, and an idea quickly spreads amongst the people: Cuba is changing; a new start waits in America. The Cuban revolution pushed many Cubans to abandon their home country, seeking a better life. Several found that opportunity in Miami; where I have started making my own story.
Ofelia and Alberto Roque, my maternal grandparents, are considered the trailblazers in our family. To the family, she’s affectionately referred to as “Negri”, to me she was “Tita” and he was “Tata”. They were middle class working people. Alberto and his brothers were of the thought that Castro would improve the country; my grandmother did not partake in their view on the matter. The world was divided into two camps, those that believed in Castro and his vision (eventually communism), and those that believed that Castro’s vision was too radical. It took much convincing of my grandfather to leave all he knew, with the promise of a better life for themselves and their future family, but Negri was just the woman for the job. The choice wasn’t popular with the Roque clan at first, but in due time they came around. A funny story is always told, my great-uncle didn’t agree with what his brother (my grandfather) had been persuaded to do, so his farewell to my grandmother was a sarcastic “Goodbye, Missus” in English, basically saying he thought she was turning her back on Cuba. A few years later, she was able to return the favor by greeting her brother-in-law with a “Hello Mister,” when he arrived in the U.S.
The “Freedom Flights” brought this brave couple to Miami, Florida, where they found their small sense of home in Little Havana. It was a short stay, whispers o...
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...mi to broaden my horizons. I needed a change of pace. I found myself in Atlanta, Georgia for nearly two years. It was as long as I could hold out on my dear, dear, “305”. I had an epiphany, I could choose anywhere in the world to live, but I chose Miami. I moved back just an hour south of my old stomping grounds, to Key Largo. Really, it’s a 45-minute drive once you do it routinely, but it’s a completely different world. I lasted about a year and a half before again, I couldn’t bear to be away.
Presently living in Miami, all things considered, I feel at peace with my surroundings. There isn’t a geographical location that I could call home, but Miami is the closest to what I imagine home to be. To say I am beholden to my grandparents for choosing Miami to put roots down would be a monumental understatement. Before I was even thought of, they knew me better than anyone.
Fidel Castro entered Havana, Cuba and took his place as Prime Minister in January of 1959, just after the fall of the Batista regime. Within days, many of the Cuban upper class began exiting the island, wary of losing their socioeconomic status and possibly their lives (Leonard 13). Castro’s radical new policies appealed to most of the suppressed lower class seeking change, but the middle sector “became disillusioned with their new leader” and soon comprised the majority of the Cuban refugees in Miami, Florida (Leonard 3). Beginning in December 1960 and ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, over 14,000 of those refugees wou...
“Cuba - A Case of Communist Take-Over.” The New York Times Magazine July 1961: 59-64 Guido, Jessica.
Many have misconceptions of the Cuban Revolution and only see the biased American side of communism and dictatorship. However, there have been positive outcomes from it such as a more united country, one that the people all worked together in support of one cause, a new and improved society. The old was no longer working and change was needed in Cuba and the citizens worked together to make this change. One of the main positive outcomes of the revolutions was the gender relations and roles. Women stood up for themselves, gained confidence, and received respectable roles in society. After decades of having inequite among men and women, women for the first time was minimizing the gender gap that was present in Cuba.
Clarke, Philip. “Cuba’s Newest Revolution Bloodless but Plenty Bewildering as New President Breaks Army Grip, Aims at Democracy.” The Washington Post. 22 July. 1945: B3. ProQuest. James Madison University library. 16 September 2003
Francisco Franco was the dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975, including the time of WW2. Perhaps he was better known as “El Caudillo,” translated into English as The Leader. He was born and raised in Spain. He was a very brilliant military general who led Nationalist rebels in defeating the Spanish government during the Spanish Civil War. Although he was viewed as a Fascist Dictator, he strongly opposed communism. He was an extremely important figure in the course of world history.
Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883 outside the village of Dovia di Predappio in the Northeastern Italian province of Forli. He had one sister and one brother. They always fought and argued over little petty things with each other. His sister name was Edvige and his brother’s name was Armaldo. His mother Rosa Malteni was a well respect and appreciated schoolteacher. His father Allesandro Mussolini was both a blacksmith and a committee socialist. He received his name "Benito" from the Mexican Revolutionary Juarez. Benito grew up as a delinquent, disobedient, and did not have any manners. He was a bully to the other children around him. He would get into numerous of fights with other children.
The legacy of slavery and the legacy of systematic racial discrimination imposed on Afro-Cubans are grim realities that are imbedded in Cuban societal and cultural fibers. Despite the abolition of slavery in 1886 and its gaining of independence in 1902 Cuban society, politics, and ideology have been haunted with the specter of the ‘race issue.’ According to Aline Helg, "the myth of Cuban racial equality has proved remarkably enduring, even since the revolution of 1959" (p. 247). Thus, in order to comprehend the current political and social conditions in Cuba as well as the conditions that led to the revolution in 1959 one must examine the afro-Cuban struggle for equality that emerged at the turn of the 20th century.
Son of a poverty-stricken shoemaker, raised in a backward province, Joseph Stalin had only a minimum of education. However, he had a burning faith in the destiny of social revolution and an iron determination to play a prominent role in it. His rise to power was bloody and bold, yet under his leadership, in an unexplainable twenty-nine years, Russia because a highly industrialized nation. Stalin was a despotic ruler who more than any other individual molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of Europe after World War II ended in 1945. From a young revolutionist to an absolute master of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin cast his shadow over the entire globe through his provocative affair in Domestic and Foreign policy.
Fidel Castro was an illegitimate child of the upper middle class in Cuba. He was the son of the family maid and his father, who happened to be a wealthy farmer and landowner. Castro was highly educated for the twentieth century in Cuba, earning a Doctorate in Law. However his success in life did not come to him as a lawyer, but as a ruthless politician and revolutionary. When dictator, Fulgencio Batista was overthrown during the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro boldly took on the role of leader over Cuba, broke away from the domination of the United States, and put Cuba’s economy in the hands of the Soviet Union. According to Charlip, “Castro visualized a reformed Cuba, with agricultural cooperatives, industry, education and healthcare
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...
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926, near Birάn in Cuba’s Eastern Oriente Province to a wealthy sugar plantation owner and a mother who was a domestic servant to his father’s first wife (Source A). Castro was the third of six children and was raised in prominently wealthy circumstances that allowed him to attend well known and well revered schools like Belen Jesuit Prep. (Source A). He was a man that could not be just labeled solely by one phrase or one convenient definition, he was loved by supporters of communist rule and he was also a face feared by many Cubans. He held multitudes of titles to countless different people, ranging from honorable military leader to a protruding symbol of the communist revolution in Latin America that was feared by the Cuban people and Americans alike.
In the 1960s, a wave of Cuban immigrants moved into the United States to escape their ruthless dictator, Fidel Castro. Aleida Rodriguez and her siblings were some of those immigrants. In her reflection, she looks at photographs of her childhood while she reflects upon the impact of emigration within her family during the sixties. In the excerpt from “my Mother in Two Photographs, Among Other Things,” author Aleida Rodriguez reveals the cultural rifts caused by relocation.
Joseph Stalin became leader of the USSR after Lenin’s death in 1924. Lenin had a government of abstemious communist government. When Stalin came into government he moved to a radical communist society. He moved away from the somewhat capitalist/communist economy of Lenin time to “modernize” the USSR. He wanted to industrialize and modernize USSR. He had overworked his workers, his people were dying, and most of them in slave labor camps. In fact by doing this Stalin had hindered the USSR and put them even farther back in time.
When researching such a controversial figure as Fidel Castro, one has to be very objective. The fact that he is loved and hated by so many and the massive amounts of propaganda associated with him makes it difficult to discover who the true man is. There is ample information concerning his life after the revolution, his relations with the United States, and his iron-fisted rule over Cuba. However, little focus is given to his life before the Cuban Revolution. It is the purpose of this essay to piece together the story of his youth and discover what may have influenced his rise to dictator when only in his thirties.
In the early 1960s important political changes took place in Cuba with the communist Fidel Castro taking power over the country; therefore, forcing many Cubans including musicians such as Celia Cruz internationally known as the “Queen of Salsa” to immigrate to the United States, especially ...