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Revolutionary Latin America

Lecture Slides

CC seminar powerpoint

Essay Che

Recorded Lecture 2020-21:
Revolutionary Latin America Lecture Part 1
Revolutionary Latin America Lecture Part 2
Lecture Script

Questions

  • How important was the Cuban Revolution?
  • What were the Cuban Revolution's main aims? Were they achieved? How much did the Revolution evolve over time?
  • What were the goals of liberation theology? How influential was it?
  • How different are Castro’s and Gutiérrez’s visions for the future of Latin America?

Required Reading:

Please read ONE of the two primary sources AND the Chomsky chapter:

  • Primary source: Fidel Castro, "History will absolve me" defence speech, October 15 1953.
  • Primary source: Gutiérrez, Gustavo, “The Task and Content of Liberation Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, Christopher Rowland, ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 19–38.
  • Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (Wiley, 2010), Introduction and Chapter 1. You might also be interested in this Time Talk by Aviva Chomsky, on the Cuban Revolution among other topics.

Further Reading

Primary Sources from the Modern Records Centre MRC Archive on campus.

The MRC has holding on Tricontinental, the bulletin set up after the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba in 1966 on international solidarity. You will need to go to the archive to consult these. You can find more on the resource for the module here.

  • Primary source: José Martí, "Our America" El Partido Liberal (Mexico City), 5 March 1892 http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/marti/America.htm
  • Daniel H. Levine, “Assessing the Impacts of Liberation Theology in Latin America”, The Review of Politics, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 241-263
  • Elizabeth Dore. How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolution. Durham/London: Duke, 2023.
  • Elizabeth Dore. Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, New York: Duke University Press, 2006. (Especially the epilogue).
  • Elizabeth Dore and John Weeks, The red and the black : the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan revolution. Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992.
  • Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas: Party and Revolution. Blackwell, 1988.
  • Greg Grandin "Living in revolutionary time : coming to terms with the violence of Latin America's long Cold War" in A century of revolution : insurgent and counterinsurgent violence during Latin America's long cold war / Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds.
  • Lillian Guerra, ‘“To condemn the Revolution is to condemn Christ”: Radicalization, Moral Redemption, and the Sacrifice of Civil Society in Cuba, 1960’, Hispanic American Historical Review 89(1): 73-109 (2009).
  • Gutiérrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation. SCM, 2001.
  • Harmer, Tanya, and Alberto Martín Álvarez (eds),Toward a Global History of Latin America's Revolutionary Left. Gainsville. FL: Florida Scholarship Online: 2021.

  • Harmer, Tanya, Allende's Chile and the Interamerican Cold War. UNC Press, 2011 [e-book @ Library]
  • Harmer, Tanya. "Two, Three, Many Revolutions: Cuba and the Prospects for Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1967-1975," Journal of Latin American Studies, Feb 2013, vol. 45:1, pp. 61-89.
  • Antoni Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams. Oxford: Berg, 2000.
  • Brian Loveman. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. OUP, 2001.
  • Louis A. Pérez Jr, “Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy Toward Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 34: 2 (2002), pp 227-254.
  • Mona Rosendahl, Inside the Revolution: Everyday Life in Socialist Cuba (Ithaca, 1997).
  • Orin Starn, “Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path and the Refusal of History,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 399-421
  • Steve Stern. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995. Duke, 1988.
  • David Tombs, Latin American Liberation Theology. Brill, 2002.