Module 3: The Caribbean Geo-Cultural Formation

Question 1

History of Cuba

Answer 1

1. Indigenous people in Cuba: Taino, Siboney, and Guanahatabey
2. 1492 — La Hispaniola (Santo Domingo): Haiti + Dominican Republic
3. Last stop from Spain to Mexico or The Philippines
4. Colonial economy in the Caribbean region: sugar and tobacco

Question 2

Sugar Colonial Industry

Answer 2

1. Sugar as one of the most valuable commodities during colonial period
2. The main resource of European in 19th century
3. Monoculture for exportation
4. Labor intense & Environmental degradation (unproductive land)
5. The Atlantic Slave Trade
   - 10 million enslaved people (4 mil in the Caribbean and 5 mil in Brazil)

Question 3

Colonialism & Globalization = Capitalism

Answer 3

1. Globalization is the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and colonial/ modern Eurocentred capitalism as a new global power
2. A new technology of domination/exploitation (Race/labor)

Question 4

Cuban Independence

Answer 4

1. Slavery Abolition in Cuba (1880)
2. The Cuban War Independence (1895-1898): Cuba vs. Spain
   -The US supported the Cuban Independence
   - Jose Marti — “Nuestra America” (Our America)
3. The Spanish-American War (1898): Cuba vs. USA
   - The US occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines
4. “The amendment [in Cuban Constitution of 1901] limited Cuban sovereignty in fiscal and treaty-making matters and allowed the United States to intervene at any time to maintain a ‘government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty”

Question 5

Nuestra America (1891)

Answer 5

1. Jose Marti (1853-1895), Cuban poet, essayist, journalist, and one of the most important Latin American independence leaders
2. Our own Greece is preferable to the Greece that is not ours; we need it more.

Question 6

Discourse of Colonialism (1950) - Aime Cesaire

Answer 6

1. A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization
2. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization
3. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization
4. between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance

Question 7

Fulgecio Batista in Power

Answer 7

1. 1926: US investment in Cuba, nearly $1.4 billion
2. 1940s: Nationalization of the electrical system (by San Martin)
   -Formation of the Cuban’s People Party (Fidel Castro)
3. 1952: Fulgencio Batista military coup
   -US Military assistance grants: $1.5 mil (1954-1956) $3 mi (1957-58)
   -Also assist Batista’s army

Question 8

26th of July Movement (M-26-7)

Answer 8

1. Guerrilla Movement: It was not a mass-based revolution
   -Overthrown Batista’s Power
2. 1953: Cuartel Moncada Attack (July 26th)
   -Castro led the attack and was captured Castro is exiled to Mexico: Meets Ernesto “Che” Guevara and creates the 26th of July Movement
3. 1956: 82 men sailed for Cuba to destablish Batista’s regime (Vera Cruz to Oriente Province)
   - Only 18 survived. They took refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains
4. 1957-58: Cuban people (peasants, workers, and students) support M-26-7

Question 9

Cuban Revolution of 1959

Answer 9

1. 1958
   - Batista lost his last battle in Sierra Maestra
   -Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos took over Santa Clara (dec 28)
   -Batista had no reliable defenses in Havana. He fled to Spain on Dec. 31st (with 100 mil dollars)
2. 1959
   - The 26th of July Movement entered Havana on Jan 8th
3. 1960
   - US Embargo
   - - It prevents American businesses and businesses organized under US law or majority-owned by American citizens from conducting trade with Cuban interests
4. 1961
   - Bay of Pigs
   - - a failed landing operation by the US. In 65 hours, operation was interrupted
   - - Participants: Exiled Cubans in the US
5. 1962
   - Cuban Missile Crisis
   - - the major confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union

Question 10

The Transition from US dominance to independence (or Soviet Union dependency)

Answer 10

1. Cuban elite and businesspeople fled to the US
2. Cuba nationalized oil refineries, land properties, and sugar crops previously owned by US owners
   - Previous to the 1959 Revolution, 70% of import-export trade in Cuba was with the US
   - Cuban economy depended on sugar: US quota system of 2.8 ton market
   - The Soviet Union starts to invest in Cuban sugar: 2.7 tons
3. Agrarian Reform
   - Established a limited size of most farms under 1000 and distribute the land to rural workers
   - This measure destroyed the largest holding of 400,000 acre, including US-owned sugar properties
4. Literacy campaign and expansion of free health care system 1970
   - Produce 10-ton sugar goal
5. Cuban State planning economy: industrializes or invest in the mechanization of sugar production
   - It takes time to change that economic dynamics (sugar dependency)

Question 11

Afro-Cuban Resistance: Santeria & Cimarronaje (Marronage)

Answer 11

1. Santeria = Afro-Cuban Culture & Religion
   - Syncretism = Catholicism + Yoruba Religion
2. Cimarronaje (Maroonage)
   - Cimarron—African and African descendants in the Americas who formed settlements away from slavery
   - Sometimes mixed with Indigenous people
   - Anti-colonial settlement

Question 12

Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

Answer 12

1. Haiti: Former French Colony
   - In 1789, 75% of sugar production came from Santo Domingo (Haiti + Dominican Republic)
   - French Revolution maintained the slavery system in its colony
2. Haitian Revolution : three major transformations at once
   - Independence from France
   - Slavery Abolition
   - Former enslaved Blacks got into power and ruled the country

Question 13

Haitian Constitution of 1805

Answer 13

Art. 2- Slavery is forever abolished
Art. 12- No Whiteman of whatever nation he may be shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor
Art. 14- the Haitians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks

Question 14

Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Answer 14

1. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Martinican philosopher and psychiatrist, fought in the Angelina Independence War (1954-1962)
2. “The black man wants to be white. The white man slaves to reach a human level. The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness”
3. If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process: primarily, economic- subsequently the internalization or better the epidermalization of this inferiority

Question 15

Paraphrasing Fanon’s quote

Answer 15

Subaltern = Latin America or PoC or Non-Binary, etc
Hegemonic = USA/Europe or White or Cis-Gender, etc.

Question 16

Special Period in Cuba (1991-2000)

Answer 16

1. Economic crisis in Cuba due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989
2. Cuba’s economy dependent of Soviet Union economic trade
   - Cuba’s import and export fell over 80%
3. Reductions of rationed foods at state-subsidized prices
4. Racial inequalities increased
5. “The legalization of dollars has divided Cuban society according to those who have access to dollars and those who do not. Since the majority of Cubans in the diaspora tend to be white, it is white Cuban families who benefit most from remittances”

Question 17

Emergence of Cuban Rap

Answer 17

1. Transnational culture, utilizes US American hip hop to criticize Castro’s regime
2. Gangsta rap aesthetics in Cuban context
3. Afro-Cuban rap: criticism the racial democracy ideology in Cuban socialist regime
4. “Black august Hip-Hop Collective”: Networking established to connect movements for resistance in the Americas
5. “Like the African-American activists who visited Cuba during the 1960s and 1970s from Stokely Carmichael through to Angela Davis and Asiata Shakur who is currently in exile in Cuba, African-American rappers such as Paris, Common Sense, Mos Def and Talib Kweli spoke a language of black militancy that was appealing to Cuban youth”

Question 18

Mau Mau Rebellion (1952-1960)

Answer 18

1. War in the British Kenya Colony (1920-1963) between Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) and British Army
2. Organized majority by Kikuyu people and fought against white European colonizers and settlers