Afro-Cuban

El Rapto de las Mulatas, made in 1938, is a painting by Cuban avant-garde artist Carlos Enriquez. It translates to “The Abduction of the Mulatas,” where mulatas are mixed race women in Cuba. The painting portrays a scenario that is described very literally in the title: a pair of mulatas being abducted and raped by two men who seem to be guajiros, Cuban countrymen. There are varying theories pertaining to what exactly the painting really represents, but most of these theories are centered around…

Cuban Divas: La Reina de la Salsa, Celia Cruz Only few people succeed in the music industry, and fewer people succeed at an international scale. Many factors impact when it comes to succeeding in the music industry, in other words an artist has to overcome a different number of challenges. During the beginning of 20th century, Cuba had few artists, which mainly remained known at a local level. It was until the mid 20th century when Cuban music would spark a revolution. Celia Cruz, a prime…

Debate Tryouts Speech Topic: Resolved: The United States should lift the embargo on Cuba. Good afternoon. The topic of this speech is on the United States should or should not lift the Cuban embargo. This is a very short backstory behind the embargo placed on Cuba. The U.S. placed an trade embargo on Cuba in 1962 and added travel restrictions in 1963. The economic embargo was placed because Cuba had taken oil-refineries which were American owned as their own and Cuba did not give compensation…

Melodramatic Cuba There has been a resurgence of melodrama in Cuban film since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, two of Cuba’s most prominent and historically significant filmmakers, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Humberto Solás, have produced highly melodramatic films in the almost two decades since the Soviet collapse, a time known in Cuba as the special period. 1 While there are certainly melodramatic tendencies in other post-revolutionary Cuban films, melodrama has generally been derided…

1900’s where record companies were no longer just praising Cuban artist in admiration, but began to—either travel to Caribbean countries in order to record with these musicians and provide them with portable equipment or actually giving appointed musicians opportunities to record in the U.S. It’s really interesting to point out the motives behind these clear agendas to “Latinize” the American entertainment culture so early in the 20th century…

The first cohort of Cuban immigrants is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Exiles” cohort because they were composed primarily of the Cuban elite (Olson, 53). This label not only portrayed the exiles as the best of Cuban society, but also stood in stark contrast to the label gusanos (worms) that Fidel preferred to use (Garcia, 2). The first to make the decision to migrate to Miami were those that had ties to the old political regime of Batista. These had the economics means to arrange a quick…

country's culture similar to or different from U.S. culture? Despite the fact, of some of the ways Cuban culture can be similar to U.S. culture may be through the average family of the U.S. having 3.19 members, where the Cuban family average has 3.18 members. Some of the differences of the U.S. and Cuba cultures are unambiguous. However, the Americans take for granted many luxuries, where as Cubans go without; nevertheless, one of the moral qualities of happiness cannot be built on what…

multiplicity of paradigms that conflict with her identities. Even though Mendieta’s work fits within the earth art movement, her artwork’s multifaceted nature allows it to integrate well with other movements such as feminism. Ana Mendieta uses Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion, to explore and better understand her role as a displaced woman. Throughout the Silueta series, her most well-known body of work, Mendieta uses Santeria rituals and iconography, formal…

“Cuba Libre!” screamed the Cuban-Americans that gathered in the streets of Hialeah the night the man who altered the course of many lives, including mine, died. My grandmother, a Cuban widow, who’d live over 50 years in American and speaks close to no English, experienced the pain of Castro’s regime first-hand. That night, at a fatigue-filled 85 years old, she would take out the Guiro, a Cuban instrument used usually for celebrations like fiestas and Noche Buena, and frantically strum while…

The country of Cuba has a lot of great features. The leader of Cuba is Raúl Castro. The official currency is the Cuban peso. It is divided into 100 centavos. Pesos are divided into 1, 3,5,1,20,50,100. The Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) was founded by the Cuban financial authorities to take out all foreign currencies from circulation, and offer an alternative that is equal to US dollars. It replaces the dollar as currency where previous dollars were quoted in places such as hotels, restaurants and…