Che Guevara

When an individual’s assumptions are challenged by significant discoveries, their lives are often transformed. This perspective is represented throughout Ernesto Che Guevara’s eclectic memoir, The Motorcycle Diaries, which details his arguably metamorphic journey through Latin America in the early 1950s and the diverse discoveries he makes, which are personal and political in their nature. Guevara’s varied and confronting encounters throughout his travels challenge his preconceived views of…

The history of the relationship between the United States and Cuba is a very interesting one. The two countries shared a very healthy and benevolent relationship during the nineteenth century. From around 1868 to 1898, thousands of Cubans of all ages and classes migrated to United States (Perez Jr., 167). This was also the time when presence of the American people and their culture proliferated increasingly in Cuba. The Cuban society was slowly emulating the American culture within itself (Perez…

One of the most important historical events that occurred in Cuba was the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1963. The revolution affected the history of Cuba and shaped the country to become what it is today. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Cuban government was suffering from fascist and dictatorship regime. The economy was also suffering and life was difficult, especially for poor and middle-class people. After Franklin Roosevelt becoming a president in 1932, the United Stated got involved in the…

Castro then fled to Mexico with his brother Raul Castro where he met with Argentine Marxist-Leninist Che Guevara and together they put together a small revolutionary force intent on overthrowing Batista. In November 1956, Castro and 81 revolutionaries sailed from Mexico aboard the Granma, “crash landing near to Los Cayuelos.”(Wiki) Attacked by Batista’s forces…

mirror. A photograph of Fidel Castro wedged behind the mirror makes up half of Gustavo’s face, being one of the director’s first clues to Gustavo’s love for Castro and communist Cuba. Gustavo is Cuba’s ideal “new man”; a term coined by the famous Che Guevara to describe a “selfless and cooperative, obedient and hardworking, gender-blind, incorruptible, non-materialistic, and anti-imperialist”[1] man. Gustavo truly believes in the revolution; he studies hard in hopes for a scholarship to study…

History Will Not Absolve the Militant Peacemaker History has shown that the quest for power is absolute. Many have used any and every excuse they can in order to obtain it. Those that are hungry for power will use all forms of manipulation necessary in order to obtain it; even the cloak of peace. They say that in order to create a peaceful environment, they must burn it down. They say that in order to create peace they must first kill anyone in their way. They have said that, history will…

On January 1, 1959, Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro overthrew the military regime of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in a guerilla movement. Fidel implemented the Cuban literacy campaign shortly after the coup d'etat as a social reform effort to eliminate illiteracy in the country and consolidate power. The campaign began at the start of 1961 and ended on December 22. In Children of the Revolution: A Yankee Teacher in the Cuban Schools, American writer Jonathan Kozol, provides insight…

“Tracefossilim” of 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…

In the production of knowledge many factors come into play, emotion and reason being the main factors. In my opinion I believe that the claim “In the production of knowledge, it is only because emotion works so well that reason can work at all.” is not true. In other to understand this claim, questions to what extent can emotion cloud reasoning and how emotion is used in the production of knowledge need to be kept in mind. Areas of knowledge that are best for representing these factors are…

There are a number of revolutions that we have studied in the second part of the course. However, the two I am focusing on are the Mexican and Cuban revolutions. These revolutions have three main aspects in common: they are both nationalistic revolutions. Secondly, they both are multifaceted- each supported by different people in the social hierarchy such as peasants and students. Lastly, each push for a more equitable society in terms of class and race and attempt to create laws to support…