Negro Soy Yo

In Negro Soy Yo Marc D. Perry explores Cuba’s hip hop movement as a window into the racial complexities of the island’s ongoing transition from revolutionary socialism toward free-market capitalism. Centering on the music and lives of black-identified raperos (rappers), Perry examines the ways these young artists craft notions of black Cuban identity and racial citizenship, along with calls for racial justice, at the fraught confluence of growing Afro-Cuban marginalization and long held perceptions of Cuba as a non-racial nation. Situating hip hop within a long history of Cuban racial politics, Perry discusses the artistic and cultural exchanges between raperos and North American rappers and activists, and their relationships with older Afro-Cuban intellectuals and African American political exiles. He also examines critiques of Cuban patriarchy by female raperos, the competing rise of reggaetón, as well as state efforts to incorporate hip hop into its cultural institutions. At this pivotal moment of Cuban-U.S. relations, Perry's analysis illuminates the evolving dynamics of race, agency, and neoliberal transformation amid a Cuba in historic flux. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched

GLOBAL CHANGE, DOMESTIC POLICY, AND LIFE COURSE INFLUENCES ON PERCEPTIONS OF HEALTH EQUITY AMONG OLDER CUBANS

Cubas provision of free health services to the entire population via neighborhood-based family doctors produced dramatic health gains and achieved a relative state of health equality. Since 1989, however, the termination of Soviet trade, a grave economic crisis, intensification of the US embargo, welfare reductions, and population aging have placed Cubas health successes and elder care services in jeopardy. Little independent research, though, has focused on the influence of post-Cold War circumstances on citizen attitudes about health programs and resources targeting Cubas older population. This research examined global and domestic factors since 1989 that have most influenced perceptions of the equitability and inequitability of health resources among older Cubans. Its multi-layered design drew on new International Political Economy, crystallization, and aspects of Grounded Theory. In-depth narrative interviews were conducted with Cubans age 60 years or older, their families and community support group members, family physicians and other medical personnel, and key health and government informants. Perceptions of health equity were found to correspond most with the geographic proximity and nearly unhindered physical access of older patients to their family doctors and the temporal availability of family physicians to their older patients. Conversely, perceptions of health inequity corresponded most with the older persons experience of medicine shortages and health resource rationing following global socio-political-economic change and domestic policy shifts after 1989. Furthermore, the life course influences of the pre- and post-revolutionary eras and pre-1989 and post-Cold War period were seminal in shaping the perceptions and expectations of the older participants regarding health care, the leadership, and Cuban socialism. The findings have added to the international health and cross-cultural gerontology literature. Decision-makers and health practitioners in Cuba and elsewhere have been informed about the importance of popular perceptions of the impact of health and elder policy change in an era of globalized social relations and capital. The research also has contributed a gerontological dimension and a narrative perspective to further the development of new International Political Economy

Negro Soy Yo

In Negro Soy Yo Marc D. Perry explores Cuba’s hip hop movement as a window into the racial complexities of the island’s ongoing transition from revolutionary socialism toward free-market capitalism. Centering on the music and lives of black-identified raperos (rappers), Perry examines the ways these young artists craft notions of black Cuban identity and racial citizenship, along with calls for racial justice, at the fraught confluence of growing Afro-Cuban marginalization and long held perceptions of Cuba as a non-racial nation. Situating hip hop within a long history of Cuban racial politics, Perry discusses the artistic and cultural exchanges between raperos and North American rappers and activists, and their relationships with older Afro-Cuban intellectuals and African American political exiles. He also examines critiques of Cuban patriarchy by female raperos, the competing rise of reggaetón, as well as state efforts to incorporate hip hop into its cultural institutions. At this pivotal moment of Cuban-U.S. relations, Perry's analysis illuminates the evolving dynamics of race, agency, and neoliberal transformation amid a Cuba in historic flux. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched

Archiving the revolution : claiming history in Cuban literature and film

textThis dissertation examines how both literature and film were responsible for the construction of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive. On one hand, the immediate foundation of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) three months after the triumph of Fidel Castro's 26 of July guerrilla movement in 1959, showed the urgency to establish a cinematic apparatus that would support the Cuban Revolution itself, that is, the need to project what had just happened to the outside world. On the other, literature also emerged as an important artifact of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive with the support of the literary prizes granted by Casa de las Américas-- another key cultural institution founded in those first years. Most of the first films-- such as Historias de la Revolución (1960)-- and novels-- such as Maestra voluntaria (1962)-- produced then were either about the Cuban struggle or served to record the main events and accomplishments of the post-1959 revolutionary process. That is why I considered them as historical records instituted and manipulated by the Cuban government. I also analyze the films and novels published outside the island as a "counter-archive" that contests the official version. My goal in writing this dissertation, then, was not only to trace how this Cuban Revolutionary Filmic and Literary Archive was constructed but also how it has evolved throughout the years. To do so I analyze primary works from the sixties-- such as the film P.M. (1960) and Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) and the novel Bertillón 166 (1960)-- to contrast them with works produced thirty to fifty years later that revisit those first years-- such as the films 8-A (1992), City in Red (2009) and Memories of Overdevelopment (2010). The aim is to decipher why these two mediums were used as artifacts of the archive, what was hidden or erased, how did the archive of the sixties differ from the one that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and during the "Special Period," and what challenges arose with the passage of time and the decadence of the revolutionary process. By looking for answers to these questions, this dissertation aims to contribute to the recent revision by cultural scholars of Latin American Revolutions in their anniversaries.Spanish and Portugues