Since the arrival of the first African slaves to Cuba in 1524, the issue of race has had a long-lived presence in the Cuban national discourse. However, despite Cuba’s colonial history, it has often been maintained by some historians that race relations in Cuba were congenial with racism and racial discrimination never existing as deep or widespread in Cuba as in the United States (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). In fact, it has been argued that institutionalized racism was introduced into Cuban society with the first U.S. occupation, during 1898–1902 (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). This study of Cuba investigates the influence of the United States on the development of race relations and racial perceptions in post-independent Cuba, specifically from 1898-1902. These years comprise the time period immediately following the final fight for Cuban Independence, culminating with the Cuban-Spanish-American War and the first U.S. occupation of Cuba. By this time, the Cuban population comprised Africans as well as descendants of Africans, White Spanish people, indigenous Cubans, and offspring of the intermixing of the groups. This research studies whether the United States’ own race relations and racial perceptions influenced the initial conflicting race relations and racial perceptions in early and post-U.S. occupation Cuba. This study uses a collective interpretative framework that incorporates a national level of analysis with a race relations and racial perceptions focus. This framework reaches beyond the traditionally utilized perspectives when interpreting the impact of the United States during and following its intervention in Cuba. Attention is given to the role of the existing social, political climate within the United States as a driving influence of the United States’ involvement with Cuba. This study reveals that emphasis on the role of the United States as critical to the development of Cuba’s race relations and racial perceptions is credible given the extensive involvement of the U.S. in the building of the early Cuban Republic and U.S. structures serving as models for reconstruction. U.S. government formation in Cuba aligned with a governing system reflecting the existing governing codes of the U.S. during that time period.

The United States and Cuba announced that they would begin the process of restoring diplomatic relations in December 2014 after over fifty years of political disengagement. The shift in foreign policy produced a plethora of news articles. What do newspaper articles, in particular articles in The New York Times published between January 2014-July 2015, reveal about how, if at all, the representation of Cuba has changed since the two countries have initiated the process of restoring relations? How did the U.S. public react to this change? A qualitative content analysis of 117 articles from The New York Times reveal that the thaw in foreign relations with Cuba does not mean a significant shift in the portrayal of Cuba in U.S. newspapers. Cuba continues to be characterized as an undemocratic, unfree government.

abstract: During the mid-1930s in Cuba, Ernest Hemingway befriended Cuban artist Antonio Gattorno (1904-1980) during Hemingway's most active period of Gulf Stream fishing trips. Their relationship soon transcended ocean sojourns, and the two exchanged letters, eight of which reside in the Hemingway Collection at the J.F.K. Library in Boston. Written between 1935 and 1937, the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence showcases the relationship that came to fruition between the American writer and Cuban artist in the 1930s. It also presents a lens through which to examine the cultural contact that occurred between Americans and Cubans during a decade of great political, social, and economic exchange between the two nations. In addition, the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence elucidates each country's tendency to romanticize the other before the Cuban Revolution and provides a template with which to examine current U.S.-Cuban relationships today. This thesis endeavors to first discuss the Hemingway-Gattorno relationship via a close examination of the correspondence that occurred between them. It then attests that the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence exemplifies the transatlantic glamorization that characterized pre-revolutionary U.S.-Cuban relations. The thesis explores the replay of this act of romanticizing in real time, arguing that despite governmental injunctions since 1961, Americans and Cubans alike have continued to ingeniously find ways to communicate with one another in much the same way Hemingway and Gattorno did in the 1930s. One mechanism for doing so is remembering Ernest Hemingway's life in Cuba and the home he owned there, Finca Vigía, a performance of memory that often occurs through the conduits of either the Hemingway Archives in Boston or the Finca Vigía Museum in Cuba. American and Cuban longing for the cultural contact enjoyed by Hemingway and Gattorno is expressed and performed through a glorification of Hemingway and the Finca Vigía, despite the severance of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1961. In addition, for Cubans in particular, Hemingway and the Finca Vigía present an opportunity to imagine the much more unified pre-revolutionary Cuba. Although certainly Hemingway and his home represent different realities for Cubans and Americans, in all, the thesis will show that citizens from both countries continue to find ways to create and imagine themselves in pre-revolutionary contexts like those embodied by Hemingway and Gattorno in the 1930s. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2011