<p><bold>This dissertation deals with Cuban art criticism and other written texts related to Abstract Art. From a critical perspective that relates art to society and political and institutional practices, all of the above texts are interpreted as bearers of aesthetic ideologies, which are expressed in the paradigms from which Art Criticism attempted to validate Abstraction. This study further demonstrates that the dominant discourses in the realm of Art Criticism are strongly related to Ideological State Apparatuses. Art Criticism not only mediates between the artwork and the spectator, but also between artistic acts of provocation and the establishment.</p><p> Abstraction in Cuba constituted an important axis in the polemic between autonomous art and socially committed art, but the debates themselves were subsumed in ideological and even political battlefields. Art Criticism oriented these debates, by emphasizing certain problems, and diminishing the importance of other ones. </p><p>This dissertation is organized in function of the dominant questions that Cuban Art Criticism addressed. The first chapter accordingly deals with definitions of abstract art that were prevalent in art writing and publications from 1948 to 1957, a period in which Art Criticism is mostly concerned with the autonomy of art. The second chapter follows the debates about the social commitment of abstract art, which became predominant during the first years of a Marxist-oriented Revolution. This polemic is implicit in the emergence of an Anti-Academic movement in the visual arts, and it began to lose its strength once the Cuban Avant-Garde started to gain institutional recognition. After being relegated to a peripheral position, the question concerning the social commitment of Abstract Art became crucial after the triumph of the Revolution. The final chapter deals with the relations between Abstract Art and the diverse documents that embodied and defined the Cultural Policy during the Cuban Revolution. </p><p>Throughout, this study strives to establish the place of Abstract Art in the Institutional, and discursive practices from 1959 onwards. This place is defined by its instability, as it is constituted through intermittencies and steps backwards on the path towards the institutional consecration of non-figurative tendencies. </bold></p> / Dissertation

This dissertation presents findings from ethnographic research conducted with members of the Sociedad La Unión Martí-Maceo, established by segregated Black Cuban cigar workers in Ybor City in 1904. For decades, Tampa officials have initiated numerous urban revitalization projects aimed at developing a world-class tourist destination and metropolitan center. Often, these efforts have centered on highlighting the ethnic history of Ybor City, from which the participation of Black Cubans and the Martí-Maceo Society have been actively excluded or ignored. The main issues related to contemporary Afro- Cuban identity in Tampa and which will be examined in my dissertation, include the changing nature of the Afro-Cuban community in Tampa in light of increases in migration of Cubans and other Latinos of color to the area; Martí-Maceo members’ struggle to reclaim an Afro-Cuban heritage within Tampa’s larger historic preservation efforts over the past decade; and an examination of the Martí-Maceo Society as a voluntary association that appears to have outlived its usefulness in present-day Tampa despite efforts by elderly members to sustain and expand it.

En esta tesis analizaré en la poesía de Georgina Herrera, Nancy Morejón y Excilia Saldaña 1 los conceptos de género y raza y cómo han sido apropiados del esquema patriarcal y redefinidos en la elaboración de identidad y nación a través de lo que Flora González Mandri y Catherine Davies han llamado la memoria cultural. Mi propósito es demostrar como dichas poetas han subvertido, a través de la palabra, un discurso historicamente maniqueísta que ha servido para reafirmar la doble subyugación de raza y género, como también exploro los resortes de auto-inscripción y el imaginario mítico-cultural que cada poeta emplea en su poesía para desmantelar el paradigma patriarcal. Lejos de ofrecer un análisis exhaustivo de la obra de cada escritora, mi objetivo es más bien deslindar las complejidades culturales que enmarca la producción literaria de cada una. He tomando en cuenta el contexto sociohistórico de donde surgen para comprender el lugar que han reclamado en la producción y reproducción cultural. Aunque no abordo los discursos de raza y género mediante un filtro estrictamente teórico, más bien utilizo ciertas teorías como ópticas en el vislumbrar poético de la aportación de cada poeta, me he apoyado cuando necesario en algunos postulados feministas, postestructuralistas, y postcoloniales. No obstante mi intención es ante todo ofrecer una lectura que se fundamenta en el análisis literario. En ciertos poemas aplico algunos aspectos de la teoría feminista de bell hooks, la contrapropuesta que ofrece Oyèrónké Oy ĕwùmi ante el discurso feminista occidental, el planteamiento sobre el poder del lenguaje y la dominación del discurso de Michel Foucault, y la teoría postcolonial de Homi Bhaba sobre el tercer espacio y la mímica. Herrera, Morejón, y Saldaña se adueñan de sus historias y reivindican las de sus ancestros femeninos mediante el protagonismo que ejercen como creadora/sujetos. Utilizando los temas de la memoria, la reconstrucción de la identidad, el homenaje a los antepasados femeninos, la recreación del vínculo con África como matriz, el rescate de la imagen de la mujer en el proyecto de identidad nacional, y la exaltación de la maternidad, dichas poetas deconstruyen los estereotipos afro-femeninos para después reconstruir y proyectar la imagen de la mujer dentro de un marco de resistencia. En su afán de desmontar los códigos establecidos, desarticulando y reconstruyendo el pasado para redefinir la identidad de la mujer afrocubana de manera protagónica en el presente, la obra de Morejón, Herrrera, y Saldaña rompe y transciende los parametros vanguardistas del negrismo 2 misógino de la primera mitad del siglo XX. Tras su auto-inscripción dentro de la poesía, la mujer afrocubana se plantea como creadora y portadora de la palabra constructora. En su lucha por crear un sujeto lírico que la represente y quede impreso en el subconsciente imaginario cultural, emerge como la voz más influyente de la poesía cubana post-revolucionaria.

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This thesis is an ethnography and biographical study that examines the impact of the immense socioeconomic changes underway in Cuba at the turn of the 21st century and the flexible identity categories through which individuals navigate a social crisis. The biography and ethnography in this thesis are centered on the life of Violeta Aldama, an aging revolutionary and Afro-Cuban mother who struggles to make ends meet while fighting to steer her son, Brian, through a classical music education and into a music career. Amid growing racial inequalities when many Afro-Cubans are locked out of the most lucrative jobs in the new tourism sector and less likely to have family abroad sending remittances, the booming dance music industry offers the greatest promise for advancement and wealth than possibly any other profession. With the retraction of the state in a growing market economy, Violeta must scramble to build new networks of support while also coming to terms with the idea that the system she fought for all of her life will no longer be able to sustain her son. This study argues that individuals navigate through social crises through identity categories that are both socially constructed and subjectively fluid. In the process, they rely on these identity categories to build new contacts for support while also finding in them meaning and agency. I frame this thesis around three broad identity categories - race, class and national identity. The study also shows how Violeta in turn experienced these categories - as well as motherhood and her revolutionary roles - and the ways that she used them to build networks of support. The thesis is guided by the theory on lo informal developed by scholar Damián Fernández: the split in individuals between ideals and passionate beliefs versus life on the black market to help loved ones survive. The study's methodology draws from feminist ethnography, examining not only Violeta's position in society as an Afro-Cuban woman and aging revolutionary, but also my relationship with her and her son as a white, middle-class American researcher during a time when relationships with foreigners became a crucial means of social advancement. This research bridges academic areas of study regarding Cuba's growing racial inequalities and the rising economic power of the music industry. It also contributes to the academic canon on social movements by highlighting roles of individuals - not just the state or opposition alliances - as social actors.

The present study consisted of two parts: (1) The examination of whether demographic differences in utilization of multiple forms of health services existed among Non-Hispanic Whites, Mexican-, Cuban-, and Puerto Rican-American adolescents. (2) The examination of whether the Andersen model, revised for Latino adolescents, fit equally well for Mexican-, Cuban-, and Puerto Rican-Americans. Data for this study were drawn from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of 7th through 12th-grade students in the United States collected between 1994 and 1996.Logistic regression analyses indicated that there were significant differences in routine physical exams based on ethnicity. Mexican-American adolescents were less likely than Non-Hispanic White, Cuban-American, and Puerto Rican-American adolescents to receive routine physical exams. Finding based both on the logistic regressions and on the latent mean comparisons suggested that Cuban- and Puerto Rican-American adolescents are more likely to utilize health services than Mexican-American adolescents. Cuban-American adolescents were also less likely to indicate the need for medical services, whereas Mexican-American adolescents were more likely to state that they needed medical services but were unable to receive them.The results of multi-group confirmatory factor analyses provide mixed evidence toward the indication that the revised Andersen's conceptual model is an appropriate overall framework to utilize with Mexican-, Cuban-, and Puerto Rican-American adolescents. Based on the structural equation model findings, it appears that the major link between need and use of health care services is not supported in the three Latino subgroups. The Andersen model only partially addressed health care needs among the adolescent Latino subgroups. Although there are connections from the main predisposing predictors (including Latino adolescent-specific characteristics) to enabling resources and need, these indirect associations do not necessarily predict use of health services with Mexican-, Cuban-, and Puerto Rican-American adolescents. Clearly there is a great need for health care services among Latino adolescents, particularly given their health disparities in adolescent risk behavior; however current models need further revision, such as including key cultural factors and social context, to predict use of health care services.

This study attempts to organize the conglomerate of writing on Africans within Republican Cuba. Starting with an examination of the scientific stages of such writing, we will trace the assorted work of Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), whose anthropological study of Afrocuba produced myriad readings of the heritage. The multiplicity of renderings of Cuba s Africans from the scientific arena including condemning, racially charged treatises and spiritual conceptualizations of the richness of Cuba s African heritage generated an air of inconstancy. Indeed, the contradictions generated by the discipline s scientific course were incredibly polarized, representative of an ambiguity that became emblematic of Afrocuban Studies. Regardless of such blatant ideological opposition, tracing Ortiz s anthropological reading of the place of Cuba s Africans among the nation provides a telling insight into the racialized circumstances surrounding Republican nation-building. Whether scientific research scorned Cuba s Africans or applauded their inclusion in the national imaginary, Ortiz s writing and his invitations to Cuba s younger scholars to partake of folk study outlines a succinct treatment of Cuban nation-building between 1902 and 1959. If scientific research on Afrocuba promulgated studies that both cherished and demonized Cuba s Africanness, so too did Afrocuba s artistic invocations bear contradiction. After the vogue of the African swept the 1920s Parisian art scene, Africanized artistic currents infiltrated Cuba and mingled with its scientific counterpart. The ensuing readings of Afrocuba, contradictory and complex, spurred both research-art overlaps and the rejection of scientific tenets for a so-called artistically authentic rendering of Afrocuba that is, a reading from the inside, from within Afrocuba. It is along these lines that fiction writers (including Alejo Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera, and Rmulo Lachataer) posted renderings of Afrocuba that partook of various degrees of science, research, and artistic vogue. The resultant narrative system portrayed three different sorts of Afrocuban literature; none of the writers aligned succinctly in their portrayal. Afrocuba s poetic front was even more varied in its evocation of the nation, the academy, and popular art. In this way, Nicols Guilln, Ramn Guirao, Juan Marinello, and Emilio Ballagas encapsulated unique poetic visions on two fronts: through offerings to Afrocuban poetics and through essays on the Afrocuban poetic mode. We shall examine such pieces in the hopes of understanding the balanced interplay that academic research and artistic invocation absorbed in the nation-building process, in the fashioning of Afrocuba.

My thesis grows out of a reflection on Cuban literature, race, and national identity within the broader framework of the canon and its marginal literature. It explores the dynamics of the Cuban canon and specific visions of race and nation, and studies one play, two novels, a book of poems and a radio script from four different moments in Cuban history. Fernández Vilarós´s play Los negros catedráticos (1868) sets for the first time the topic of race at the center of the national debate, immediately before the first and longest Cuban independence war. The play contrasts with Cecilia Valdés (1882), arguably the most canonical Cuban novel, with its subversive remake, Sofía (1891) and analyzes how the former seeks to conceal the nation’s racially-mixed character and present the mulata condition as a mere border-line. Sofía, however, erases this line and expands the mulata condition to everyone. Following this reading, it seeks to identify a set of markers that configures a mulato discourse in Regino Boti´s Arabescos mentales (1913). It proposes that the characteristic tendency toward elitism in Latin American Modernismo is actually a racial device to accomplish racial equality. And so language (and poetry) emerges in Boti as the most efficient vehicle to resolve racial deficiency. Finally, the thesis studies the script of the most successful Latino American soap opera ever, El derecho de nacer (1948), by Félix B. Caignet. Here Caignet converges the Villaverde´s idea of race as an objective value with Boti’s White idealization. He also proposes symbolic or cultural whitening as the only vehicle of social improvement. In conclusion, the common denominator of all four works is the representation of mulatez as an absolute and objective fact, as opposed to the marginal Sofía, which presents it as relative and subjective. Therefore, despite the traditional national discourse of Cuba as a racially-mixed country, the canon has banned those works that actually support this postulate.

The Cuban Missile Crisis has been considered by political scientists and historians as one of the most critical point in U.S. – Soviet relations during the Cold War and probably the only case of the possibility of the nuclear exchange was on highest level. The Cuban Missile Crisis was considered to be a part of continued political game of the ideological struggle between the leaders of United States and Soviet Union. However, the fact of the existence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba created situation for U.S. government to decide what course of actions should be taken and not escalate a further confrontation, which could lead to a mutual nuclear exchange. The suggestions to such course of actions were coming from different members of the Executive Committee of the National Council or EXCOMM, which did make impact on U.S. president’s decision making in relation to Soviet installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962.  The focus of this study relied on outcome of the decisions taken on secret meetings within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council or EXCOMM (included U.S. president as member of this committee) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The results of this study show if inter – and intragroup conflicts within EXCOOM made such impact on decision making outcome.

Federal agencies operating along the border in southern Florida include the United States Coast Guard (USCG), United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), which is the parent agency for Border Patrol (BP), Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the National Park Service (NPS). Each agency has its own mission regarding immigration, and conflicts have emerged regarding responsibilities and responses to immigrant landings. The purpose of this study was to identify federal law enforcement perspectives about tactics for responses to Cuban immigrant landings within national parks in southern Florida. This study was motivated by the following research questions: 1.) How do the federal agencies operating along the southeastern border in Florida work together during responses to Cuban immigrant landings within national parks? 2.) What are the perspectives among agency personnel about tactics for response to Cuban immigrant landings within national parks? 3.) What tactics should be emphasized in future responses? The concept of shared mental models (SMM) provided a framework for the research, and data was collected through the Q method. Three factors, or social perspectives, on responses to landings were revealed: 1.) React & Transport, 2.) Protect and 3.) Plan. Implications for managers, limitations and future research is discussed.