|
Cuban
Photo Exhbit
Photos Contributed by Herbert
Rogers
Enoch Pratt
Librarian
 |
Left photo: Cuban woman, an image of Santeria
Right photo: Bronze plaques of
noted Americans including WindellPhilips and Nat Turner
|
 |
| Far Right photo: a layout of books in Cuban libraries
Right photo: The Souls of Black Folk, first publication in
Spanish |
 |
 |
|
For us the Fatherland is America
Campaign to teach literacy
is to realize the potential of a human being
There can be no democracy
without justice, without equality. |
 |
 |
The struggle today is different
but no less epic. |
* *
* * *
Cuba An African Odyssey is the previously untold
story of Cuba's support for African revolutions.
Cuba: An African Odyssey is the story of the
Cold War told through the prism of its least known
arena: Africa. It is the untold story of Cuba’s support
for African revolutions. It is the story of men like
Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Agosthino Neto and of
course Che Guevara who have become icons, mythical
figures whose names are now synonymous with the world
revolution. This is the story of how these men, caught
between capitalism and communism, strove to create a
third bloc that would assert the simple principle of
national independence. It is the story of a whole
dimension of world politics during the last half of the
20th century, which has been hidden behind the facade of
a simplistic understanding of superpower conflict.
Cuba: An African Odyssey will tell the inside
story of only three of these Cuban escapades. We will
start with the Congo where Che Guevara personally spent
seven months fighting with the Pro-Lumumbist rebellion
in the jungle of Eastern Congo. Then to Guinea Bissau
where Amilcar Cabral used the technical support of Cuban
advisors to bleed the Portuguese colonial war machine
thus toppling the regime in Europe. Finally, Angola
where in total 380,000 Cuban soldiers fought during the
27 years of civil war. The Cuban withdrawal from Angola
was finally bartered against Namibia’s independence.
With Namibia’s independence came the fall of Apartheid…
the last vestige of colonialism on the African
continent.
Cuba: An African Odyssey unravels episodes of
the Cold War long believed to be nothing but proxy wars.
From the tragicomic epic of Che Guevara in Congo to the
triumph at the battle of Cuito Carnavale in Angola, this
film attempts to understand the world today through the
saga of these internationalists who won every battle but
finally lost the war.
Credits:
Written, directed and narrated by Jihan El-Tahri /
Edited by Gilles Bovon / Photography by
Frank-Peter Lehmann
Sound Recordists: James
Baker, Graciela Barrault / Produced by Tancrède
Ramonet, Benoît Juster, Jihan El-Tahri
Source:
Snagfilms
* *
* * *
 |
Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy
of an Image (2009)
By Michael Casey
Illustrated. 388 pages. Vintage Books.
$15.95
Casey,
Buenos Aires bureau chief for Dow Jones
Newswires, tap dances across history— and
the globe to examine intellectual property
and iconography through the lens of the
famous image of Che Guevara captured by
fashion photographer Alberto Korda. Some say
that only the famous photograph of Marilyn
Monroe, her skirt rising as she stands over
a subway grate, has been more reproduced,
writes Casey. The author does not neglect
the relevant biographical details or
history, but his focus is Che as a brand. He
wants to understand why the Korda image
remains so compelling to such a wide variety
of people and how it continues to represent
so many different (and differing) causes; he
suggests that the power of Che, the brand,
is in its ability to be anything to anyone.
The book can feel like a disorderly amalgam
of travelogue, visual criticism, biography
and reportage—fragments befitting a study of
globalized culture. Readers interested in
the impact of visual culture or in better
understanding the elusiveness of
intellectual property rights, particularly
in a global marketplace, will find much food
for thought.
Publishers Weekly
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War |
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
* * * * *
 |
The Brilliant Disaster
JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs
By Jim Rasenberger
My telling of the Bay of Pigs thing will certainly not be the first. On the contrary, thousands of pages of official reports, journalism, memoir, and scholarship have been devoted to the invasion, including at least two exceptional books: Haynes Johnson’s emotionally charged account published in 1964 and Peter Wyden’s deeply reported account from 1979. This book owes a debt to both of those, and to many others, as well as to thousands of pages of once-classified documents that have become available over the past fifteen years, thanks in part to the efforts of the National Security Archives, an organization affiliated with George Washington University that seeks to declassify and publish government files. These newer sources, including a CIA inspector general’s report, written shortly after the invasion and hidden away in a vault for decades, and a once-secret CIA history compiled in the 1970s, add depth and clarity to our understanding of the event and of the men who planned it and took part in it. . . . |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
By David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
Economist Glenn Loury /Criminalizing a Race
|
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 8 November 2008
|
