Teishan A. Latner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469635460
- eISBN:
- 9781469635484
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635460.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Chapter One illuminates Cuba’s influence on the American Left at the height of the sixties era by examining the history of the Venceremos Brigade, an anti-imperialist Cuba solidarity organization ...
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Chapter One illuminates Cuba’s influence on the American Left at the height of the sixties era by examining the history of the Venceremos Brigade, an anti-imperialist Cuba solidarity organization formed in the United States in 1969. Initiated by New Left antiwar and civil rights activists from Students for a Democratic Society and incorporating a broad spectrum of social movements, including women’s liberation, veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and elements of Puerto Rican, Chicana/o, and Asian American movements, the Venceremos Brigade sent several thousand U.S. leftwing activists to Cuba during the next decade as volunteer laborers. Working in agricultural and construction projects on the island to support Cuban socialism and publicizing the nation’s achievements in universal education and healthcare, the Venceremos Brigade built a grassroots counterpoint to the Washington consensus of antagonism toward the Cuba.Less
Chapter One illuminates Cuba’s influence on the American Left at the height of the sixties era by examining the history of the Venceremos Brigade, an anti-imperialist Cuba solidarity organization formed in the United States in 1969. Initiated by New Left antiwar and civil rights activists from Students for a Democratic Society and incorporating a broad spectrum of social movements, including women’s liberation, veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and elements of Puerto Rican, Chicana/o, and Asian American movements, the Venceremos Brigade sent several thousand U.S. leftwing activists to Cuba during the next decade as volunteer laborers. Working in agricultural and construction projects on the island to support Cuban socialism and publicizing the nation’s achievements in universal education and healthcare, the Venceremos Brigade built a grassroots counterpoint to the Washington consensus of antagonism toward the Cuba.
Teishan A. Latner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469635460
- eISBN:
- 9781469635484
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635460.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Chapter Two examines efforts by the FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, and U.S. politicians to portray travel to Cuba by American dissidents as a threat to U.S. national security. Alleging covert Cuban ...
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Chapter Two examines efforts by the FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, and U.S. politicians to portray travel to Cuba by American dissidents as a threat to U.S. national security. Alleging covert Cuban involvement in left-wing political bombings, espionage, street demonstrations, and growing interest in socialism among the American public, U.S. officials claimed that Cuba’s support for American radicals posed an internal security threat. Lurid media coverage focused on the Venceremos Brigade and Black Panther Party, which were accused of violating the U.S. travel ban to Cuba to receive training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro’s government. The imagined perils of contact between Cuba’s revolutionaries and American radicals, however, lay in their ideological, not military, potentials. In 1976, the FBI summed up a decade of investigations, concluding that the communist nation had been the single greatest foreign influence on domestic radicalism during the 1960s.Less
Chapter Two examines efforts by the FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, and U.S. politicians to portray travel to Cuba by American dissidents as a threat to U.S. national security. Alleging covert Cuban involvement in left-wing political bombings, espionage, street demonstrations, and growing interest in socialism among the American public, U.S. officials claimed that Cuba’s support for American radicals posed an internal security threat. Lurid media coverage focused on the Venceremos Brigade and Black Panther Party, which were accused of violating the U.S. travel ban to Cuba to receive training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro’s government. The imagined perils of contact between Cuba’s revolutionaries and American radicals, however, lay in their ideological, not military, potentials. In 1976, the FBI summed up a decade of investigations, concluding that the communist nation had been the single greatest foreign influence on domestic radicalism during the 1960s.
Teishan A. Latner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469635460
- eISBN:
- 9781469635484
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635460.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Cuba’s grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political ...
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Cuba’s grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island’s achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation’s Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba’s multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.Less
Cuba’s grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island’s achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation’s Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba’s multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.
Derrick E. White
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813037356
- eISBN:
- 9780813041605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813037356.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter chronicles the decline of the IBW and its struggle to survive in the increasingly conservative climate of the late 1970s. It also details the organization's persistent financial ...
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This chapter chronicles the decline of the IBW and its struggle to survive in the increasingly conservative climate of the late 1970s. It also details the organization's persistent financial troubles. At the center of the IBW's problems were a series of mysterious break-ins that destabilized the financially fragile organization. The break-ins appear to have been government sponsored by the likes of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The IBW's demise meant the loss of a vibrant intellectual space that attempted to maintain the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1970s.Less
This chapter chronicles the decline of the IBW and its struggle to survive in the increasingly conservative climate of the late 1970s. It also details the organization's persistent financial troubles. At the center of the IBW's problems were a series of mysterious break-ins that destabilized the financially fragile organization. The break-ins appear to have been government sponsored by the likes of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The IBW's demise meant the loss of a vibrant intellectual space that attempted to maintain the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1970s.
