The structure of Cuban history
Subtitle: meanings and purpose of the past
By: Louis A. Pérez, Jr
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9781469606927; 9781469608860
Subjects: Cuba; History; Cuban National characteristics; Influence; Collective memory; Memory
Other titles: Cuban history
Description: "In this expansive and contemplative history of Cuba, Louis A. Pérez Jr. argues that the country's memory of the past served to transform its unfinished nineteenth-century liberation project into a twentieth-century revolutionary metaphysics. The ideal of national sovereignty that was anticipated as the outcome of Spain's defeat in 1898 was heavily compromised by the U.S. military intervention that immediately followed. To many Cubans it seemed almost as if the new nation had been overtaken by another country's history. Memory of thwarted independence and aggrievement--of the promise of sovereignty ever receding into the future--contributed to the development in the early republic of a political culture shaped by aspirations to fulfill the nineteenth-century promise of liberation, and it was central to the claim of the revolution of 1959 as the triumph of history. In this capstone book, Pérez discerns in the Cuban past the promise that decisively shaped the character of Cuban nationality." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: All this we prefer; title: Intimations of nationality; title: Transformation in times of transition; title: Nation in waiting; title: Anticipation of the past; title: History with a purpose.