This book analyzes the evolution of the eldercare crisis in Cuba under the influence of advanced demographic aging, a prolonged economic crisis, and growing contradictions between the needs, values, and aspirations of the various generations.

Aging and Generational Relations

"Together, these three tell a saga played out during a unique age filled with upheaval, sharp divisions, and yet, hope. Spanning nearly five decades of life in Cuba and in exile, this wide-ranging history is also an intimately personal narrative, one that helps explain Cubans' complex and diverse views about the path their country has taken."--BOOK JACKET.

Many books have already been written about the Cuban Revolution. Most of them have had an understandable focus on the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. This author too deals with these very topics as swell, but he presents that chapter of Cuban history through autobiographical stories and the personal anecdotes of the individuals who actually participated in these events. The author goes back to his earlier years when he was immersed in the events that shaped his future, what he thought the revolution would be, and how the events he observed forced him to reverse his conclusions. He writes how, as a young idealist, he is driven to abandon the very pro-revolutionary cause he once embraced and, instead, takes arms against the oppressive Castro regime. He shares his concerns and hesitations, describes his personal evolution. and recounts the joys and frustrations experienced while participating in guerrilla and other paramilitary activities that eventually evolved into the debacle known as the Bay of Pigs. The stories are all true, and some remain painful after more than fifty years. Additional anecdotes are presented by several of his war buddies. All of them share in the same ideological principles, underwent similar experiences, reached the same conclusions and made similar individual decisions. They truly represent their generation, which was propelled into action by its religious principles and moral convictions. Their stories are as diverse as the individuals who share them. They range from the tender words of a grandfather answering the school project questions of an innocent grandson, to the sometimes bitter words and memories of those who felt abandoned and betrayed on the beachhead of the Bay of Pigs, all the way to the life-altering experience of a man who, at the age of eighteen, endures a hellish night where he personally says goodbye to eight of his friends and witnesses their executions by firing squad, one after another, after another... The book is not just history. It is living history; it is lived history. It was not written by scholars that researched the events using books written by others. Instead, it was written by those whose actions created that history, those that were active participants in the events described and were lucky enough to survive these events. Ramon Machado was born and raised in Cuba, and was part of the liberation efforts recounted in this book from the time he was 19 until he was about 25 years old. He became a nuclear engineer and worked in that field until he "retired" in 2002. He then taught high school physics for another 10 years. Now that he is truly retired he finally found the time to sit down and write this book. He has five children and five grandchildren and lives with his wife, Connie, in Mississippi.

Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba is a new history of the first decade of the Cuban Revolution, exploring how youth came to play such an important role in the 1960s on this Caribbean island. Certainly, youth culture and politics worldwide were in the ascendant in that decade, but in this pioneering and thought-provoking work Anne Luke explains how the unique circumstances of the newly developing socialist revolution in Cuba created an ethos of youth which becomes one of the factors that explains how and why the Cuban Revolution survives to this day. By examining how youth was constructed and constituted within revolutionary discourse, policy, and the lived experience of young Cubans in the 1960s, Luke examines the conflicted (but ultimately successful) development of a revolutionary youth culture. She explores the fault lines along which the notion of youth was created—between the internal and the external, between discourse and the everyday, between politics and culture. Luke looks at how in the first decade of the Cuban Revolution a young leadership—Fidel, Raúl and Che—were complemented by a group of new protagonists from Cuba’s young generation. These could be literacy teachers, party members, militia members, teachers, singers, poets… all aiming to define and shape the Cuban Revolution. Together young Cubans took part in defining what it meant to be young, socialist and Cuban in this effervescent decade. The picture that emerges is one in which neither youth politics nor youth culture can alone help to explain the first decade of the Revolution; rather through the sometimes conflicted intersection of both there emerged a generation constantly to be renewed—a youth in Revolution.

In the years since Fidel Castro came to power, the migration of close to one million Cubans to the United States continues to remain one of the most fascinating, unusual, and controversial movements in American history. María Cristina García—a Cuban refugee raised in Miami—has experienced firsthand many of the developments she describes, and has written the most comprehensive and revealing account of the postrevolutionary Cuban migration to date. García deftly navigates the dichotomies and similarities between cultures and among generations. Her exploration of the complicated realm of Cuban American identity sets a new standard in social and cultural history.