This book provides a much-needed study of the lived experience of militarization in the Caribbean from 1914 to the present. It offers an alternative to policy and security studies by drawing on the perspectives of literary and cultural studies, history, anthropology, ethnography, music, and visual art. Rather than opposing or defending militarization per se, this book focuses attention on how Caribbean people negotiate militarization in their everyday lives. The volume explores topics such as the US occupation of Haiti; British West Indians in World War I; the British naval invasion of Anguilla; military bases including Chaguaramas, Vieques and Guantánamo; the militarization of the police; sex work and the military; drug wars and surveillance; calypso commentaries; private security armies; and border patrol operations.

Drawing on the long and varied history of discourses of cultural hybridity across the caribbean, this book explores the rich and fraught cultural crossings that are often theorized homogeneously in postcolonial studies as 'hybridity'. What is the relationship of cultural hybridity to social equality? Why have some forms of hybridity been enshrined in the caribbean imagination and others disavowed? What is the appeal of cultural hybridity to nationalist and post-nationalist projects alike? What can we learn from the hybridization of Afro-caribbean and Indo-caribbean cultures set in motion by slavery and indentureship? In answering these questions, this book intervenes in several important debates in postcolonial studies about cultural resistance and popular agency, feminism and cultural nationalism, the relations between postmodernism and postcolonialism, and the status of nationalism in an age of globalization.

This book explores the humanities as an insightful platform for understanding and responding to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, other manifestations of “Guantánamo,” and the contested place of freedom in American Empire. It presents the work of scholars and writers based in Cuba’s Guantánamo Province and various parts of the US. Its essays, short stories, poetry, and other texts engage the far-reaching meaning and significance of Gitmo by bringing together what happens on the U.S. side of the fence—or “la cerca,” as it is called in Cuba—with perspectives from the outside world. Chapters include critiques of artistic renderings of the Guantánamo region; historical narratives contemplating the significance of freedom; analyses of the ways the base and region inform the Cuban imaginary; and fiction and poetry published for the first time in English. Not simply a critique of imperialism, this volume presents politically engaged commentary that suggests a way forward for a site of global contact and conflict.

The Caribbean is a region that has been at the heart of world history and global development for centuries. Despite its small geographic size, it is the lynchpin of the Atlantic economy. Further, through a series of migrations, Caribbean people are represented in most of the major cities of the West, and have impacted the histories of Britain, Canada, and the United States, as well as places throughout Europe and Latin America. The Caribbean History Reader provides a thorough and up-to-date overview of Caribbean history from the pre-Columbian era to the present. It brings together a range of classic and innovative articles and primary sources, to create an introduction to Caribbean political, economic, social and cultural currents, providing an important first reference point to scholars and students alike.

Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command. Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch "ideas not missiles" into the command's area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC.

Over the last decade, studies of the Cold War have mushroomed globally. Unfortunately, work on Latin America has not been well represented in either theoretical or empirical discussions of the broader conflict. With some notable exceptions, studies have proceeded in rather conventional channels, focusing on U.S. policy objectives and high-profile leaders (Fidel Castro) and events (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and drawing largely on U.S. government sources. Moreover, only rarely have U.S. foreign relations scholars engaged productively with Latin American historians who analyze how the international conflict transformed the region's political, social, and cultural life. Representing a collaboration among eleven North American, Latin American, and European historians, anthropologists, and political scientists, this volume attempts to facilitate such a cross-fertilization. In the process, In From the Cold shifts the focus of attention away from the bipolar conflict, the preoccupation of much of the so-called "new Cold War history," in order to showcase research, discussion, and an array of new archival and oral sources centering on the grassroots, where conflicts actually brewed. The collection's contributors examine international and everyday contests over political power and cultural representation, focusing on communities and groups above and underground, on state houses and diplomatic board rooms manned by Latin American and international governing elites, on the relations among states regionally, and, less frequently, on the dynamics between the two great superpowers themselves. In addition to charting new directions for research on the Latin American Cold War, In From the Cold seeks to contribute more generally to an understanding of the conflict in the global south. Contributors. Ariel C. Armony, Steven J. Bachelor, Thomas S. Blanton, Seth Fein, Piero Gleijeses, Gilbert M. Joseph, Victoria Langland, Carlota McAllister, Stephen Pitti, Daniela Spenser, Eric Zolov