As a teenaged girl, Lara Canedo was torn from her roots when, at her motherÍs insistence, she left her native Havana for Spain as one of thousands of Cuban refugees of the late 1960s. Lara now finds herself, a mature adult, returning home ? but to a dilapidated capital that no longer resembles the city she left behind, and to a homeland that has been with her only subconsciously during twenty years in exile. As she revisits sites from her childhood and youth ? accompanied by Osvaldo, an old boyfriend hoping to rekindle their romantic past ? she encounters people and places that arouse suppressed memories. Even as she journeys through present and past, through subconscious and conscious, Lara crosses Cuba to visit her godmother, Clemencia, who has kept LaraÍs childhood journals for all these years. Reading through them allows Lara to clearly see the differences between then and now, reawakening her once-strong identity and granting her a sense of perspective she had never possessed before. Forced at last to confront the past after long denial, Lara is able to see the land of her birth anew, with eyes free of the unbridled and delusionary nostalgia she shares with so many exiles. She realizes that to remember means to actively acknowledge and use her memory to meld the split pieces of her life and so create a healing unity from them.

In July 2015, Abe Kogan navigated the streets of Havana, camera in hand, capturing the evocative beauty of an isolated island frozen in time. Kogan's black-and-white photographs, devoid of picturesque tropical landscapes and charming beach scenes, are provocative, intimate portraits of the daily lives of the Habaneros. These inner-city vignettes reveal Havana's urban pulse and focus on the dynamic community that inhabits a world on the brink of change. This book captures life on the pavement, which is where Havana's citizens spend their time--gossiping over balconies and languishing in the doorways of the once-glorious buildings that have fallen into ruin, their expressions marked by both vitality and hardship.

Split Seconds Havana is a 2017 Gold Award winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Photography. These captured shots within Split Seconds Havana occur smack in the midst of the pre-normalization of Cuban/US relations followed by the signing of the accord between the 2 nations, President Obama s visit, and Fidel Castro s death. This collection of black and white photos situates Havana inside of the dying embers of its 57 year relationship with orthodox communism. But now with its feet firmly planted in the pre-post Castro dance of modernity and change, bets are on that Havana is set to change and in a big way. The author is not sure how much change is in the cards. Nor how quickly it will manifest. Havana will reinvent itself regardless of change, rates of change, confluences or conflicts of influences he says. The shots presented here cut through the politics and the gossip of endless predictions spun by the international and local rumor mills. They portray a timeless face of Havana. A captivating and repeating humanity. "Generational Generalities" as he likes to say. Devoid of its powerful tropical flavors via his cancelation of color, landscapes and seascapes, Havana is stripped bare and reveals its inner city urban pulse. The metronome of its Habaneros.

Newly revised and redesigned, this book assesses nearly 500 years of urban development and planning in Havana, paying particular attention to the city's rich blend of Spanish-Cuban-Latin American-North American architecture and design.

From the first amateur leagues of the 1860s to the exploits of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, here is the definitive history of baseball in Cuba. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria expertly traces the arc of the game, intertwining its heroes and their stories with the politics, music, dance, and literature of the Cuban people. What emerges is more than a story of balls and strikes, but a richly detailed history of Cuba told from the unique cultural perch of the baseball diamond. Filling a void created by Cuba's rejection of bullfighting and Spanish hegemony, baseball quickly became a crucial stitch in the complex social fabric of the island. By the early 1940s Cuba had become major conduit in spreading the game throughout Latin America, and a proving ground for some of the greatest talent in all of baseball, where white major leaguers and Negro League players from the U.S. all competed on the same fields with the cream of Latin talent. Indeed, readers will be introduced to several black ballplayers of Afro-Cuban descent who played in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier once and for all. Often dramatic, and always culturally resonant, Gonzalez Echevarria's narrative expertly lays open the paradox of fierce Cuban independence from the U.S. with Cuba's love for our national pastime. It shows how Fidel Castro cannily associated himself with the sport for patriotic p.r.--and reveals that his supposed baseball talent is purely mythical. Based on extensive primary research and a wealth of interviews, the colorful, often dramatic anecdotes and stories in this distinguished book comprise the most comprehensive history of Cuban baseball yet published and ultimately adds a vital lost chapter to the history of baseball in the U.S.

This volume showcases new research on the global reach of Latin American revolutionary movements during the height of the Cold War, mapping out the region’s little-known connections with Africa, Asia, and Europe. Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left offers insights into the effect of international collaboration on the identities, ideologies, strategies, and survival of organizers and groups. Featuring contributions from historians working in six different countries, this collection includes chapters on Cuba’s hosting of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference that brought revolutionary movements together; Czechoslovakian intelligence’s logistical support for revolutionaries; the Brazilian Left’s search for recognition in Cuba and China; the central role played by European publishing houses in disseminating news from Latin America; Italian support for Brazilian guerrilla insurgents; Spanish ties with Nicaragua’s revolution; and the solidarity of European networks with Guatemala’s Guerrilla Army of the Poor. Through its expansive geographical perspectives, this volume positions Latin America as a significant force on the international stage of the 1960s and 1970s. It sets a new research agenda that will guide future study on leftist movements, transnational networks, and Cold War history in the region. Contributor:s José Manuel Ágreda Portero | Van Gosse | James G. Hershberg | Gerardo Leibner | Blanca Mar León | Eduardo Rey Tristán | Arturo Taracena Arriola | Michal Zourek

Focussing on one of the most influential scholars writing on international relations, Wang Gungwu, this book explores the limitations of Western international relations approaches to China, and explains China’s IR from a non-Western perspective, and demonstrates how the study of Chinese experiences can enrich the IR field.