I am Cuba

I am Cuba is a movie made of four short movies that show the people during the time of the revolution.  The four different mini-movies are:
1) Americans in a nightclub, one of them takes advantage of Maria, who is seeing the local town fruit seller, goes with her back to her shack and then in the morning pays for her services.  The American is interested in her one valuable possession in the morning and leaves her extra money and takes it from her because he is not able to communicate with her.  In the morning the ‘boyfriend’ walks in and sees what is happening and with that Maria’s relationship with him is ended and she is left in the world alone.  Ruined by an American asshole.  
2)  A farmer is bought out by United Fruit, although the farmer is bought out by a Cuban landowner.  The farmer sends his children to town because he knows that their way of life is over, that everything that he has worked for in the past means nothing now.  The children go to town and buy coca-cola’s and listen to music which is being played on a juke-box.  The father farmer in the meantime is in the field lighting fire to his crops which have given him work and money in the past years because he knows that from now on they aren’t going to bring him anything.  
3)  A young teenage  girl is walking in the streets and American sailors who are on leave in Guantanomo Bay see her.  The sailors decide to follow her to an area where she is finally cornered.  Ultimately she is rescued by a student who then the sailors ‘give a break’ and carry on with singing and going and walking through the streets enjoying their leave.
4)  A family is bombed by Castro in the mountains and try to cope with losing everything that they had, to include one of their children who was hit by one of the bombs.  


These four mini-movies show what the people go through during the revolution.  It is interesting to read in ” Born in Blood and Fire”  that women did not have much education while living in slumlike conditions.  Some of them were able to teach themselves certain things such as reading to make a living for themselves and family.  One also notices the presence of American industrialism in the mini-movies.  In each of the movies besides the last one there is always something that is American, whether it be American people or American modern items to include coca-cola and a juke-box.  “This, the revolution transformed the domestic class structure, and it ushered into power a government more committed to economic expansion and diversification than the one it displaced” (Eckstein 504)  In all of the mini-movies you are also able to see the separation of class.  The farmer and the family in the mountain may be on the same social class but now have to both find a new way to live.  The revolution is not something that was easy on anyone, just as no major change is.  It takes time, time that the citizens did not have at that time.