<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> was filmed in 1964 and directed by Russian film director Mikhail Kalatozov in Cuba. The film tells four different segments that depict the Cuban people’s suffering that ultimately leads to the revolutionary forces marching into Havana. The film shows some suffering, but nothing that would drive a country’s people to revolt against their government. Most of the suffering seems to come from Americans according to the film. More specifically: Americans sleeping with Cuban women. Also absent is the discussion of race and Cuban identity that was going on at the time according to the article by Alejandro de la Fuente.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">While the film does feature some Afro-Cubans, it never explores the struggle they were going through to be acknowledged as Cubans, while retaining their African heritage without being seen as unpatriotic. Fuente believed that this was a problem because: “Cubans have been trying to find unity and common ground for at least a century and have frequently perceived race as an obstacle to reaching this goal.” (43) It is difficult to achieve because the Cubans have to “reconcile race and nation, two categories that the colonial authorities had successfully presented throughout the nineteenth century as incompatible.” (44) The general population of Cuba seemed to ignore this problem and that is reflected in the film. However, in the 1930s, there was the invention “of the Cuban race, a new national paradigm that celebrated as its own blacks' cultural contributions to Cubanness.” (57) This made the Afro-Cubans equal with white Cubans, but still forced the to reject their African heritage. Even during and after the revolution of 1959, in which Afro and white Cubans fought side by side, the discussion was still ignored:</span></div><div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpFirst" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Race did not figure prominently in the agenda of the revolutionary</span></div><div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">leadership that took power in 1959, but their commitment to social justice would deeply affect relations between blacks and whites in the country. (60)</span></div><div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">While America’s interference was an important reason for the Cuban Revolution; those reasons are never explored in the film. A huge reason was that the revolutionaries “believed US multinationals were only a new version of the Spanish and Portuguese empires” bleeding Latin America dry. (Chasteen 265) Cuban nationalists focused almost all of their anti-imperialist rhetoric against the United States in the 50s. (266) This led them to overthrow the government because they viewed it as little more than the puppet of the imperialistic United States. It is true that Castro allied with Soviet Russia only after the United States tried to invade Cuba to stop the spread of communism. Good job guys. The movie ignores most of these reasons and substitutes its own. They rebelled because American tourists and sailors were taking advantage of their women. It makes sense if the director was trying to have the women represent the country like Eisenstein did in <i>Que Viva Mexico</i>. It does not seem like they did though, so the film made the revolution feel completely unnecessary. </span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E9fNCNDNgWw/TWrXoqj7bOI/AAAAAAAAABE/QLj2252gKLE/s1600/comradejd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E9fNCNDNgWw/TWrXoqj7bOI/AAAAAAAAABE/QLj2252gKLE/s400/comradejd.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Comrade Judging Dog judges. You are found GUILTY comrade. Da.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpLast"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1378570525637450649-4997100435714847551?l=dcaldwellhistory475.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
