State of Ambiguity: Civic Life and Culture in Cuba's First Republic

Abstract

Cuba's first republican era (1902–1959) is principally understood in terms of its failures and discontinuities, its first three decades and the overthrow of Machado seen at best as a prologue to the "real" revolution of 1959. This book brings together scholars from North America, Cuba, and Spain to challenge this narrative, presenting republican Cuba instead as a time of meaningful engagement—socially, politically, and symbolically. Addressing a wide range of topics—civic clubs and folkloric societies, science, public health and agrarian policies, popular culture, national memory, and the intersection of race and labor—the contributors explore how a broad spectrum of Cubans embraced a political and civic culture of national self-realization. These essays recast the first republic as a time of deep continuity in processes of liberal state- and nation-building that were periodically disrupted—but also reinvigorated—by foreign intervention and profound uncertainty.