Cuban Revolution Themes

Connections of the Cuban Revolution Cuba was a country in Latin America that had a long struggle with gaining full independence. The final fight for independence was fought in the 1950’s. This revolution was recapped in the documentary Cuba: The Forgotten Revolution. With the main focus being on the 1950’s revolution, the documentary looked at the key players of the revolution, including José Antonio, Frank País, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. All of these revolutionaries’ main goal was to break away from the current dictator Fulgencio Batista. The revolutionaries’ issue with Batista was his close relation with the United States of America. Keeping him in power meant keeping American imperialism as the prominent source for
These events and people include the Monroe Doctrine, José Rodo, and José Martí and previous Cuban revolutions. The Monroe Doctrine was created in 1821 and not enforced until after 1823. This doctrine closely relates to the documentary considering this doctrine was “active and militarily aggressive imperialism” (Krauze 8). The Monroe Doctrine allowed America, but no other countries, to invade Latin America. This is the doctrine that allowed the United States to get control of Cuba after their first fight for independence from Spain. America decided to “help” Cuba in the Spanish-American War and ended up taking control of Cuba after their victory. The documentary also talked about José Rodo. Rodo was the author of Ariel, which was an anti-American article during the first round of Cuban revolutions for independence in the 1800’s. The first revolution, “…humiliated Spain, a Cuba that seemed only to have changed its master-Rodo hated both results” (Krauze 24). This retells the simplified history before the Cuban 1950’s revolution shown in the documentary. Also, knowing Rodo was against it from the start shows that the anti-imperialism had always been around, but they needed more people to join the movement before being able to do anything about it. Besides Rodo with the anti-American views back in the initial Cuban revolutions, there was also José Marti.
Part of the reason that this revolution had such a ripple effect across the world and was related to other historical events/people was because it was built up from those past events/people; the previous Cuban revolutions were leading to this very revolution where Cuba finally found their independence from imperial nations. Also, considering the revolution was a success, other countries found hope and attempted to follow Cuba’s example with the influence of Che. Even though the historical connections are not included in the documentary, they are important to consider since it they are so closely