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2 - “How Can Men Tire When Women Are Tireless?”: Women Rebels before Moncada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2018

Lorraine Bayard de Volo
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
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Summary

Women's activism and the gendered logics deployed in the insurrection are better understood in light of women's prior participation in Cuba's wars of independence and 1930s rebellion. This chapter pursues several points along these lines that will inform later chapters. First, the 1950s insurrection and women's place in it were not created from scratch but rather drew from experiences of Cuba's previous wars and rebellions. In part, this occurred symbolically, as rebels used narratives of women's contributions in prior conflicts to legitimize contemporary women's activism and inspire Cubans more generally to rebellion. But as I show, women activists also drew from their own previous insurrectionary experiences. Thus, tactics developed in the wars of independence were applied to the 1950s insurrection, and some women active in Cuba's 1930s rebellion transferred their political experience to the 1950s, lending a sense of continuity as well as efficacy.

A second and related theme, first identified by Cuban historian Gladys Marel García-Pérez, is the multigenerational aspect of the anti-Batista women's activism. Building upon this, I further note that although the Cuban War Story frames it as an insurrection of youth, rebels in general and women in particular were often older than the term “youth” implies. The multigenerational anti-Batista women, when organizing as women, transcended much of the infighting and rivalry – some of it between generations – that characterized other anti-Batista groups.

Several scholars note the continuities between the 1950s rebellion and its historical antecedents. As Sweig summarized, most individual and institutional actors “on the Cuban political stage in the late 1950s were consciously playing out a drama that in fact began during the Wars of Independence against Spain and the American intervention in 1898, and continued in the 1930s.” Louis Pérez Jr. finds, “Cubans all through the first half of the twentieth century lived with and within their history. The past was remembered – relentlessly.” Pérez also points to the later reorganization of Cuban history to suit the goals of the post-1958 revolution in power, which meant “portray[ing] the revolution less as a break with the past than as a fulfillment of the revered heroes' mission.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Women and the Cuban Insurrection
How Gender Shaped Castro's Victory
, pp. 23 - 45
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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