Browsing by Subject "1968"
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Item The artist among ruins: connecting catastrophes in Brazilian and Cuban cinema, painting, sculpture and literature(2013-12) Lopes De Barros Oliveira, Rodrigo; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Litvak, Lily, 1938-; Afolabi, Niyi; Davis, Diane; Fierro, Enrique; Salgado, CésarThis work is an attempt to create a constellation. In a constellation, some stars are greatly apart from each other. However, they appear on the same plane to our eyes. This method is derived from Walter Benjamin. Here I have, as my objet petit a, the pictorial, sculptural, cinematic and literary production of Brazil and Cuba from 1959 and beyond. As a barrier for creating meaning of such a vast content, I chose the theme of ruins, expanding when possible to its relatives: decay, catastrophe, debris, death, war, the lost paradise, the garden, intellectual thinking, utopia, dystopia, dreamworlds, rot, hope, human destruction, homelessness, and more. I work with figures of those two geographic regions, in which I think ruins—being inorganic, organic or abstract ones—have a major role in the work of: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Glauber Rocha, Orlando Jiménez Leal, Sabá Cabrera, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Rogério Sganzerla, Néstor Almendros, Antonio José Ponte, Ramón Alejandro, and Francisco Brennand. This effort led me to reevaluate the classical concept of ruins in Western thought, which I think was relatively in force until World War I and which underwent a radical transformation after the advent of twentieth-century concentration camps, the domination by humans of atomic power, and the establishment of extremely high speeds for travels. I also propose that modern ruins acquire their full significance especially in the Third World. For, to the contrary of the central nations of capitalism, the Third World cannot be turned into ruins. It has already been born as such a thing. The aforementioned events just made this state of existence clearer.Item Capitalizing on Castro : Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States, 1959-1969(2012-05) Keller, Renata Nicole; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-This dissertation explores the central paradox of Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States in the decade following the Cuban Revolution--why did a government that cooperated with the CIA and practiced conservative domestic policies defend Castro's communist regime? It uses new sources to prove that historians' previous focus on the foreign and ideological influences on Mexico's relations with Cuba was misplaced, and that the most important factor was fear of the domestic Left. It argues that Mexican leaders capitalized upon their country's "special relationship" with Castro as part of their efforts to maintain control over restive leftist sectors of the Mexican population. This project uses new sources to illuminate how perceptions of threat shaped Mexico's foreign and domestic politics. In 2002, the Mexican government declassified the records of the two most important intelligence organizations--the Department of Federal Security and the Department of Political and Social Investigations. The files contain the information that Mexico's presidents received about potential dangers to their regime. They reveal that Mexican leaders overestimated the centralization, organization, and coordination of leftist groups, and in so doing gave them more influence over policy than their actual numbers or resources logically should have afforded. The dissertation uses the concept of threat perception as an analytic and organizational tool. Each chapter considers a different potential source of danger to the Mexican regime in the context of the Cold War and the country's relations with Cuba. For the sake of clarity, it breaks the threats into the categories of individual, national, and international, even though these subjective categories may blend into one another throughout the course of the analysis. The first chapter begins with an individual threat: Lázaro Cárdenas, a powerful former president who became one of Fidel Castro's most dedicated supporters. The next three chapters analyze threats on the national level by looking at the domestic groups that Mexican leaders perceived to be the greatest dangers to their regime. The final two chapters move to the international level and examine the roles of Cuba and the United States. As a whole, this study of the connections between Mexico's foreign and domestic politics makes a significant and timely contribution to the historiographies of modern Mexico, U.S.-Latin American relations, and the Cold War.Item (Re)membering the past WWII-the years of lead in contemporary Italian literature, theater, and cinema(2015-12) Mabrey, Beatrice Giuseppina; Raffa, Guy P.; Bonifazio, Paola, 1976-; Bini Carter, Daniela; Charumbira, Ruramisai; Lombardi, GiancarloA cursory investigation of contemporary Italian literary, cinematic, and theatrical works produced since the 1990s reveals a marked interest in revisiting the dominant events of the twentieth century. Among the many episodes discussed, World War II, the postwar period, the 1968 protests, and the terrorist movements of the 1970s emerge as topics of particular interest for writers, playwrights, and cinematographers. Like the lieux de memoire described in Pierre Nora’s groundbreaking historiography, these “sites of memory” work through the “reciprocal overdetermination” of history and collective memory to act as bastions of national identity. This study examines a variety of works that draw upon Italy’s rich tradition of the historical novel and its most recent incarnation as the romanzo neostorico. Specifically, it shows how these works approach these sites of memory to unveil and explore the intricate web of memories and traumas underpinning the often-silencing narratives promoted by social and political institutions. Building on recent scholarship that advances the notion of a return to an engaged postmodernism, the author argues that these texts encourage their readers or spectators to engage with the formative sites of Italian national identity and to renegotiate their place within their own experiences. She claims that works such as Ascanio Celestini’s Radio Clandestina, Cristina Comencini’s Due Partite, and Francesca Melandri’s Più alto del mare engender a critical rereading of history by creating new myths. For the author, this rereading takes place predominantly through an encounter with memory. Consistent with Toni Morrison’s conception of “rememory,” these innovative works use individual and collective recollections of the events cited above (experienced or “inherited” by many of the authors and readers themselves) to reassemble a “dismembered” past and open a space for the development and expression of nascent and marginalized subjectivities. This, in turn, creates spaces for confronting pressing sociopolitical issues in contemporary Italy.Item The role of student protests in 1968 : the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia & Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico(2016-12) Gonzalez, Brenda; Garza, Thomas J.; Alexandrova, MarinaThis report delves into the events that occurred on August 21st 1968 in Czechoslovakia and October 2nd 1968 in Mexico. The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and the massacre at Tlatelolco are two crucibles that remain a significant factor in the mindset of people from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Mexico today. In my writing I draw parallelisms between these two events, that occurred mere months from each other, on different continents and had students asking one common thing from their respective governments, they wanted to be heard. The invasion of Czechoslovakia came as a surprise; the country’s new leader Alexander Dubcek was relaxing the government’s stronghold on the media and freedom of press was slowly becoming a reality. These advances did not sit well with Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Politburo so they made a rash decision to invade; the Soviets believed that losing their stronghold in Czechoslovakia would lead to their demise in other Eastern European countries. 1968 was also a turbulent year in Mexico, the country was poised to host the Summer Olympics and it would be the first time a Latin American country would hold that honor so the pressure was enormous. By 1968 the PRI party held a tight reign on Mexico’s government and the students wanted change, they felt social injustice was on the rise and they felt compelled to speak up. Unfortunately the government was not ready to negotiate and ten days before the inauguration of the Olympics the army marched in on a peaceful student protest and opened fire. Both movements were squashed but they mark the beginning of the end of one party rule in Czechoslovakia and Mexico. The conclusion of the report reaches 1988 when the Velvet Revolution took off in Czechoslovakia and Mexico’s presidential election had to be rigged in order for the PRI to win. After the Velvet Revolution Czechoslovakia eased into democratic elections and it continues to be a full democracy today while Mexico still struggles to obtain a democratic standing in the world.