Session Abstract

In the era of the Cuban Revolution, the fate of the youngest became a key battleground amid Fidel Castro’s challenge to the political and economic order of the region.  As they coped with the implications of Cuba’s embrace of socialism, actors from across the Americas transformed children into symbols of what they perceived to be their nation’s impending redemption or its frightening decline.  From the United States to Argentina, the struggle over the future of children became emblematic of a Cold War that many saw as the decisive stage in world history.  This panel shall therefore explore the politics and cultural representations of childhood as key components in the debates concerning equality, justice, and freedom in a period of intense conflict and change.  Anita Casavantes Bradford’s paper, “To Save Our Children: The Politics of Childhood in the Anti-Castro Struggle, 1959-1962,” explores the relationship between the anti-Castro Cuban exile community and the politics of childhood in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution’s ascent.  Casavantes Bradford argues that exiles in Miami crafted emotionally-laden images and discourses concerning the fate of children.  By doing so, they hoped to forge a unified front to liberate their oppressed homeland.  Anne Luke’s paper, “From Pioneers to Young Communists: Constructing Childhood in Revolutionary Cuba,” examines the process of mass mobilization and politicized education of children by the Union of Young Pioneers during the early 1960s, whose far-reaching recruitment drives differed from the highly selective recruitment of adolescents and adults.  James Shrader’s paper, “This Is Why We Fight: The Cuban Revolution, the Argentine Left, and the Politics of Childhood, 1959-1976” seeks to analyze the transnational impact of the Cuban Revolution in the Southern Cone.  Shrader explores how perceptions of the socialist island’s policies for its children influenced the ways in which Argentines racialized their country’s mestizo and indigenous children as symbolic of a dystopian nation as they challenged dictatorship and US imperialism.  Finally, Teishan Latner’s paper, “The Antonio Maceo Brigade and the Politics of Cuban Émigré Radicalism in 1970s America,” explores the little-known history of the Cuban-American left who, protesting the policies of the US government and their parents alike, journeyed to the island as an act of solidarity.  As children of anti-Castro exiles, their encounter with revolutionary Cuba and the reframing of their own youth politics challenged the notion of a monolithic movement in Miami, and signaled a shift in the relationship between Cuba and the diaspora.  All four papers shall contribute to a greater understanding of how the little studied transnational politics of childhood evolved during Latin America’s Cold War.