Christopher Vargas
In the document I chose to analyze it mentions about Cuba and the influence that communism had in Castro who was dictator of Cuba during a period of time during the Cold War. During his time in charge Raul Castro who was Chief pf Cuba’s Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias he took charge of Cuba in 1959 and was someone who was seen as a military leader. The United States viewed Castro’s ideology as a threat because at the time of the Cold War the U.S and the Soviet Union and thought that if Cuba and The soviet Union were working together it would influence other countries to join and eventually the Soviet Union would grow stronger through making deals with Latin American Countries.
There was a concern of the U.S government that communism would spread to other countries and seen as communism was viewed as the natural enemy of what the U.S stood for Democracy they didn’t want Cuba to Develop a Communist type of government. In the Document it mentions of how they hope that Castro would fail to bring Cuba to Economic prosperity. If Castro were to succeed in helping Cuba stabilizing its economy the first thing, they can do is hope to prevent Cuba from obtaining funds and supplies and to make the value of their money to decrease and wages to drop so that the people of Cuba would grow frustrated and angry with the way things are and overthrow Fidel Castro. In the document we see that there is mention of the support that Castro has from the Cubans.
At the time Cuba, from what we learn in class, people saw Cuba for its tourism and the people of Cuba didn’t want to be associated with anything that Castro viewed things as bad to Cuba’s national pride like Gays, gambling, white tourism, and prostitution. Like in Lillian Guerra ‘s work we learn that in Cuba Homosexuality was something that was bad and that they even made labor camp for those who were thought to be gays. “Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Produccion (UMAP) and located in the isolated sugar lands of Camaguey province, these camps imprisoned thousands of self-acknowledge, closeted and presumed homosexuals for up to three years without charge.” The government believe that Homosexuality went against what the Cuban people should desire to be and do which is helping in the labor force to help Cuba’s economy to prosper. They believe that the young people should be their targeted audience since the young would be able to work better than any other age group. Lillian Guera also states “I argue that Cubans Officials efforts to re-engineer social attitudes in the late 1960s had less to do with the past cultural traditions or external factors and more to do with deliberate political strategies these same officials devised to solve the economic conditions of the moment and further consolidate their power.”
State Department, Memorandum, “The Decline and Fall of Castro,” Secret, April 6, 1960: the National Security Archive record group 59: general records of the department of state 1960-63 Central Decimal file: 737.00/4-660
Lillian Guerra, “Gender Policing, Homosexuality, and the New Patriarchy of the Cuban Revolution, 1965-70,” Social History 35, no. 3 (August, 2010), p.268.
Lillian Guerra, “Gender Policing, Homosexuality, and the New Patriarchy of the Cuban Revolution, 1965-70,” Social History 35, no. 3 (August, 2010), p.271.