The Cuban Post-Socialist Exotic

Contents


Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. vii

1.Introduction .................................................................................................... 1

2.Theoretical Approach and Methodology ........................................................ 4

3.On Travel Writing .......................................................................................... 10

4.Towards a U.S. American Mission ................................................................. 15
4.1.Civil Religion ....................................................................................... 15
4.2.Manifest Destiny .................................................................................. 19
4.3.The Cuban War of Independence ......................................................... 24

5.Othering Discourses ....................................................................................... 26
5.1.Tropicalization and the Tropical Sublime ............................................ 26
5.1.1.The Cuban Revolution of 1959 ............................................................. 29
5.1.2.Cuba in U.S. Caricatures ...................................................................... 34
5.1.3.Conceptual Metaphors .......................................................................... 36
5.1.4.Metaphors of Cuba in the U.S. American Imagination ......................... 38
5.2.Racialized Erotics ................................................................................ 47

6.Othering Discourses in Travel Literature ....................................................... 53
6.1.Latin America through the Eyes of the European Conquista ................ 53
6.2.Representations of Cuba in Nineteenth-Century United States ............ 61
6.3.Early Twentieth Century ...................................................................... 71
6.4.The Cuban Revolution in U.S. American Travel Literature ................. 80

7.Post-Socialist Nostalgia .................................................................................. 89

8.The Corpus of Travel Narratives .................................................................... 97

9.This is Cuba: An Outlaw Culture Survives by Ben Corbett ............................ 101

10.Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island by Lea Aschkenas .................... 127

11.Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling through Castro's Cuba by C. P. Baker ........... 151

12.Conversations with Cuba by C. Peter Ripley ................................................. 174

13.Real Life in Castro's Cuba by Catherine Moses ............................................ 194

14.Further Travel Narratives on the Special Period ............................................. 211

15.Synthesis and Conclusion ............................................................................... 221

Epilogue .................................................................................................................. 231

Works Cited ............................................................................................................ 232

Further Reading ....................................................................................................... 248