Youth and the Cuban Revolution

Even 60 years on, the Cuban Revolution continues to capture the imagination of people the world over.Despite this advancement in years, for many the island is still associated with the spirit of youthful rebellion.In this study, Anne Luke looks back at the formative decade of the 1960s-a time when globally the young seemed to be seizing the day, often inspired by the Cuban exampleand asks what this meant for Cuba itself.Her analysis attempts to provide a "form of conceptual triangulation" (p.xi), exploring how "the sixties," "youth," and "Cuba" interacted with one another.In doing so, she questions the extent to which the Cuban youth experience differed from that experienced elsewhere during that tumultuous decade.The book is clearly structured.Luke begins with a general discussion of what it meant to be "young" in Cuba during those revolutionary times, concluding that it was quite distinct from what young people elsewhere experienced.She then goes on to explore how youth found a special place in the discourse of the revolutionary regime, which in turn engendered a range of youth-oriented policies for this new generation.Despite the particular path that the island was pursuing, Cuba was not isolated from the global cultural forces of the sixties.However, Luke argues that while outside of Cuba young people were seen as challenging the status quo, in the island youth was perceived as "a positive force for change within the dominant revolutionary ideology" (p.68).Keen to avoid treating the young in Cuba as a homogenous mass, Luke delineates three main groups and dedicates a chapter to each one.There were those who were fully integrated with the revolutionary process; this saw the development of youth organizations, culminating in the consolidation of the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC) as the vanguard of the new generation.Secondly, other movements enabled a significantly wider level of youth participation and voluntarism than that offered by the UJC, through the much-feted literacy campaign, revolutionary militias, and the aficionado movement that encouraged widespread involvement in the arts.Finally, there were those youths who were more on the cultural margins of the Revolution, seeking to push the boundaries of what this transformative process should mean through publications and music.This is a very thorough study of how the Cuban political establishment perceived "youth," and the role of young people in the forging of a new society.Luke successfully explains the details of the policies pursued and their ideological underpinnings.While asserting the exceptionalism of the Cuban case, she places it firmly within a global context.However, the study never really

Ideology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Status quo · Youth culture · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law