Cuban Research Institute Events

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  The Catholic Church in Cuba: The Present Situation and Challenges for the Future

  Jose Conrado Rodriguez

  The Catholic Church is the leading nongovernmental institution in Cuba today. From its strong clashes with the Cuban revolutionary government in the early 1960s, through its long period of isolation and marginalization in the 1970s and 1980s, the church has improved its relations with the state, especially after the visit of Pope John Paul II to the island in 1998. The church has recently played the role of mediator between civil society and state authorities, particularly in securing the release of 75 political prisoners in 2011.The Vatican has been credited with facilitating the secret conversations that led to the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba in July 2015.

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  Operation Pedro Pan: The Cuban Children's Exodus [Film Screening]

  Cuban Research Institute

  Between December 1960 and October 1962, Operation Pedro Pan brought 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States. Many Cuban parents, afraid that Fidel Castro's government would take away their parental authority, exercised the right to choose how their children would be educated, by sending them abroad. Approximately half the minors were reunited with relatives or friends at the Miami airport. Others were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau, directed by a young Irish priest, Bryan 0. Walsh. Many of the children were placed in temporary shelters in Miami and relocated to 200 cities across 48 states and U.S. territories. Most were eventually reunited with their parents. Directed and produced by Carlos Gutierrez. Operation Pedro Pan: The Cuban Children's Exodus is a documentary film illustrating the story of the largest recorded child refugee exodus in the Western Hemisphere. A production of Operation Pedro Pan Group, lnc.'s Historic Committee, this documentary, which runs for 90 minutes, is based on research undertaken by the Historic Committee. The film consists of 22 interviews with former Pedro Pans, Pedro Pan mothers, caretakers, and historians, which cover life in Cuba before 1959, the drastic changes brought about by the Revolution, the unaccompanied children's exodus from the Island, and their arrival and adaptation to life in the U.S. The documentary concludes with the inspiring reflections of the lives of these Cubans nearly 55 years later.

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  Rafael Soriano: The Abstract Art Movement in Cuba and Beyond, A Panel Discussion

  Dr. Jorge Duany, Elizabeth Thompson Goizueta, Dr. Alejandro Anreus, Dr. Abigail McEwen, and Hortensia Soriano

  Cuban painter Rafael Soriano (1920-2015) was an acclaimed master of geometric abstraction and a global figure in the twentieth-century art world; his work resonated with international artists of Latin American origin like Roberto Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Wifredo Lam. As a result of the Cuban Revolution, Soriano immigrated to the United States in 1962.

  Between October 27,2017 and January 28,2018, the Frost Art Museum is hosting the exhibition "Rafael Soriano:The Artist as Mystic,"organized by the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, in collaboration with the Rafael Soriano Foundation, and curated by Elizabeth Thompson Goizueta. An unprecedented examination of his life's work, this exhibition focuses on the multiple influences that nurtured a style where, in his words,"the intimate and the cosmic converge."

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  Revolutionary Horizons: Art and Polemics in 1950s Cuba

  Author Abigail McEwen

  Modernism in Havana reached its climax during the turbulent years of the 1950s as a generation of artists took up abstraction as a means to advance artistic and political goals in the name of Cuba Libre. During a decade of insurrection and, ultimately, revolution, abstract art signaled the country's cultural worldliness and its purchase within the international avant-garde. This pioneering book offers the first in-depth examination of Cuban art during that time, following the intersecting trajectories of the artist groups Los Once and Los Diez against a dramatic backdrop of modernization and armed rebellion. Abigail McEwen explores the activities of a constellation of artists and writers invested in the ideological promises of abstraction, and reflects on art's capacity to effect radical social change. Featuring previously unpublished artworks, new archival research, and extensive primary sources, this remarkable volume excavates a rich cultural history with links to the development of abstraction in Europe and the Americas.

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  New $3,000 Scholarship Opportunity for FIU Students The Jose Antonio Echeverria Scholarship

  Cuban Research Institute

  Scholarship submission details and deadline.

  The Jose Antonio Echeverria Scholarship is awarded every year to any undergraduate or graduate FIU student who meets the requirements. All undergraduate applicants must enroll in the Undergraduate Certificate Program in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, if not enrolled at the time of application. This requirement is not applicable to graduate students.

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  Suite Habana

  Cuban American Studies Association (CASA)

  Cuban American Studies Association (CASA) Invites you to the inauguration of the Movie Series “An Epic Quest: Cuban Film and Documentary ” Screening: Suite Habana Special presentation by Guest Speaker: Dr. Santiago Juan-Navarro Introduction by: Esteban Alfonso

  When: Wednesday, December 6th, 2017 at 6:30 pm Where: GL 220 Refreshments will be served Open and free to all FIU students and the general public

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  I am Cuba-Soy Cuba: Commemorating 100 years of Russian Revolution

  Dr. Rebecca Friedman and Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs

  "I am Cuba" Soy Cuba is a 1964 Soviet Cuban film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov Hidden away in the Soviet archives for three decades, "I Am Cuba" is a wild celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality — a whirling, feverish dance through both the sensuous decadence of pre-revolutionary Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. In four stories of the revolution, the camera takes the viewer on a rapturous roller-coaster ride of bathing beauties, landless peasants, fascist police, and student revolutionaries.

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  Classically Cuban Concert Together: In Memory of Carlos Averhoff, Sr.

  Carlos Averhoff Sr. and Carlos Averhoff Jr.

  The Cuban Research Institute is pleased to announce the 13th installment of its annual concert series.This year's concert will be dedicated to Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz, in memory of the renowned Cuban saxophonist and former FIU music professor, Carlos Averhoff, Sr. The event will be directed by his son, Carlos Averhoff, Jr., in collaboration with artists who performed alongside Averhoff, Sr., including Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch, Malena Burke, Federico Brito, and others.

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  Second International Seminar on Memory, Conflict and Reconciliation

  Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs

  Join the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs and the Vaclav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy for Its second International seminar on the complex questions surrounding the role of memory In our public discourse about conflict and reconciliation.

  A distinguished group of scholars from fields such as political science, religion and history as well as practitioners - people confronted with the problem of memory, conflict and reconciliation In the context of their various professional activities-will articulate diverse perspectives on the nature of memory, engage In dialogue and help us learn more about this topic.

  Panel 1:The Philosophical Perspective

  Martin Palous, Director, Vaclav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy, FIU

  Monsignor Tomas Halik, Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czech Republic

  David Walsh, Professorof Philosophy at Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. Martin Kroupa,Title, Post Bellum, Czech Republic

  Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, Writer and Educator; Co-founder and Spokesperson, Cuban Democratic Directorate

  Panel 2: Cotemporary History and Storytelling

  Richard Cohen, Author and Publisher

  Carlos Alberto Montaner, Author

  Martin Petrtyl, Title, Post Bellum, Czech Republic

  Rosa Maria Paya, Human Rights Activist and Founder of CubaDecide

  Sebastian Arcos, Associate Director, Cuban Research Institute, FIU

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  When Cuban Political Deportees Turned African Ethnographers

  Benita Sampedro Vizcaya

  This presentation will address an array of links — trajectories, journeys and passages — between the islands of Cuba and Fernando Poo (between the West-central African Atlantic and the Caribbean), during the second half of the nineteenth century. These islands are neither points of ending nor points of origin; they circumscribe the Atlantic, an ocean which touches upon multiple insular and coastal experiences, narratives, histories and, in this case, ethnographies. By the 1850s, a number of West African localities had already begun to transcend their original function as a point of departure for the slave trade, becoming instead a site of exchange in the reverse direction. The island of Fernando Poo was integrated into the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century. It began to serve in the second half of the nineteenth century as a destination for eastward movement, first for the emancipados and soon after (as a prison colony) for Cuban political deportees allegedly taking part in pro-independence insurrection movements.

  This presentation will focus on processes of deportation, which affected thousands of Cubans of all social classes between the 1860s and the Spanish American War. Some deportees left detailed accounts of their experience In their African exile, turning into impromptu ethnographers of the African continent; in those accounts, Fernando Poo is always described in necrological tones, with a litany of metaphors of morbidity and mortality. Negatively compared with Havana, Fernando Poo evoked ideas of a return to the primitive and backwardness. Their colonial gaze on the local inhabitants Is at least as intense as that of the Spanish colonial agents themselves.

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  The Stories of Totalitarianism Presentation of a Czech oral history project focused on Cuba followed by discussion

  Florida International University

  In 2017, the Vaclav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy (VHP] at Florida International University started to cooperate with Post Bdlum a Czech non governmental, non profit organization founded in 2001 with the intention to document the memories of individuals whose lives have been affected by their personal encounters with totalitarianism and to pass their stories and testimonies on to the broader public through the Memory of Cuban Nation project. The goal of this event is to present and discuss the interim results of this cooperation.

  Also, the documentary movie 'An Unfinished Dialogue between Vaclav Havel and Oswaldo Paya’, which VHP produced in 2016 v/ill be screened and discussed on this occasion.

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  Arsenio en Salsa

  Cuban Research Institute

  Arsenio Rodríguez (1911-1970) constituye una de las leyendas musicales de Cuba como compositor, intérprete del 'tres', director de orquesta, e innovador del son cubano. Durante su carrera, Arsenio compuso alrededor de 200 piezas musicales, mayormente sones y boleros. Entre sus innovaciones al género del son se incluye la estructura de 'conjunto' en 1940, expandiendo el tradicional septeto de los años 20s y 30s, así como la fusión del guaguancó dentro del son. Después de más de una década de éxito en Cuba, Arsenio se estableció en la ciudad de New York en 1952 donde desarrollo la segunda parte de su carrera. La música de Arsenio tuvo un amplio impacto en diversas áreas de Estados Unidos y Latinoamérica, en particular en el movimiento de la 'Salsa'. En esta presentación, el investigador, profesor y coleccionista Ramón Gómez, resumirá la obra de este destacado músico cubano y nos hará disfrutar de varias piezas compuestas por él e interpretadas por diferentes salseros.

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  El Paquete Semanal: A Cuban Sharing Economy

  Jennifer Cearns

  This lecture will explore the digital phenomenon of El Paquete Semanal, or "the Weekly Package," a nationwide distribution network through which a Terabyte of films, music, apps, and more besides is moved across the island of Cuba on a weekly basis. It will contextualize this network within Cuba's unique historical and political trajectory and propose a framework for understanding how El Paquete fits into a global chain of material and digital consumerism. Finally, it will examine the way value is created in this network in the light of widespread suggestions that El Paquete signals a move closer towards capitalism in Cuba.

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  Marti's Song for Freedom: Book Presentation by Author Emma Otheguy

  Emma Otheguy

  He found freedom in the river that rushed to the sea and peace in the palmas reales that swayed in the wind. Freedom, he believed, was the inherent right of all men and women. But his home island of Cuba was colonized by Spain, and some of the people were enslaved by rich landowners. Enraged, Marti took up his pen and fought against this oppression through his writings. By age seventeen, he was declared an enemy of Spain and forced to leave his beloved island.

  Marti traveled the world, speaking out for Cuba's independence. But throughout his exile, he suffered from illness and homesickness. He found solace in New York's Catskill Mountains, where nature inspired him once again to fight for independence. As he wrote in his seminal book Versos sencillos (1891),

  Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crece la palma, Y antes de morirme quiero Echar mis versos del alma.

  I am a sincere man From where the palm tree grows, And before I die I want To say the verses of my soul.

  Written in verse, Marti's Song for Freedom is a beautiful tribute to a brilliant political writer and courageous fighter of freedom for all men and women.

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  Framed Fictions of Blackness: Paintings, Photographs, and the Iconography of Crime in Cuba(1882-1933)

  Alberto Sosa Cabanas

  At the turn of the 20th century, Cuban paintings and photographs usually depicted black bodies as part of narratives in which blackness seems incompatible with notions of modernity and nation. Visual culture becomes a merging of discursive transformations that link class, race, and identity and bring to a fore controversial representations of blackness. Many of these representations legitimate popular ideas about the relations among Afro-Cuban culture, corporeality, and the underworld,. This lecture will explore multiple visual expressions, particularly samples from Cuban ethnographic photography and pictorial works, to understand the negotiation of Cuban racial imaginaries and politics.

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  The Harvard Cubans

  Danny Gonzalez Lucena

  In 1900, more than half of all Cuban public teachers boarded five American military ships to participate in a summer school organized by Harvard University. For the first time, the oldest institution of higher education in the United States opened its doors to 1,273 people born in a foreign country. The purpose of the trip was to teach them about modern methods of teaching and to show them the great advances of American society.

  The people of Cambridge, Mass., convinced that this expedition would aid the reconstruction of Cuba after the terrible wars of independence that the Island had suffered, donated more than $70,000 for the visit. The educational project was not only a resounding success, but it also became the largest cultural exchange that has ever existed between the two countries: thousands of Americans accompanied the Cubans for six weeks.

  In the spring of 2016, Cuban journalist and documentarían Danny González Lucena, under the auspices of the Cuba Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, began an investigation that finished with the production of the documentary Los cubanos de Harvard (The Harvard Cubans'). The result of his work will be screened and discussed with him and the following persons:

  •Irina De la Guardia, assistant to the director

  •Dr. Eliana S. Rivero, Professor Emérita, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona

  •Dr. Michael J. Bustamante, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Florida International University

  •Michael H. Frye, great-grandson of Alexis E. Frye, Colorado Springs, Colorado

  •Teresa L. Frye Dushane, great-granddaughter of Alexis E. Frye, Salt Lake City, Utah

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  The Contemporary Cuban Postdocumentary

  Dean Luis Reyes

  Since the 2003 premiere of Fernando Perez's documentary film Suite Habana, newer treatments with a greater fictional component have questioned the Cuban tradition of nonfiction filmmaking, with its predominantly testimonial character and social themes. Three essential works of the past two decades are Humberto Padron's Family Video (2001), Susana Barriga's The Illusion (2009), and Miguel Coyula's Memories of Development (2010). In the past three years, a series of independent short- and medium-length films, directed by young filmmakers, has emphasized a nonfiction that is increasingly removed from the preponderant currents of the epic period of the Cuban Revolution, as they insist on critically approaching social questions and employing formal reflexive methods.

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  Adiós mi Habana An Autobiographical Comic Book Book Presentation by Author Anna Veltfort

  Anna Velfort

  Through the format of the graphic novel, Anna Veltfort offers a glimpse into a chapter of Cuban history that has never been told before. Adios mi Habana recounts the years Anna and her family spent in Cuba during the 1960s and early 1970s. She quickly perceived that daily life for ordinary Cubans bore little resemblance to the privileged circumstances of their family as "foreign technicians." She discovered history, received an education, enjoyed and suffered "mass activities," working in agriculture and participating in research conducted by the University of Havana in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. She also experienced gay paranoia and repression as she explored and defined her sexual identity by coming out as a lesbian during the time of the cruel homophobic purges that swept Cuban society.

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  Hemingway: Between Key West and Cuba

  Richard Abella, Raul Villarreal, and Dr. Ricardo Castells

  The world-renowned American novelist Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida, between 1931 and 1939, and near Havana, Cuba, between 1939 and 1960. Hemingway: Between Key West and Cuba (2017) is a short documentary examining how these two distinctive yet similar islands and cultures influenced the author's personal and artistic vision. Produced by Santa Fe College and the Santa Fe College Foundation, and written by C. Michael Curry and Raul Villarreal, the film features original photographs and video footage of Key West and Havana from the 1930s to the early 1960s. After screening the film, it will be discussed by the following panelists:

  Richard Abella is a Cuban film, television, and radio director and actor, currently residing in Gainesville, Florida. He has more than 20 years experience in audiovisual communication and his work has been recognized with prizes in several events and festivals. One of his most recent productions is the fiction television series, Zoologico (2016).

  Raúl Villarreal is a multidisciplinary visual artist who has exhibited his art in 20 one-person exhibits and over 400 group exhibits in the United States and other countries. He is the author of the book, Hemingway's Cuban Son (2009), based on his father René's memoirs of his friendship with the famous American author. Villarreal is the Coordinator for Cultural Programs at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida.

  Dr. Ricardo Castells is Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Florida International University. He specializes in Golden Age Spanish literature and has lectured and published essays about Hemingway's works and about Cuban and Cuban-American literature.

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  "Cargo esta marginalidad...:" Transdisciplinary Thinking in Lourdes Casal

  Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel

  Recognized by many as a founding figure of Caribbean, Cuban, and Latino Studies, Lourdes Casal (1938-81) posed questions and explored research methods that are usually located in the humanities or the social sciences, yet her work proposed the need to question disciplinary boundaries in Latin American, Caribbean, Latino, and Cuban studies. Dr. Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel will discuss Casal's transdisciplinary contributions using three concrete examples: (1) her academic training and doctoral dissertation; (2) her study of Cuban exile and migration by combining research approaches from psychology, sociology, and literary and cultural studies; and (3) her focus on womanist recoveries of Cuban history and diasporic experiences as precursors to work on sexuality and gender studies.The presentation will end with a discussion of Casal's legacy for interdisciplinary programs (usually known as the "studies" units) in area, ethnic, and women's studies.

  View lecture video here:

  http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/crivideo/63/

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  To Build Another House A Documentary about the Art of Humberto Calzada

  Eliecer Jimenez Almeida

  Humberto Calzada is a Cuban-American artist whose career has spanned over 40 years. Born in Havana, Cuba, he left the island with his family when he was sixteen years old, shortly after the Castro takeover. Calzada's work is strongly influenced by his native city's colonial and neoclassical architecture. He is renowned for placing its architectural imagery in surreal, dreamlike settings to explore themes of loss, decay, and rebirth. The young Calzada matured, evolved, and lay roots in Miami all the while attempting, through his art, to salvage and reconstruct his lost home and homeland. This documentary, Para construir otra casa ("To Build Another House"), endeavors to explain how his personal and spiritual loss, as remembered or imagined from afar, has affected his art and imagery.

  Eliecer Jiménez Almeida is an independent Cuban filmmaker, cinematographer, and film editor. He has a degree in journalism and has studied documentary cinema at the International Film and Television School (EICTV) of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, and at the Documentary Film Program of the Sundance Institute. He is the creator of the IKAIK program for audiovisual experimentation.

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  Second Generation Voices: The Pleasures and Afflictions of Inherited Exilic Legacy

  Jorge Duanny; Alan L. Berger; Richard Blanco; Vanessa Garcia; and Eugenio M. Rothe, MD

  The Exile Studies Program In Collaboration with The Betsy-South Beach Hotel The Department of English & The College of Arts, Sciences & Education Presents Panel Discussion Second Generation Voices: The Pleasures and Afflictions of Inherited Exilic Legacy

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  Art in Exile: Navigating Real and Imagined Homelands

  Richard Blanco

  Mr. Richard Blanco is a highly acclaimed poet, essayist, and public speaker. He is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Mr. Blanco was bom in Madrid to Cuban exiled parents and raised in Miami. His educational background is closely associated with FIU: he holds a bachelor of science in Civil Engineering and a master of fine arts in Creative Writing, both from FIU. He is the author of the memoirs The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood and For All of Us. One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey. He published several chapbooks and collections of poetry, Matters of the Sea. One Today. Boston Strong- Looking for the Gulf Motel. Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires, among them. With Ruth Behar, he is co-creator of the blog Bridges to/from Cuba: Lifting the Emotional Embargo. Blanco’s many honors include the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center, the Paterson Poetry Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Maine Literary Awards. The Academy of American Poets named him its first Education Ambassador in 2015. He received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College, and the University of Rhode Island. In his talk, Mr. Blanco will discuss a number of issues that characterize his body of work.

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  "Una Tarde para Recordar"

  Erique Chia

  CELEBRANDO SU 25 ANIVERSARIO EN MIAMI con La Querida y Admirada CRISTY ARIAS Cantando preciosas melodías del cancionero cubano e internacional. El Magistral Guitarrista FffAfflPRECO Interpretando canciones españolas y de Latino America y Gran Pareja de Baile DARCY Y ODARAY DOMINGO 8 DE OCTUBRE 3:15 PM BOLETOS A LA VENTA Boletería de Miami-Dade County Auditorium 305-547-5414

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  New Scholarship Opportunity for FIU Students The Jose Antonio Echeverria Scholarship

  Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs

  The Jose Antonio Echeverria Scholarship is awarded every year to a student of Architecture, History, Politics & International Relations, or Religious Studies at FIU. In addition, the student must be enrolled in the Undergraduate Certificate in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. The scholarship was created to honor the memory of Jose Antonio Echeverria, President of the University Students Federation (FEU in Spanish) at the University of Havana in 1957, who was murdered while defending democracy in Cuba. The purpose of this scholarship is to promote the understanding of the political, social, and economic realities of 1950s Cuba, and in particular of the life and legacy of Jose Antonio Echeverria. Although Echeverria was an architecture student, the scholarship is awarded to encourage students to become active in governmental and political affairs. In 2007, Echeverria's family and friends donated $100,000 to establish the scholarship fund at FIU.The scholarship awards $4,000 each academic year to cover tuition, books, and other educational expenses. This year, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Jose Antonio Echeverria Scholarship, the Echeverria family has decided to grant two scholarships instead of just one. The best two applications will be awarded $4,000 each.