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The University of North Carolina Press
352 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 105 illus., notes, index
Cuba in the American Imagination
Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos
For more than two hundred often turbulent years, Americans have imagined and described Cuba and its relationship to the United States by conjuring up a variety of striking images--Cuba as a woman, a neighbor, a ripe fruit, a child learning to ride a bicycle. One of the foremost historians of Cuba, Louis A. Pérez Jr. offers a revealing history of these metaphorical and depictive motifs and discovers the powerful motives behind such characterizations of the island.
Pérez analyzes the dominant images and their political effectiveness as they have persisted and changed since the early nineteenth century. Drawing on texts and visual images produced by Americans ranging from government officials, policy makers, and journalists to travelers, tourists, poets, and lyricists, Pérez argues that metaphor was central to the U.S. imperial project as a way of transforming the pursuit of national self-interest into the lofty, disinterested purpose of moral duty. With particular focus on the pivotal eras of the war of 1898 and the 1959 Cuban revolution, Pérez demonstrates that these descriptions served the foreign policy interests of the United States. As charged and coded modes of persuasion and mediation, these images sanctioned and sustained the moral logic of U.S. power over Cuba. Pérez further argues that the metaphors in service to America's imperial impulses over Cuba were subsequently projected over the world at large.
"Brilliant. . . . Perez's study--the latest in a series of perceptive books on US-Cuba relations by this prolific historian--illustrate[s] how an avid US self-interest was transformed into selfless moral enactment."
--The Nation
"Perez draws on politicians' speeches, newspaper editorials and comic strips published over the century and a half before the revolution to show that Cubans were consistently represented not as agents of their own destiny but as innocent victims." A Nota Bene selection of The Chronicle of Higher Education
--London Review of Books
"Argues that Cuba was a laboratory of American imperialism. . . . Skillfully analyses how the metaphor of neighbour and neighbourhood was employed to justify U.S. intervention in Cuba in the late 1890s. . . . Includes a remarkable number of pictorial descriptions of Cuba from a wide range of American newspapers and magazines."
--Times Literary Supplement
"An indispensable study of U.S. policy towards Cuba. . . . A necessary preface for all other analyses of the subject."
--Diplomatic History Review
"A quietly ferocious critique of US foreign policy as seen through the lens of Cuban-US relations."
--Virginia Quarterly Review
"[An] excellent and highly recommended study. . . . One of the most important contributions to the debate about US-Cuban relations. . . . Should be required reading for policymakers, Latin Americanists, and Cuban exiles everywhere."
--Latin American Review of Books
Cloth: $34.95
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
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