Welcome to a treasure box of digitized documents, objects and imagery from UF’s Cuban archives at Smathers Libraries’ Special Collections! Here we present archival materials that span different periods of Cuban history and are also unknown to most historians and the public alike. We hope to inspire their use in classrooms around the world and to further knowledge of the rich political culture of Cuba. Gems of the Archive will itself become an archive as new examples are uploaded monthly.
All items curated by Lillian Guerra with the assistance of Miguel Torres Yunda.
- Rolando Masferrer’s Private Army Trains in Miami
Read moreBy the late 1960s, St. George had lost all hope that any armed exile group might succeed in toppling Cuba’s communist regime, particularly because he knew that such groups’ reliance on the United States, and often CIA funding, undermined their credibility—especially in Cuba. To his shock, one of the giants of the terror network on which Cuba’s former dictator Fulgencio Batista had relied began operating openly in Miami in 1965. Headed by ex-Senator, Spanish Republican exile, and Batista loyalist Rolando Masferrer, the militia took the same name it had once had in Cuba: Los Tigres. Famous for the atrocities they committed against civilians on behalf of Batista, Miami’s Tigres were mostly U.S. citizens. Their middle age and lackluster physical condition made them no less dangerous.
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- “Government by Television”
Read moreIn this contact sheet, St. George catches Fidel Castro’s theatrical style of speaking on Ante la Prensa, a Cuban version of the United States’ popular Meet the Press. One difference obvious to any viewer, however, was that invited speakers on the American show offered comparatively short and courteous responses to on-stage reporters, whereas Fidel Castro’s answers often lasted two to three hours (on what was formerly a 45-minute telecast). On these shows, Fidel regularly justified radical policy moves, denounced any critics, and demanded the resignation of officials he considered too democratic or independently minded—including many members of his own cabinet who had given their lives to the fight against Batista. In 1959, journalist Herbert Matthews called Fidel’s constant presence on TV and radio “government by television”.
- The Puzzle of Ernesto “Che” Guevara Solved
Read moreAn earlier edition of Gems of the Archive featured this puzzle, manufactured and purchased by Andrew St. George in Cuba. Here we see the same puzzle in the context that explains why St. George found it so interesting. Surrounded by books that normalized hero worship in the pivotal year of 1960, it was one of many cultural instruments—some produced by state agencies and others for profit by local businesses—that mimicked the “one-man, one-state, one-way” ideology typical of fascist and communist rule. St. George had witnessed both political systems in Nazi-controlled Hungary and in Central Europe after the Soviet Union’s liberation became a permanent occupation after World War II.
- Guardian and Donor of His Father’s Legacy
Read moreAlong with thousands of images of Cuba and Latin America, the Andrew St. George Collection also includes many intimate portraits of the photojournalist’s family from the early years of the Revolution when, together, they witnessed Cuba’s tumultuous transformation. No words can express the gratitude that all of us who study and love Cuba feel toward the donors of the Andrew St. George Collection. His sons and their families have entrusted priceless treasures of knowledge to the University of Florida. Thank you.
- TOYS THAT TEACH WHITE SUPREMACY
Read moreKnown in the US South as “topsy turvy” dolls because of their two-in-one design, dolls like these from Cuba differ fundamentally from ones I have seen at local Florida antique stores.
- CUBA’S 1961 CURRENCY CRISIS
Read moreWhen I was a little girl growing up in Kansas, I often asked my mother to explain why she had left Cuba. Rather than speak in adult abstractions that flatly cited black-and-white reasons such as “communism,” my mother often referenced specific experiences she had before she left Cuba in 1964. They revealed the Castro regime’s authoritarian character and the average citizen’s powerlessness in vibrant, dramatic colors. For example, Mom said she quit her job in 1960 at the National Bank when the Cuban government announced it would retire Cuba’s republican-era currency and replace it with newly minted revolutionary bills. There was only one catch: no Cuban could exchange more than a few hundred pesos. When my mother and other bank employees were assigned to exchange new bills for old ones in the countryside and poor areas of Havana, however, they discovered that most peasants and many illiterate Cubans had never had bank accounts and kept their savings in cash. Thus, the maximum limit for exchanging only a few hundred republican-era pesos meant that tens of thousands of citizens lost their whole life’s savings! Bank workers like my mother were appalled. They were also charged with explaining this policy as a ...
- CATHOLIC COMMUNISM?
Read moreAfter the Cuban state formally dropped its promotion of atheism in favor of official secularity in 1991, the Papacy successfully negotiated the right of the Catholic Church to edit and publish theological newsletters like this one, Vida Cristiana . Here, jornada had a spiritual purpose: it was a week-long call to prayer for the expansion of clerical ranks. The same editorial also justifies “one-man” paths to salvation, invoking Jesus Christ as the “one man” who could bring that about, as opposed to the apparent one-man, nearly forty-year rule of Fidel Castro himself. Similarly, page two of the newsletter examines whether “freedom” ...
- “The Wounded Island” (1980)
Read moreA mixed media watercolor monoprint, Isla Herida is the unique creation of Florencio Lennox Campello, born in Santiago de Cuba in 1956, as part of a printing assignment while the renowned artist was still a young student at the University of Washington School of Art.
- The Puzzle of Che Guevara (1960)
Read moreManufactured by a privately owned business in Cuba in 1960, this puzzle-portrait of Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara speaks to the market for hero-making propaganda and revolutionary memorabilia that citizens’ trust in the Revolution then represented.
- “Terpsichore” by Manuel López Oliva (1997)
Read moreOne of the nine muses in the religion of the ancient Greeks, Terpsichore is primarily known as the patron of dance.
- “Free and Equal”: Really?
Read moreFor much of its first three decades in power, the Cuban government spent an astonishing amount of money, time, and effort courting the white American and Western European “Left”, particularly through its Soviet-modelled Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos , originally founded in the early 1940s by Stalinist leaders of the Partido Socialista Popular, a label Cuban Communists adopted until 1965.
- Cuban Patriot Day, 1958
Read moreSince the 1920s, Cubans have celebrated as a national holiday the birthday of José Martí, the nationalist writer and principal civilian leader of Cuba’s 1895 War for Independence from Spain.
- What a passport can say
Read moreIn 1963, my father, Tomás H. Guerra, decided to leave Cuba for exile after the government passed communist reforms that eliminated his peasant family’s right to grow and sell crops independently of the state.
- The Liberty Editions of 1959
Read moreBefore Fidel Castro’s government took over the press in the early summer of 1960, Bohemia magazine had a vast circulation among subscribers across the island and large swaths of Latin America.
- Quinceañera Glamour Shots of the 1970s
Read moreIn 1968, Fidel Castro unexpectedly announced the confiscation of all remaining small businesses on the island without compensation to their owners.
- Witnessing Cuba in the 1970s
Read moreProbably written in 1978 when the Carter administration negotiated with the Castro regime to allow visits by Cuban exiles and US citizens for the first time, this fascinating report paints a portrait not unlike that of Cuba today.
- Sugar magnate (privately) endorses US-Cuba relations
Read moreDated 1974, this letter from Cuban sugar baron Alfonso Fanjul to his cousin and fellow magnate George Braga reveals the tight connection between US foreign policy toward Cuba and the power of the United States’ wealthiest elite.
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- “This is your house, Fidel” (1959):
Read moreThroughout 1959, the revolutionary government headed by Fidel Castro and a cabinet of top revolutionaries who had fought the urban war against Batista was enormously popular.
- Revolutionary Drinking Glass (1959):
Read moreThis glass is a product of the massive tide of euphoria that engulfed popular culture and consciousness when Fidel Castro’s caravan triumphantly entered Havana on January 8, 1959, a week after the dictator Batista had fled.
- Machado: Crímenes y horrores de un regimen by Sergio Carbó (1933):
Read moreOwner and director of the newspaper Prensa Libre, journalist Sergio Carbó completed this book, the first record of the atrocities perpetrated by President Gerardo Machado’s government against citizens, in late August 1933. It was published only two weeks after the dictator, his family and many military and police officials fled Cuba for sanctuary in Miami.
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- Medal for building “tunnels of love” or war? Fidel’s autocracy in the 1980s
Read moreIn the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, many of the most far-fetched examples of Fidel Castro’s “policy-making-by-whim” became both the stuff of legend and taboo.
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- Cuban Cigarette Cards of Erotica
Read moreMost of us know that bubble gum companies once included collectible baseball cards in their packages in order to encourage sales. But did you know that Cuban cigarette manufacturers did something similar over a century ago?
- Fidel Castro in Moscow’s Red Square, 1963
Read moreTaken by Alberto Díaz, better known as “Korda”, and bearing the stamp of his studio, this photograph shows a 36-year-old Fidel Castro addressing adoring crowds in Moscow on his April 1963 tour of the Soviet Union. Although conspicuously absent from the stage that day,
- Recycled Beer Cans (2011)
Read moreAlthough most of us would probably not qualify these objects as “archival”, a historian sees in them the opportunity to document the struggles that Cubans face in an economy defined by austerity, scarcity and intense creativity.
- Recycled toothpaste tubes and pull-off tops (2016)
Read moreIn 2016, Historian of the City of Baracoa, Dr. Alejandro Hartmann, took me on a whirlwind tour of chocolate farmers and “manufacturers” of artisanal chocolates in the mountains near the city.
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- “Welcome to Our Revolution” (1959)
Read moreThis pamphlet dates from the winter of 1959 when Nancy Macaulay first visited her husband Neill Macaulay in Cuba.
- Alma Guajira
Read moreThis original copy of the play “Peasant Soul” (Alma Guajira) was published by the Cuban cigar company Gener in 1927.
- A Communist Life in Medals
Read moreIn Cuba, like the Soviet Union, the practice of distributing small lapel pins as tokens of the state’s political appreciation became and remained fundamental.
- Cigar Label
Read moreHow a cigar label revealed the hypocrisy of many pro-Embargo American politicians.