Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Images of Trinidad, Cuba

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

Trinidad, Cuba is a UNESCO World Heritage site for the 16h century Spanish colonial buildings and churches in the city's center.  75,000 people live there.  It's a wonderful, friendly, and beautiful town. 




















---o0o---

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Samizdat in Cuba

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.


This is a fascinating and hopeful article (there is a button on the site to translate) that Keelin found.

The Cuban people have developed something like a modern/digital Samizdat (the clandestine distribution of literature banned by the state, in the communist countries of eastern Europe) to get news and entertainment from outside the state-controlled media and propaganda machine. Instead of Xeroxes, they use USB drives that can be purchased for 30 pesos (about $1.20) or portable hard drives.

https://www.cubanet.org/reportajes/el-paquete-semanal-manda-en-los-hogares-cubanos/ (Translation button is on the right-hand side of the page)
---o0o---

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Guerrillero Heroico: Michael Korda's famous 1960 photograph of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

by Jack Brummet, Travel Editor



Guerrillero Heroico: this image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, by Cuban photographer Michael Korda was taken in Havana in 1960 at a memorial service for the victims of the Le Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, Guevara's notoriety and revolutionary actions and execution (by CIA-hired assassins), solidified the leader and his image as an icon.

Korda once said that at the moment he shot the picture at the funeral, he was drawn to Guevara's facial expression, which showed "absolute implacability" as well as anger and pain.

Images of Che Guevara are ubiquitous in Cuba (and over much of the world). There are also, of course, many images of Fidel Castro, who survived Che by over 50 years. But it is Che you see *everywhere*, in many forms and mediums.


The image was the focus of a documentary "Chevolution," by Trisha Ziff, as well as a 2009 book "Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image" by Michael Casey."

It is a stunning photograph 
and fascinating to see (in such a heavily controlled and monitored society) the degree of exploitation of this image, in memorials, photos, books, and posters. Here are some of the trash and trinkets we saw.

---o0o---

Friday, June 02, 2017

Granma's target practice dummies

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.



One of the target practice dummies Fidel, Che, Raoul, and the 79 other revolutionaries used on board the yacht Granma as they sailed from Mexico to invade Cuba. I still don't know they avoided ricochets?

---o0o---

Friday, June 06, 2014

Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial (with footnote on Guerrillero Heroico)

By Jack Brummet, Latin America Ed.

In April 1959, Alfredo Korda [1]  shot this photograph of Fidel Castro, the new leader of Cuba, laying a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.

This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder allows anyone to use it, provided it is not used to denigrate the Cuban revolution

Castro admired Abraham Lincoln and kept a bust of him in his office.  He once wrote about Lincoln's devotion “to the just idea that all citizens are born free and equal."
____________________________________________________________

[1] Korda also shot one of the most famous images of all timeGuerrillero Heroicothe shot of Ernesto Che Guevara at a memorial.  According to the Wikipedia page about this photo, "To take the photo, Korda used a Leica M2 with a 90 mm lens, loaded with Kodak Plus-X pan film. In speaking about the method, Korda humbly remarked that  'this photograph is not the product of knowledge or technique. It was really coincidence, pure luck.' "


---o0o---

Friday, May 21, 2010

Six photos of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Six pictures of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  I am reading a long and excellent biography of him right now--Guevara, Also Known as Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.  A fascinating story and an excellent read.

The last picture is the one that has become the face of Che everywhere (including t-shirts, posters, etc.).  Some people say it is the most famous photograph in the world.  It was taken at a funeral, following the (CIA-assisted) bombing of a ship in Havana.   

---o0o---