Getting to know Cuba - Research Part I

Since the Neolithic era the island known as Cuba has actively affected the surrounding region. This holds true whether we are talking about immigration of the Arawak peoples onto the island from mainland South America, or Fidel Castro's revolution. The history of this island is so vast and rich that things were happening throughout all eras in (relatively) recent history. 

So where to begin? What to focus on? Entire books have been written about just the effects of Columbus' visit in 1493 to Cuba. On the other side of that coin, there is so little information about the Guanahatabey peoples that historians confused them for a totally different people altogether. Certainly, there are quite a few centuries in Cuba's history which were exciting, but I'm going to have to narrow it down. 

I am doing this research for a final project based around this particular island nation. While comprehensive, this project is not a doctorate thesis, and so I cannot be too expansive, and I also cannot hyper focus on one minor aspect of Cuba. 

Given that I need enough material for roughly ten pages, I am trending towards the timeframe which put Cuba on the global map: Castro's revolution. As such, I've been tasked with finding at least three sources for my research. I was instructed to use the Virtual Caribbean Library, but since the 'Resources' section consists of place-holder pseudo-Latin I'm on my own. I'm a big fan of the paper page, and so my first source is an actual book - Revolutionary Cuba: A History.

This book will serve as the main practical reference for the history leading up to the revolution as well as a good play by play on the who, what, when, where, and why of it all. This book retails for for $31.95 on Amazon.com. 

Since this paper will also need to include some sort of photographic media, I'm also going to use the Duke University Libraries Digital Collection: Deena Stryker Photographs (1963 - 1964 and undated) 

Fidel Castro in Pic's room at the Habana Libre Hotel, answering questions and writing to the ambassador to France

This collection features rare and candid images of a nation in the years following the revolution and will help to flesh out the paper with meaningful photographs relevant to the topic. 

Lastly, I am going to use two primary sources: my grandfather, who married a Cuban woman (my grandmother) in the 1950's, and my friend, whose family emigrated from Cuba in the late 1990's. I think it is important to have first hand accounts to bring the human aspect to the research. History books are great secondary sources, if you are careful of the authors own biases, and still images do a wonderful job capturing moments during these events... but the people who were either there during the event, or had their own lives inexorably shaped due to those events can drive home the human cost of the history. Of course, primary sources have their own problems (misremembering, over-exaggerating, implicit biases), but their stories are priceless additions to the historical record. After all, a historian's job is to tease away the spectacle of these primary accounts, to suss out the truth in the statements and capture it forever as an eye-witness testimony. I rather much look forward to it. 

There we go, three (of probably many many more) sources I will use for this project. While I wait for the Amazon delivery of my book, I can sit back, sip a Cuba Libre and begin a first draft of interview questions for my primary sources.