Imagining Antonio Maceo: memory, mythology and nation in Cuba, 1896-1959

Imagining Antonio Maceo: memory, mythology and nation in Cuba, 1896-1959 Public Deposited

Last Modified

Creator

Nathan, Robert C.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Abstract

This thesis explores collective memories of Antonio Maceo and changing ideals of nation and identity in the Cuban republic. Among the most important military leaders in the Wars of Independence, Maceo, as a Cuban of color, entered popular memory at the intersection of race, identity and the political origins of the nation. In the years following his 1896 death, memories of Antonio Maceo and other figures of the independence movement took shape as collective memories around which Cubans articulated and debated visions of nationhood. Maceo became a powerful tool both for those seeking to legitimate the republican social order and for those that condemned persistent inequality and corruption. What Cubans remembered and celebrated of Maceo, and which memories became dominant, can illuminate the ideals and anxieties that shaped how Cubans imagined and contested the meaning of the nation through the upheavals of independence, republic, and revolution.

Date of publication