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45 2¿La Revolución— es Para los Niños? The Politics of Childhood and the Origins of Dissent in Revolutionary Cuba When the Batistato, as the Batista regime was known, fell on New Year’s Day 1959, 500 members of the nation’s military and political elite immediately fled the country. Otherwise, the news provoked an immense outpouring of joy.1 Cubans of all races and social classes, in rural and urban areas, cheered Batista’s flight and danced in the streets. One week later, progressive middle-class professionals and workers, Catholic students and campesinos, parents and children poured into Havana’s wide thoroughfares to throw flowers to the bearded revolutionaries who marched in victorious procession through the capital. The hated tyrant had been ousted, and many Cubans believed that the youthful liberators of the M-26-7 had redeemed their nation. An ebullient media, freed from the censorship and terror of the Batista years, joined in unanimous celebration of the triumphant Revolution that would cleanse their republic of corruption and finally establish the long-desired moral republic, guaranteeing freedom, progress, and prosperity for all. Many children, perhaps too young to understand the historical significance of the event, were nonetheless powerfully moved by the outpouring of happiness. Román de la Campa recalls returning to Havana after a Miami holiday on the same day that Castro arrived in the city: “The festive atmosphere at the port was unforgettable. . . . On the way home we saw people of all ages and social classes jumping with joy in the streets as if it were New Year’s Eve.”2 From the first days following the Revolution, however, euphoria and revolutionary fervor were accompanied by an outpouring of darker emotions, the product of almost sixty years of frustrated national aspirations , emotions exacerbated by the humiliation and fear of the recent 46 / ¿La Revolución—es Para los Niños? dictatorship. Personal and political hostilities, class envy, and the rage of the marginalized and dispossessed combined to give rise to rioting and looting in the shadows of celebration. Gastón Vásquez, the adolescent son of a Spanish merchant, watched as a crowd smashed the windows of his father’s shoe store in Centro Habana and stole the inventory before similarly vandalizing other stores on the street. Initially supporters of the Revolution, Vásquez’s family had even bought M-26-7 bonds to support the anti-Batista insurgency; within a few years, the teenager and several of his relatives would join forces with others, both on and off the island, to conspire against the Castro government.3 Children’s recollections of the first weeks of 1959 provide vivid evidence of the complex and often contradictory responses to the Revolution’s triumph , responses provoked by the persistent tension between competing nation-making projects within the broadly based moral crusade that sought to remake the republic. On New Year’s Day, Cubans of all races, classes, and political affiliations put aside differences and self-doubt to celebrate the rebirth of their nation. They invited insurgent leaders to form a broadly based provisional government that would bring back democracy and introduce the reforms that would eradicate government corruption and remake their society according to José Martí’s egalitarian vision. However, this fragile consensus was soon threatened by disagreements over the Revolution’s policies, by concern about the ideological composition of the government, and especially by opposition to the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Fidel Castro. Within the first volatile year of the Revolution, as the nation passed from a brief celebratory moment into a more contentious period, symbolic and actual children played an important role in official and media efforts to articulate the Revolution’s nature and goals, maintain consensus, and shore up the popularity of the frequently reorganized government. However, even as individuals and groups who had taken little interest in the events leading to Batista’s fall became passionate Castroites, many of Castro’s earliest supporters on the island and in the United States became increasingly disenchanted.4 As a result, the revolutionary leadership began to rely more heavily on an evolving politics of childhood, disseminating child-centered messages through the strategic manipulation of an enthusiastic media and a growing number of increasingly staged public rallies and demonstrations . Children and discursive representations of childhood would thus quickly become central to the revolutionary government’s efforts to both manage a changing relationship with the United States and mobilize a broader pool of citizens, young and old...

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