Women and the Cuban Insurrection: How Gender Shaped Castro's Victory

By documenting the centrality of women rebels and Castro's hearts and minds campaign, this book shatters the Cuban War story's mythology of an insurrection waged and won by bearded guerrillas alone. Rebels used gender as a tactic to protect themselves, attack enemy morale, and attract public support.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 01 February 2018
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Political scientist Lorraine Bayard de Volo challenges the conventional masculine narrative of the Cuban Revolution by employing gender analysis and focusing on previously unexamined testimonies of women rebels. Contrary to the popular belief that the Cuban War was solely won by bearded guerrillas, Bayard de Volo demonstrates that revolutions are not determined solely by bullets and battlefield heroics. By examining women's diverse roles in the insurrection, particularly those that took place outside the battlefield, such as smuggling messages, hiding weapons, and distributing propaganda, Bayard de Volo explores how gender, both masculinity and femininity, were deployed as tactics in the crucial but largely overlooked battle for the hearts and minds of the Cuban people. Drawing on extensive and rarely explored archives, including interviews and oral histories, this author presents a fresh interpretation of one of the most significant events of the Cold War.

Weight: 39g
Dimension: 154 x 228 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781316630846