University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 9-10-2010 INTIMATE ENEMIES: VISUAL CULTURE AND U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS, 1945-2000 Blair Woodard Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Recommended Citation Woodard, Blair. "INTIMATE ENEMIES: VISUAL CULTURE AND U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS, 1945-2000." (2010). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/87 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INTIMATE ENEMIES: VISUAL CULTURE AND U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS, 1945-2000 BY BLAIR DEWITT WOODARD B.A., History, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992 M.A., Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 M.C.R.P., Planning, University of New Mexico, 2001 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2010 © 2010, Blair D. Woodard iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writing of my dissertation has given me the opportunity to meet and work with a multitude of people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude while completing this journey. First and foremost, I wish to thank the members of my committee Linda Hall, Ferenc Szasz, Jason Scott Smith, and Alyosha Goldstein. All of my committee members have provided me with countless insights, continuous support, and encouragement throughout the writing of this dissertation and my time at the University of New Mexico. I owe my greatest thanks to my dissertation chair and advisor, Samuel Truett. Sam has been instrumental in the writing of my dissertation as well as my intellectual growth while at UNM. He not only provided the encouragement, intellectual inspiration, and necessary pushes that enabled me to write this project but did so with constant kindness and good humor. Sam has stood by me with steadfast loyalty and friendship throughout my entire academic career, and for that I will be forever grateful. I also wish to thank the other UNM faculty with whom I had classes or just enjoyed countess conversations: Elizabeth Hutchison, Judy Bieber, Kim Gauderman, David Farber, Durwood Ball, David Craven, Claudia Isaac, David Henkel, Susan Dever, and Eva Hayward. They all made my time at UNM a much richer and rewarding experience. I am also deeply grateful to the history department staff, Yolanda Martinez, Helen Ferguson, Dana Ellison, and Barbara Wafer, for helping me to negotiate all the bureaucratic processes that graduate school entails especially in the last few years that I have spent away from New Mexico. I am indebted to the numerous institutions that have provided financial support during the research and writing of this project. The Latin American and iv Iberian Institute provided two field research grants that enabled me to travel to Cuba at the initial stages of this project. The UNM history department provided me with numerous fellowships and assistantships that supported me during my time at UNM. In 2007, I received two awards from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Stuart Bernath Dissertation Prize and the Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant. These grants enabled me to conduct critical research at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami. A University of New Mexico Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship provided me with much needed funding during the writing process. Throughout my research, I have had the privilege to work with many wonderful archivists and research librarians without whom I would never have been able to complete this project. The interlibrary staffs at the University of New Mexico and California State University, Fullerton have been able to obtain materials for me from around the country. Additionally I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to: Jeff Bridgers at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Esperanza B. de Varona at the Cuban Heritage Collection, at the University of Miami, Mark Gens at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Carol Wells at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, Ted Jackson at Georgetown University Library Special Collections, Pedro Torres More at Cuban Tourism Institute in Havana, Martin Gostanian The Paley Center for Media, Los Angeles, Barbara Robinson, University of Southern California, Boeckmann Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Lincoln Cushing at the University of California, Berkeley, Susan Liberator at The Ohio State Cartoon Research Library. v My time as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico was made all the more rewarding by my fellow graduate students with whom I shared classes and good times. I thank them all for their keen intellects but mostly for being my friends: Matt Babcock, Chad Black, Lincoln Bramwell, Lisa Brown, Mark Duimstra, Meg Frisbee, Sarah Grossman, Erik Loomis, Melissa Mann, James Martin, Sarah Payne, Jeff Sanders, Amy Scott, and Tiffany Thomas. I am especially grateful to Tiffany Thomas and her family for the love and support that they gave me for many years. To my friends outside of academia who have been my faithful cheerleaders and confidants especially: Mark Albright, Mark Duimstra, Kevin Dutton, Sarah Frazee, Jill Frazee, Angela Henderson, Matthew Horner, Amy Kunz, Dan Lanningham, and Sheila Morgan. I thank them all for the laughter and wonderful times spent together. I also owe special mention to my friends Mark Albright, Maureen Dana, Sarah Payne, and Mark Duimstra who were drafted into reading various sections of my dissertation at critical moments. I would not have made it without them. Lastly I want to thank my family, my sister Maureen Dana, my brother-in-law Richard Dana, and my nephews Larson and Avery. They have been with me through every step of this process and beyond. For their love and support I cannot thank them enough. And finally to my parents, JoAnn and Nelson Woodard, who have not only provided me with financial and unflagging emotional support but instilled in me the curiosity and courage to pursue not only this project but all things. They remain my best example of the love and dedication that makes everything worthwhile. It is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. vi INTIMATE ENEMIES: INTIMATE ENEMIES: VISUAL CULTURE AND U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS, 1945-2000 BY BLAIR DEWITT WOODARD ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2010 INTIMATE ENEMIES: VISUAL CULTURE AND U.S.-LATIN AMERICAN RELATIONS, 1945-2000 By Blair DeWitt Woodard B.A., History, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992 M.A., Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 M.C.R.P., Planning, University of New Mexico, 2001 Ph.D., History, University of New Mexico, 2010 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the visual discourse between Cuba and the United States that has helped shape the foreign relations between the two countries over the last fifty years. Images celebrating proximity and metaphorical connections, produced before the 1959 Cuban revolution, assisted in fortifying linkages between the two nations; whereas after the revolution, adversarial imagery further splintered the relation between the two countries. I argue that the visual culture produced in Cuba and the United States are not just “windows to the past,” but were also “active agents” of dialogue that both reflected and shaped an evolving transnational relationship. This relationship was characterized not only by state-to-state diplomacy, economic exchange, and military intervention, but also by the dissemination of popular representations that produced and reinforced the essence of foreign relations at a more intimate level. While traditional diplomatic history tells the story of such relationships at the official level, popular visual culture provides for a better understanding of how the U.S. and Cuban general public perceived of these relationships through viii representations and metaphors of family, gender, race, and class, often not visible in the textual record. It is through the interpretation of the time period’s visual culture— advertising, billboards, comic books, films, photographs, political cartoons, posters, and television shows—that the history of foreign relations between Cuba and the United States as an intimate popular experience comes most clearly into focus. It is this personal, intimate connection to foreign relations produced by the visual culture of both societies that I evoke in this project. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................xi INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................20 Border Relations, No Passports, and Lucky Guys: Connections Between the United States and Cuba, 1945-1959 CHAPTER TWO ...........................................................................................................63 Robin Hood, Reporters, and Real Men: Fidel Castro’s Honeymoon with the U.S. Media, 1955-1959 CHAPTER THREE.......................................................................................................122