Cuba During The US Occupation: Summary

In A Cultural History of Cuba During the U.S. Occupation, 1898-1902, Utset seeks to analyze the Cuban experience “between empires”, from a different perspective. Rather than approaching the study by concentrating on the political leaders and elites, she disrupts this trend and focuses on the agency of Cuba’s people en masse—the voices of ordinary Cubans. By examining Cuba below and beyond the elite, Iglesias offers a perspective rarely visited and illuminates the complexities of the developing events that transpired between the end of Spanish colonial rule, 1898, and the beginning of U.S. occupation in 1902. In doing so, she identifies three distinct views Cubans held regarding nationalism: proponents of a staunch unwavering break from the past to a solidified distinct Cuban identity; advocates for embracing progress and modernity by accepting the Americanization of Cuba; and supporters of protecting and maintaining a Spanish heritage. She accomplishes this by utilizing a wide array of resources. While she emphasizes that at the turn of the century, Cuban society was largely illiterate and rustic, her investigation encompasses the use of the

occupation that are wide-ranging and deeply intimate. More broadly, the book is a reflection on how personal identities, public and private memories, business, and political events are often interconnected and linked. This reviewer is delighted to know that Louis A. Pérez is not the only authoritative voice on Cuban historiography, (specifically the war of 1898). Utset’s monograph is inspiring and illuminating for many transatlantic historians looking to explore perspectives outside and underneath familiar frameworks of region and nation and toward more expansive views of the transatlantic