¡Cuba! (A1)
End-of-unit celebratory lunch at El Oriental de Cuba!
For the last portion of the trimester, we focused our studies on Cuba in the 20th century, and particularly the novel Casa Dividida by Chris Mercer. This novel tells the story of two very different families whose fates intertwine as a result of the Cuban Revolution.
To begin the unit, we looked at the person who is widely thought of as the country’s national hero, José Martí, who fought for Cuban independence from Spain in the 1890s. We examined one of his poems, “Cultivo una rosa blanca,” which encourages treating others with respect and forgiving your enemies. After reading the poem, we created our own versions, altering the poem’s central metaphor of a white rose to be something of our own choosing, and changed the theme to a message more personal to us. We then recorded the poems and shared them with the class.
During this unit, we also discussed two other historical albeit controversial figures in Cuba’s history: Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. We looked closely at articles, songs, and videos that focused on the impact of Castro and Che. And later, we were asked to make a difficult decision about one of the figures: were they a hero or a villain in the context of the Cuban revolution? Finally, we wrote an academic essay explaining our answers to this complex question. Read our essays and decide for yourself if Castro and Che were heroes or villains!
As a final project for our Cuban unit, we had the opportunity to delve into the minds of people from before, during, and after the Cuban Revolution. First we considered what we knew to be true about the daily lives of Cubans during the time period, and then crafted more specific narratives about a fictional person in that position. We then recorded ourselves saying their narratives in character. Some narratives took the form of diary entries, while others were closer to a short spoken biography of that moment in the character’s life. Through this project, students considered the emotions that could have been involved in the events leading up to and as a result of the Cuban Revolution, including the arrival of Castro in 1959, the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, and the Special Period in the 1990s.
Zayna says: It was really interesting to learn about José Martí’s poetry in the context of Cuba’s history. He’s an amazing poet and I had a fun time adapting his poem to something more meaningful to me.
Jesse says : I love poetry, and poetry in Spanish is so beautiful, so I really enjoyed this project, and it was also very fun to hear all of the different versions that everyone came up with. I also really enjoyed writing the academic essay because I had come into this class with one opinion, and I ended up writing the essay from the other side, and I’m honestly not entirely sure whether I believe Che Guevara is more of a hero or a villain.
Mary Alice says: What an interesting project! I did a lot of research about Cuba, Fidel Castro, the Cuban medical system, the Angolan civil war, death rates of soldiers in the US army, and even more. I really put a lot of effort into this project, and it was very informative to research this subject, about which I knew a little, but not nearly as much as I knew now. …A lot of work went into our monologues. I had fun fleshing out my character, researching the historical event which my monologue describes, and creating details that make my monologue believable, as well as add character, such as family members or ways in which the event had an impact on my character’s life. It was very eye-opening!