On this day in 1959, U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country following the victory of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) at the Battle of Santa Clara, marking the successful conclusion of the Cuban Revolution.
The 26th of July Movement takes its name from the date of with a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, however, the movement bearing this name was not formally organized until the attackers were released from prison in 1955. Public resistance continued sporadically until November 1956, when 80 members of the M-26-7 returned from exile.
Soon after landing on the island, a separate revolutionary group, the "Directorio Revoluncionari Estudiantil" (DRE), unsuccessfully attempted an attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana.
Throughout 1957, armed resistance from groups such as the DRE and M-26-7 would escalate. After a failed offensive by the government against rebels in the summer of 1958, the rebels launched a major counter-offensive.
On December 28th, 1958, after a fraudulent election in favor of Batista, revolutionary forces reached the city of Santa Clara. Seizing equipment from an armored train intended to transport government reinforcements, the rebels quickly captured the city, prompting Batista to panic and flee to the Dominican Republic with a personal fortune of more than $300 million.
In the following days, revolutionary forces entered Havana with no resistance, and Castro established a provisional government. The 26th of July Movement later reformed along Marxist–Leninist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965.
Batista later settled in fascist Spain, dying there in 1973 at the age of 72.
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara
History Will Absolve Me by Fidel Castro
To the U.N. General Assembly, The Problem of Cuba and its Revolutionary Policy by Fidel Castro
r/Communism Cuba and Fidel Castro Megathread
r/Communism Another Cuba and Fidel Megathread
lecture from Michael Parenti about Cuba
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ok Moby Dick was a mistake right after 2666, i was reading the road and was gonna do blood meridian but finding out about mccarthy's
shit put a shadow over that for now, and im giving myself permission not to read theory until i actually will be required to for organizing reasons. what should i read chat????? there's just too many fricken books out there.
Why was Moby Dick a mistake? Moby Dick rocks, you should definitely read it.
Moby Dick is one of the few works of art that lives up to the outsized hype. There's a reason why it’s conisdered a classic
mistake because following near-1000 page digressive dense novel that took me over a year and a half to finish with 500+ page dense digressive novel too much, not disputing that it slaps because i think it very probably does (was enjoying it so far). think i just need something a bit shorter and more approachable to palate cleanse.
So I’m in the middle of reading Moby Dick (quarter of the way through) and I’ve been telling everyone about how approachable it is and how much of a page turner it is.
What I’m told is that while the narrative parts are great, it literally segues into encyclopedic accounts of the whaling industry and, like, how to literally catch a whale. Haven’t reached those parts yet so I can’t really conclude if that’s right. What I have read so far has been really fun
i actually fw digressive novels pretty heavy so that's not a problem for me at all, it's just a question of whether right now is the moment for me to take on such a thing. i've heard its a lot funnier than its reputation and i was def getting that by the 5% mark, it seems to poke fun at Ishmael a lot for being a self-aggrandizing pretentious neurotic dork.
Same. Twenty page long digressions on cryptography or history are a big part of why I tolerate Neil stephenson
Iain M. Banks's Culture starting with Player of Games
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series
Farewell! You will all be trapped in this dense, symbolist tome forever!
u better watch it or im gonna make ur ass leave the earth for no raisin
You am the greetest!
What kind of stuff do you like? If you want to stick with American stuff the short stories of Poe are absolutely awesome, and scratch that same itch as Melville. Melville's stories in The Piazza Tales are also wonderful and much lower commitment than Moby Dick. If you want more contemporary cannot recommend Gary Indiana enough; Resentment and its sequels are just perfect. If you want to stick with Spanish speaking literature, Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya rocks. It's a Bernhard-esque rant by a guy investigating right wing death squad massacres in Latin America that is somehow hilarious whilst also terrifying. Hurricane Season by Melchor is wonderful as well, really pulsating prose. And I adore Zama by Antonio di Benedetto, an existential novel about a guy waiting to be promoted in colonial South America to viceroy or whatever and whittling away his days in anticipation of a glorious future that never comes (it hits, hard).
Ann Lieke's ancillary books. They're real heavy at times tho