Citizen Engagement in Cuba

James A. Baer is emeritus professor of Latin American history at the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.

• Chapter One: Citizen Engagement in the Cuban RepublicChapter Two: Mass Organizations and Citizen Engagement in the Revolutionary StateChapter Three: Housing, Revolution, and Citizen EngagementChapter Four: Dino Pogolotti and the History of his NeighborhoodChapter Five: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and Cuban NGOsChapter Six: Projects in Pogolotti Chapter Seven: Summary and Evaluation

This volume features the work of Iranian poet and visual artist Sohrab Sepehri (1928–80) in conversation with that of James Baldwin. Sepehri's work was largely composed during the repressive reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1953–79), who was placed in power by the Americans after they overthrew the legitimately elected President Mohammad Mossadegh. Harsh repression eventually led to a popular revolution and the overthrow of the shah. Throughout his life, Sephri‘s works, written and visual, presented a poetics of love; love understood not as emotion but as a way of knowing. This type of love cuts through cultural and political barriers, allowing those who experience it to encounter the sacredness of other people and of all creation. Love as knowledge opens up a vision of a future in which the dignity of each person is upheld and all of creation is respected and treated accordingly. To demonstrate that such a radical, transformative experience of love is not culturally limited but rather a potentially universal human experience, Davary connects Sepehri's work to the work of James Baldwin (1924–87), who, embedded in the racial violence of the US, arrived at a similar awareness of a deeper love as the only path to fundamental social revolution. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.