Dalia Antonia Muller

In Cuban Émigrés and Independence in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf World, Dalia Antonia Muller argues, "The Gulf world shaped, and was intimately shaped by, the Cuban independence conflict during the nineteenth century" (pg. 2). Key to Muller’s examination is the concept of americanismo, which she defines as “a forerunner to the anti-imperialist latinoamericanismo of the twentieth century” (pg. 6). Muller argues that a Gulf framework of the Cuban independence struggle is necessary due to the role of the Cuban exile community that existed in diaspora throughout the United States, Mexico, and South America. The events of the Spanish-American War tend to overshadow these connections and the support that Cuban exiles found from other Latin Americans in the Gulf World, retroactively portraying the dominant Gulf conflict as one against the United States rather than the search for a communal identity among the former colonies of Spain, including Cuba. Muller draws extensively upon the records of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the National Association of Cuban Revolutionary Émigrés to demonstrate these Gulf connections. Those familiar with the work of Elliot Young and Louis A. Pérez Jr. will find her work a welcome contribution to the historiography while newcomers may use it as an introduction. The concept of americanismo promises to shift how scholars examine the Cuban revolutionary struggle.… (más)