State of Ambiguity

Steven Palmer is Canada Research Chair in History of International Health and Associate Professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of From Popular Medicine to Medical Populism: Doctors, Healers, and Public Power in Costa Rica, 1800–1940 and coeditor (with Iván Molina) of The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture, Politics, both also published by Duke University Press.José Antonio Piqueras is Chair of Contemporary History at Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain. He is the author of several books on Cuban and Caribbean history, including Trabajo libre y coactivo en sociedades de plantación.Amparo Sánchez Cobos is Assistant Professor of History at Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and the author of Sembrando ideales. Anarquistas españoles en Cuba.

Cuba's first republican era (1902–1959) is principally understood in terms of its failures and discontinuities, typically depicted as an illegitimate period in the nation's history, its first three decades and the overthrow of Machado at best a prologue to the "real" revolution of 1959. State of Ambiguity brings together scholars from North America, Cuba, and Spain to challenge this narrative, presenting republican Cuba instead as a time of meaningful engagement—socially, politically, and symbolically. Addressing a wide range of topics—civic clubs and folkloric societies, science, public health and agrarian policies, popular culture, national memory, and the intersection of race and labor—the contributors explore how a broad spectrum of Cubans embraced a political and civic culture of national self-realization. Together, the essays in State of Ambiguity recast the first republic as a time of deep continuity in processes of liberal state- and nation-building that were periodically disrupted—but also reinvigorated—by foreign intervention and profound uncertainty.

Contributors Imilcy Balboa Navarro, Alejandra Bronfman, Maikel Farinas Borrego, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, Marial Iglesias Utset, Steven Palmer, Jose Antonio Piqueras Arenas, Ricardo Quiza Moreno, Amparo Sanchez Cobos, Rebecca J. Scott, Robert Whitney