User:Spike.Sommers/sandbox

Possible Topics

Tamara Bunke lived a fascinating and international life. Jews and women are overlooked in the Cuban Revolution. I'd like to use my German and Music minors to flesh out the information on Burke's childhood, ideology, and contributions to the field of music. <-- I HAVE PICKED THIS TOPIC

The article on the Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile) would be more interesting if it had images. I'd also like more information on the movements origins/formation. Similarly, the article mentions that the movement is still alive but there's hardly any information on the current state of the organization. Finally, how were women involved? There isn't a single woman mentioned in this article.

The article on the United States occupation of Haiti has a US American outlook. I'd like to make the article more balanced by including Haitian perspectives. In re: sources, I've loved Renda's "Taking Haiti" and this article would benefit from her scholarship on paternalism, race, and gender. Finally, there are events that Renda discusses in her book that I think should be in this article.

I'd like to make the article on Rigoberta Menchú more objective by finding more information on her activism and adding citations. I'd also like to assess if the current sources are reliable and qualify those sources accordingly.

Annotated Bibliography:

Estrada, Ulises. Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia. Melbourne Australia: Ocean Press, 2005.

This book celebrates Bunke's achievements, skills, and life by showing how much Bunke sacrificed in the process of infiltrating high society, delivering coded messages, executing “dead drops”, and personally waging guerilla warfare.  Bunke’s ideology was that of both a nationalist and a globalist.  Estrada reveals Bunke took on the name “Tania” in honor of a Soviet guerilla who used the same alias and was killed by Nazis in 1941 (Estrada, 27).  Estrada’s portrayal of Bunke, unlike that of the Wikipedia article, is humanizing and moving.  For example, Bunke is quoted making fun of Cuban machismo saying, “You Cubans think you are macho but you are so timid.” (Estrada, 74).    That said, Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia is an adoring elegy written by one of Bunke's lovers/best friends.  It must be read critically.

Hosek, Jennifer Ruth. Sun, Sex and Socialism: Cuba in the German Imaginary. German and European Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

This book explains how Cuba shaped the culture and identity of the German left.  This is important scholarship because the ways the global south impacted the global north needs more scholarship.  Sun, Sex and Socialism is a cultural history.  It explains how Tamara, like Che, became a commodified global symbol for the new left and general youth resistance.

“Remains of Che Guevara Ally Found.” Miami Herald (Miami, FL), Sep. 23, 1998.

This short newspaper article explains where and how Bunke was buried.  It also reveals the controversy in re: finding and verifying Bunke’s remains.

Rojas, Marta, and Mirta Rodríguez Calderón. Tania, the Unforgettable Guerrilla. [1st Ed.]. ed. New York: Random House, 1971.

This collection of personal statements, correspondence, interviews, and other records captures Tamara Bunke in the words of her (extremely biased) family and friends.  We learn that she considered herself a “cubanized Argentine” (67), believed the Cuban Revolution was a continental struggle, and that her “greatest desire is to return to Argentina, my homeland, and do everything possible to help the party there.” (15).  We also learn about the sexism she faced.  For example, Bunke was initially not allowed to be an interpreter.  She only ended up becoming a guerilla through breaking Che’s orders and returning to the guerilla base.  As a guerilla she fought “to be treated just like the rest of the comrades” (200).  Furthermore, Bunke was also “criticized because, although she was a foreigner… she wore our military uniform.  She answered that it was the duty of all revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries, whatever country they were in.”.  Although this book is clearly communist propaganda, I nevertheless appreciate how it captures Bunke in her own words.  Finally, the book has many excellent photographs.

Ryan, Henry Butterfield. The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats. 1st Oxford University Press Paperback Ed. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

This book is a detailed account of the failed insurgency in Bolivia, in which Bunke died.  It explains Bunke’s involvement as a guerilla, how she died, and how her death was received.

Trnka, Jamie H. ""Neuer Mensch" or "Hombre Nuevo?" Volker Braun's Critical Solidarity with Latin America." German Studies Review 34, no. 3 (2011).

This article focuses on the way in which Tamara Bunke complicates the common conception of a revolutionary as well as conceptions on the type of relationships that exist among revolutionaries.  Bunke’s intersectionality and transnational role “destabilizes the New Man’s role as universal revolutionary subject, and, with it, the role of the East German state and humanist tradition in world socialist revolution.” (Trnka, 559).  The article explains how revolution was relocated from the old left’s “masculine productivist socialization” in factories to “the new left’s gendered cultural reproduction” in the country.  Not only does this article examine the relationship of East German socialism relationship to Latin American revolution but it also details the ways Bunke experienced sexism as a Guerilla.