"La Niña Adorada del Mundo Socialista:" The Politics of Childhood and U.S.-Cuba-U.S.S.R. Relations, 1959-1962.

Between 1959 and 1962, children played a highly visible role in the dramatic realignment of revolutionary Cuba’s diplomatic relations. This article demonstrates that Fidel Castro’s government consistently deployed discourses and images of childhood as well as actual children within a broader campaign to liberate themselves from U.S. domination even as it sought to strengthen ties between Cuba, the U.S.S.R. and the socialist world. At the same time, the Castro regime also made use child-centered images, texts and speeches in order to negotiate the contradictions between the Revolution’s claims to have fulfilled the islands’ long-frustrated aspirations towards national sovereignty even as it sought to justify its reinvention as “la niña adorada del mundo socialista,” dependent for its survival on the protection and largesse of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]