“Back from Cuba with Machetes and Cameras” Feminist Contour Lines through the Venceremos Brigade: 1969-1971 and Today

Author

Nicolette Bull, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Women's and Gender Studies

Advisor

Cindi Katz

Subject Categories

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Keywords

Off Our Backs, Venceremos Brigade, Cuba, New Left, gender, sexuality

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between two political organizations formed in 1969: the Venceremos Brigade to Cuba and the U.S. feminist periodical Off Our Backs. The Venceremos Brigade was founded ten years after the Cuban Revolution, bringing groups from around the world to Cuba to cut sugarcane alongside local workers in an effort to bolster Cuban economic independence in the face of sanctions, then to travel the island for political education. Over half a century later, despite decades of counterrevolutionary opposition to the program, the Venceremos Brigade is still active and currently preparing for the departure of its 53rd contingent. This thesis exists to add one fold to the story of the program’s longevity: that feminists who participated in the first few years of the Venceremos Brigade aided in the program’s decades-long survival by creating a shared revolutionary imagination across disparate geographical locations. Between 1969 and 1971, several women from the Off Our Backs community joined the first few contingents of the Brigade. They shared in the pages of the periodical their poetry, interviews, diary entries, and reflective essays from their time as brigadistas, drawing contour lines that established common ground between issues of gender and sexuality in both countries. Analyzing these articles, my thesis draws connections between Off Our Backs’ part in fulfilling the Brigade’s goal of “bringing the revolution back home” and Cindi Katz’s concept of countertopography: a tool for connecting supposedly unalike places by identifying the commonalities between the ways they each relate to a particular issue. The first section of my thesis interrogates the complicated and often contradictory position of the women of Off Our Backs in relation to conflicts around sexism and homophobia in the Brigade. This is followed by a comparison with other periodicals that wrote about the Brigade during the same years, and finally an analysis of the Brigade’s goals today, highlighting the changing role of feminism in the program.

Recommended Citation

Bull, Nicolette, "“Back from Cuba with Machetes and Cameras” Feminist Contour Lines through the Venceremos Brigade: 1969-1971 and Today" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5743