Clandestinas: Women in the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1955–1959

By: Carollee Bengelsdorf

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Synopsis: In Clandestinas, Carollee Bengelsdorf challenges the silences surrounding women’s participation in the insurrection in Havana during the Cuban Revolution. The official narrative of the revolution emphasizes virtually exclusively the role of the guerrillas in the sierra in defeating the Batista dictatorship, thereby diminishing the centrality of the urban underground. Given that women insurrectionists were overwhelmingly concentrated in the cities, this inevitably meant that their presence was diminished as well. But even in the urban movements, women are portrayed as secondary, as enablers of the men who do the real fighting. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with over thirty former clandestinas, Bengelsdorf surfaces a different narrative. She paints a portrait detailing the lives of women and the actions in which they were involved in the clandestinidad. She briefly examines the trauma each of her interviewees experienced to different degrees both during and after the dictatorship’s downfall. The book includes a visual essay with photographs curated by Susan Meiselas.