The Hope, Fear, Agony of Cuba


Because of the Cuban revolution, there were two things that changed. The one that Cuba was in alliance with before, America, is now not in alliance with Cuba anymore. Now, Cuba is teamed up with the USSR. After Castro came into power, Castro made Cuba not sugar dependent anymore. Cuba may not have a specialty in world trade anymore, but this act decreases risks of economic collapse for Cuba. Two things that stayed the same after the Cuban revolution is that people still wish to get a new government. Just like the character I constructed for this journal; people wish to overtake Castro. Just like how people still wish to get a new government, there are still people who believe in Castro. The revolution is over, and Castro has won the belief of those citizens who believe in Castro. 

A Guy on an Island Against the Government

In this video, our group explains the Cuban Revolution through pictures. We talk about the history of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro from 1952-1959. Fidel Castro goes through many hard times of wars or strikes to obtain a new government for Cuba. Fulgencio Batista works hard to keep his power as government, so he goes against Castro. Some hard parts of making this video was how we had to time our movements to what we said, but after the final product was done, it gave us a sense of accomplishment. Learn about the Cuban revolution as you watch through this video.

Code Girls Decode Codes

The book Code Girls, by Liza Mundy, explains the story of women who saved people’s lives by breaking codes in WW2. After WW2 started, America needed men on the battlefield, leaving a lack of more men for other war jobs. Women with education were America’s last hope. The Navy sent out letter to all schools and colleges for educated women. However, no one would have suspected how hiring these women would have affected the social hierarchy and results of the war.

The two note pages above is a cause and effect map that we learnt about in day 9. The map shows the main topic: Dot Braden gets a new job at the Navy. The map includes what happened that led Dot Braden into getting a new job, and what happened after she got a new job.

One of the central ideas I found while reading was: When people work together, they start bonding. This was shown in many areas of the book, as the book talks about the relationships between characters and how the code breaking team grew together.

This is one of the social issues I found in the book: Economics collapsed around the world. During the time period in the book, World War 2, a lot of countries were lacking resources and money. This was an issue that I found in the earlier parts of my book, an issue that came up but then left.

This was one of the themes I found: When someone steps up, others will also step up and follow. I chose this theme because it was shown a lot in the middle parts of the book, when the people finally saw how much women have achieved. People finally started talking about how they see the situations currently which made more people show their opinion.

These were some of the notes and ideas I took while reading Code Girls.

Middle Ages Barber

This found poem was made from the last page of “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez. The conflict in the short story is how the barber’s enemy, Torrez, came to his shop and wanted a shave, which gives the barber the opportunity to kill Torrez by cutting his throat while giving him a shave. However, when that opportunity comes, the barber is troubled by decisions and comes across deciding whether he wants to kill or not. I tried to show this in my found poem by first showing one decision of how the barber would kill Torrez and saying that the barber doesn’t like Torrez, then showing other side of the decision by saying how the barber doesn’t want to be a murderer.