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Friends
& Deliverers, 1992
This piece is intended to resonate with an ongoing pattern of U.S. invasion
of small Third World countries, accompanied by rhetoric that contrasts
demonic Old World (European or Communist) powers with the benign salvation
of U.S. democratic forces. The presence of the Cuban boys in their Young
Pioneer outfits is a celebration of their militant independence and fraternity
across racial lines (part of the heritage of the Cuban Revolution). At
the same time it suggests the potential for submersion or uniformity within
a new order....
Panel 1
Background image and text in yellow from "Our New Islands and Their
People," N. D. Thompson Publishing Co., 1899, p. 3: “Throughout
the Islands, wherever our soldiers went, they were received by the native
population as friends and deliverers. Many Cuban boys, rendered homeless
by Spanish cruelty, fraternized with our men and made themselves as much
a part of the outfit as if they were enlisted for the war.”
Text in white from Columbus and Columbia, op. cit., James G. Blaine essay,
“Progress and Development of the Western World,” p. 45): “Adventurous
sailors from Europe visited these shores for four centuries before (Columbus)
was born...and left undoubted evidence of their presence; but no result
for humanity. The Old World did not yet need the New.... America would
have been useless to Europe for she could not then colonize this new great
wilderness...She was not sufficiently advanced...to take proper advantage
of the discovery, and therefore the discovery came to nought, was practically
no discovery.”
Panel 2
Background image and text in yellow from "Our New Islands and Their
People," N. D. Thompson Publishing Co., 1899, p. 3: “Throughout
the Islands, wherever our soldiers went, they were received by the native
population as friends and deliverers. Many Cuban boys, rendered homeless
by Spanish cruelty, fraternized with our men and made themselves as much
a part of the outfit as if they were enlisted for the war.” Foreground
image is from transparency taken by Esther Parada in Havana, Cuba, 1984.
—From the Artist Statement
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