The Harvard Cubans: Film Screening and Q&A with Director

Posted on October 20, 2017 by in Past Events

Our friends at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies invite Harvard undergraduates and friends of the FDR Foundation to  Monday’s screening of the documentary film The Harvard Cubans (Los cubanos de Harvard), produced by the Cuba Studies Program at DRCLAS/Harvard. The film covers the Cuban Teachers’ Expedition in 1900, when 1,273 Cuban schoolteachers attended Harvard Summer School in the largest people-to-people exchange between the two countries, at the time or since.
As background, here is an interesting article from the magazine OnCuba about the Expedition and the documentary (also available in Spanish). FDR arrived at Harvard around the same time as the Cuban teachers, while cousin Teddy and other Harvardians played key roles (both pro and con) in the Spanish-American War which led to the Expedition.
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
October 23, 2017 | 6:00pm | CGIS S-010*

In the year 1900, more than half of all Cuban public school teachers from across the island boarded five American military ships to travel to Cambridge to participate in a Summer School organized by Harvard, the largest such endeavor ever undertaken by the University. The Cuba Studies Program sponsored the making of a documentary film about the expedition. Visit our website for the full synopsis.

Following the premiere screening of the film, a question-and-answer session will be held with director Danny González Lucena and historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset, Visiting Research Scholar at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard. Please note the 72-minute film is in Spanish with English subtitles. Reception to follow.

About the director: Danny González Lucena is a journalism graduate of the University of Havana. He currently works as a cultural journalist on Cuban television, where he specializes in music. He has also been involved in issues related to heritage conservation and folk traditions, with several international special reports. His work as a filmmaker includes the titles: Por qué luchamos (2011), dedicated to the life and work of the Saíz brothers; La Perla de Oriente (2016), which investigates little-known aspects of Guantanamo musician Lilí Martínez; and Los cubanos de Harvard (The Harvard Cubans) (2017).