Madhouse
Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History
Jennifer L. Lambe
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 12/2016
Pages: 344
Subject: History, Medical
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9780000000000
eBook ISBN: 9781469631042
DESCRIPTION
From its birth, Cuban psychiatry was politically inflected, drawing partisan contention while sparking debates over race, religion, gender, and sexuality. Psychiatric notions were even invested with revolutionary significance after 1959, as the new government undertook ambitious schemes for social reeducation. But Mazorra was not the exclusive province of government officials and professionalizing psychiatrists. U.S. occupiers, Soviet visitors, and, above all, ordinary Cubans infused the institution, both literal and metaphorical, with their own fears, dreams, and alternative meanings. Together, their voices comprise the madhouse that, as Lambe argues, haunts the revolutionary trajectory of Cuban history.