4: How Teaching a Country to Read Embarrassed the CIA

What would you do if a company took over your town or country, while defended by one of the most powerful countries in the world? Would you fall in line, even when the wages were barely above slave wages? Would you watch in silence as police forces rounded up your neighbors and executed them just for being locals who opposed the company takeover? Would you step aside as they destroyed every last piece of land and drop of water? Some may think these are ridiculous questions to entertain, but for many around the world these are real questions they’ve had to face. Today we are talking about someone who had to face these questions, and was stuck in a place where many would argue that left them no option but to fight. If you’d like to help organizations working to fix the damage done as discussed in this episode, you can donate to places like the Smithsonian who are working on projects such as the Caribbean Indigenous Legacies Project or organizations like Care that work to fix agricultural systems in these countries. Learn more about issues related to this episode:* Guantanamo Bay* School of the Americasdelaneyxclara’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Citations:Che Guevara:• Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Grove Press, 1997.• Castañeda, Jorge G. Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. Vintage Books, 1998.• Taibo II, Paco Ignacio. Ernesto Guevara, Also Known as Che. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.Bay of Pigs Invasion:• Gleijeses, Piero. Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs. Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 1995, pp. 1-42.• Kornbluh, Peter. Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. The New Press, 1998.• Rasenberger, Jim. The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Scribner, 2011. Get full access to Ripples of Rebels at delaneyxclara.substack.com/subscribe