Is modernism the most apt term for the literary efflorescence that took place in the first decades of the twentieth century across a range of regional and cultural contexts? What are the advantages and disadvantages of considering the heterogeneous collective of the Americas together? This essay spotlights significant Latinx writers, texts, and exchanges seldom included in conversations about American modernism, as it discusses the development of Latinx literature and Spanish-language literatures within the geographical bounds of what is now the US. Doing so reveals the crucial contributions of Latinx poets and the role of translation in fueling literary innovation.

During the 1960s, Cuba attempted to provide leadership to the Latin American Left, and to the region’s numerous Cuban-inspired guerrilla movements in particular. In the process, Cuban leaders departed from Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy, garnering harsh criticism from their Soviet and Chinese allies. Yet Cuba found a steadfast supporter of its controversial positions in North Korea. This support can in large part be explained by the parallels between Cuban and North Korean ideas about revolution in the Third World. Most significantly, both parties embraced a radical reconceptualization of the role of the Marxist–Leninist vanguard party. This new doctrine appealed primarily to younger Latin American militants frustrated with the old communist and social–democratic organizations. It was appealing because it captured the sense of urgency created by the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and provided a path of immediate revolutionary action. The impact of the Cuban/North Korean concept of the party went beyond polemics and theoretical debates. It had a tangible influence on strategies and tactics employed by revolutionary movements in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Mexico, and Bolivia, as they took up arms in the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter examines planned revolutions, which emerge from deliberately organized and orchestrated rebellions. Planned revolutions contain several key, interrelated elements. First, regardless of their declared ideological beliefs, all self-declared revolutionaries are essentially nationalist. Two other, related elements characteristic of planned revolutions are those of leadership and the party. Planned revolutions will not appear unless several highly dedicated individuals commit themselves to planning, organizing, and leading a takeover of power. Sooner or later, the cabal gives rise to a political party or a guerrilla organization whose chief, often only, mission is to lead a revolution. The party sees itself as the revolution’s vanguard. Among the planners involved in this vanguard, usually an individual with greater ambitions, or better organizational skills and opportunities, or through sheer chance, emerges as its leader. While planned revolutions cannot succeed without the work of an organized revolutionary party, the party’s leader becomes the face of the revolution, and, if the revolution succeeds, he then becomes the leader of the country. The October 1917 Russian revolution, and the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions belong in this category. As starkly evident by Che Guevara’s failed movement in Bolivia, not all attempts at revolutionary capture of power succeed.