Julio Cortázar, Self-Portrait, Paris, 1975
The first Pan American Games were held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1951.
A sweaty worker loading sacks onto the McCormack line boat. Photograph by John Phillips. Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1939.
The national flag of Cuba hangs alongside the Cuban coat of arms and the revolutionary flag of Yara (also known as the flag of La Demajagua) inside the Cuban National Assembly. Created in the mid-nineteenth century by the Venezuelan Narciso López, who led a few unsuccessful attempts to liberate the island from Spanish rule, the current flag of Cuba was adopted as the nation’s national emblem upon independence in the first decade of the twentieth century. The flag of Yara was created by Cuban revolutionary Carlos Manuel de Céspedes during the Ten Years War (1868-1878), and is named after the Grito de Yara (Cry of Yara), Céspedes’ proclamation of Cuban independence in the town of Yara in 1868.
Cuban citizens lining up to vote. Photograph by George Skadding. Havana, Cuba, June 1944.
1944 was the last year of Fulgencio Batista’s first administration. His handpicked successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas, lost to former president Ramón Grau, who played an instrumental role in the development Cuba’s 1940 constitution.
