The letters were written by Langston Hughes to Nicolas Guillen, the National Poet of Cuba, President of the Writers' Union, UNEAC, and a member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. They outline one of the longest and most significant literary friendships of the 20th century.
"A change in attitudes toward nature and "natural persons" during the 1920's-30's in the United States led in part to a revision in North American attitudes toward Latin Americans. Insofar as the peoples of Latin America, including Indians, blacks, women, children, and the poor, symbolized natural folk - that is, those individuals not participating in mainstream capitalist culture - they became the substance of a stereotype made popular by a countercultural revolution in the 1920's-30's." (author)
"This paper uses the Bissette affair to evaluate the application of 'action theory,' an influential orientation in contemporary political anthropology. ....By applying [Victor W.] Turner's concepts of social drama and political field to the Bissette historical incident and to local-level politics in Morne-Vert, I will demonstrate some inherent strengths but also a decided weakness, given a political economy viewpoint, in Turner's contribution to action theory." (author)