Dictator's Dreamscape

Joseph Hartman focuses on the public works campaign of Cuban president, and later dictator, Gerardo Machado. Political histories often condemn Machado as a US-puppet dictator, overthrown in a labor revolt and popular revolution in 1933. Architectural histories tend to catalogue his regimes public works as derivatives of US and European models. <i>Dictators Dreamscape</i> reassesses the regimes public works program as a highly nuanced visual project embedded in centuries-old representations of Cuba alongside wider debates on the nature of art and architecture in general, especially in regards to globalization and the spread of US-style consumerism. The cultural production overseen by Machado gives a fresh and greatly broadened perspective on his regimes accomplishments, failures, and crimes. The book addresses the regimes architectural program as a visual and architectonic response to debates over Cuban national identity, US imperialism, and Machados own cult of personality.