“The Light That Shineth in the Darkness”: Anglo-American Rural Missionaries and the Cuban Revolution

Though rural Protestant missionaries stationed in Cuba routinely reproduced Anglo-American epistemologies and values, often the service of US corporations, they also worked alongside their parishioners to challenge state economic violence, as well break cyclical nature Cuban poverty. Shared struggle with Cubans against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship proved transformative for many who, late 1950s, developed a revolutionary consciousness born through transnational solidarity. Missionaries challenged dominant narrative coming from government foreign Revolution pursued an increasingly anti-imperial anti-capitalist agenda after Batista entered exile. While corporate executives officials North America Europe feared new government, missionaries, funded by these same defended structural changes taking place 1959. Through oral history archival research, this article exposes how Protestants particularly influential shaping lens which came understand, appreciate, ultimately support Revolution.