‘Cadáveres Amados’: Martyrs, Memory, and Cuban National Symbols

On November 27th, 1871, eight young medical students were marched into a public plaza in Havana and shot by Spanish authorities. On the first anniversary of their death, the exiled José Martí used their execution to denounce Spanish rule in Cuba, and to legitimize the violent struggle for Cuban Independence. The executed students became martyrs to Cuban nationalism. Since then, their execution at the hands of tyrants has been repeatedly repurposed in revolutionary periods in Cuban history. This article engages with the work of Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann, and Pierre Nora to reflect on the process of collective and cultural memory formation and reformation. It considers the factors that contributed to the transformation of the execution of these students from a singular tragedy, among a wider field of atrocity, into a defining moment in Cuban identity. Further, drawing on works by Jay Winter, Robin Cohen, and Ron Eyerman, this article interrogates the role of individuals and groups in this process. Over one hundred and fifty years, members of exile communities, moral witnesses, student protesters, and revolutionary leaders used the memory of these martyrs to contest authoritarian rule, hoping to advance their vision of a Cuba that could be. Driven by changing political imperatives, the memory of the students altered to reflect new collective priorities. This case study shows change and continuity in cultural memory. Tracing the evolution of this narrative from the Cuban War of Independence, through the rule of dictators, Castro’s revolutionary war, and the following socialist era, this article concludes by asking how their memory is being—once again—transformed today. With a focus on the construction and use of public monuments and memorials, but incorporating literature, images, annual marches, and films, this article argues that the public memory of their deaths altered in different periods to invoke a revolutionary vision of Cuban national identity battered by a century and a half of instability.

Understanding Notional Machines through Traditional Teaching with Conceptual Contraposition and Program Memory Tracing

A correct understanding about how computers run code is mandatory in order to effectively learn to program. Lectures have historically been used in programming courses to teach how computers execute code, and students are assessed through traditional evaluation methods, such as exams. Constructivism learning theory objects to students’ passiveness during lessons, and traditional quantitative methods for evaluating a complex cognitive process such as understanding. Constructivism proposes complimentary techniques, such as conceptual contraposition and colloquies. We enriched lectures of a “Programming II” (CS2) course combining conceptual contraposition with program memory tracing, then we evaluated students’ understanding of programming concepts through colloquies. Results revealed that these techniques applied to the lecture are insufficient to help students develop satisfactory mental models of the C++ notional machine, and colloquies behaved as the most comprehensive traditional evaluations conducted in the course.