Based on the readings done in class, Celia Sanchez is a huge key player in the success of the Cuban Revolution and getting Fidel Castro into power. On Wikipedia, everything in the article seems to be relevant to the topic but it does not elaborate much on her role throughout the Cuban Revolution and Post-Revolution. It is very vague and feels like it discredits her from all the work she actually did. A distraction that caught me off guard was the statement of Fidel Castro’s physician, Renee Vallejo, being the other person besides Sanchez that was close to him. It seemed irrelevant to add that since it didn’t seem to have much of a connection to Sanchez only Castro. Most of the article is very factual and eliminates any biases against Sanchez, the Cuban Revolution or the Batista Regime. It shares facts about what she did (briefly). The information is enough to make any assumptions or think that Sanchez made an impact. It stayed pretty much neutral throughout. Much of the viewpoints are underrepresented. Her role throughout the Cuban Revolution needs to be emphasized more and elaborated.

The section about her Early Life, only states where is from, which is great to know about her but what would make the section stronger, would be to add what her life consisted of before she met Castro and got involved in the Revolution.

Some of the citations work, most are from books and the rest are from websites. It’s very limited the information they received from the references since it did not emphasize her role as it should have. Some of the WikiProjects that the article is involved in are WikiProjects Women, WikiProjects Carribean, WikiProjects Military History, WikiProjects Biography/Military/Politics and Government/ and WikiProjects Cuba. All are rated to be of low importance and start class. Which is very surprising since she handled a lot the underground work that carried the Revolution to what it became. But she was a role model many women who wanted to fight for a better future for themselves and their people.

Because of the lack of information on Sanchez, makes it seem that she was not an important key figure or role model. In the Talk section, one person made the assumption that Sanchez was Castro’s lover because of how close they were. Which is very different from what we talk about in class. In our readings, she is distinguished as someone willing to risk everything on the movement and how she worked alongside other women to make this happen. What is appreciated about this article about her is the Legacy section, which shows Castro’s gesture towards Sanchez after her death, to show how much work she put into making Cuba what is it today.

1. Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

For the most part everything is relevant, in the section about Santamaria’s life and death they discuss her family as an aside when they are discussing her depression. I found this to be distracting, I would have written them as separate sections or even paragraphs because they did not seem too related. The article spends too much time talking about Castro and Che, how Santamaria helped them, at times this article reads more like an article about them not her. For example, it discusses how Castro wrote in lemon juice in his manifesto to hide a secret message, as interesting as this piece of trivia is it has nothing to do with Santamaria.

2. Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

The article seems very neutral, it does not go into Santamaria’s politics just her life and what she was able to accomplish for the revolution.

3. Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or under-represented?

The article did not discuss her politics or Batista regimes feelings towards her, only that they saw her has a threat.  These viewpoints could be included more in the article but it implies how the government feels towards her.

4. Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

All of the citations except two do not have links attached. The two that have links are working and they sources do seem to say what the article claims. However, there is a lot more information in the sources that was not included in the article, which is highly disappointing.

5. Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

This article needs many more citations, I am a bit of an over citer but this article goes multiple sentences without citing. From what I can tell most of the citations are from American scholars which will bias the analysis, this bias is not acknowledged. There seems to be only five original sources that the authors just cite over and over again.

6. Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

I would have like to see more about her personal feelings about the revolution, why she was motivated to join. Since none of this is in the article and it would add a lot to the article.

7. Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

There is nothing on the Talk page.

8. How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

This article is rated start class. It is a part of Biography, Articles for creation, Cuba, and Women’s History.

9. How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we’ve talked about it in class?

The article discusses Santamaria’s depression and her suicide which we did not discuss in class. Other than that there was little difference in content covered. But Wikipedia definitely framed her involvement in the revolution more around how she helped the male leaders than we did in class.

P.S. When I wrote this no one had used this article, but I didn’t post it for a while, so here we are.

While the article does a good job of staying on track, for the most part, aided by its brevity, there are certain aspects that distract from the initial discussion of the Cuban Literacy Campaign. The background offers valuable context, and could even use a little bit more information to function, but the incorporation and linkage of said context are not very useful. The page needs to relate back to the original topic and make an argument for why it is there in the first place and why it is important to note when learning about the campaign.

The article has a tendency to paint the Batista regime in a negative light and seems to praise Fidel Castro heavily. Although there are moments where it acknowledges the propaganda associated with the institution of the campaign, as well as embedded in the materials they used to teach and promote. Offers a communist perspective, and has a little too much bias to be accurately representing the Cuban Literacy Campaign. More information on the organization would be useful, speaking about the roles many played in a more extensive way, as well as explaining why such a distinction in the roles is necessary. The Organization section needs more clarity.

The entirety of the Challenges section is very accusatory and lacks context, offers an idea of the challenges that they faced, but over-represents the militant counter-revolutionary groups that targeted the organization- doesn’t explain if they had an issue with the propaganda or just the organization as a whole- needs more clarity and information to be a useful section.

There are very few links in the article, and to very obvious pages like Fidel Castro, UNESCO, and other obvious terminology that does not particularly support article claims. Most of the facts are cited, and by reputable sources, but many of them seem to be very focused on the revolution as a whole and not specifically on the Literacy Campaign, and those that seem to be less biased as it looks at perspectives, and critical analysis of the campaign. The most recent sources are from 2010, however since the campaign is no longer active, there is likely not a large influx of new information on the topic

The page is apart of the WikiProject Cuba which is considered inactive, and this article is rated of low importance for the project. It has a C-Class rating. The Talk section has very few conversations, a comment or two on the bias, and small edits and link changes are all that are mentioned. As far as the discussions we have had in class this page is far more biased, and lacks critical analysis of the campaign or of the context.

Everything in the article was relevant, there was some background about the Cuban revolution. After that it expanded on the element of propaganda that Castro used in and after the Cuban Revolution. There could have been more examples of propaganda across different mediums. As well as Propaganda in Cuba that was not directly from Castro even though he might have been the biggest supplier.

The article only referred to propaganda produced by Castro, this could have been the case but there is no mention of any produced by Batista or even outside counties about the revolution at this time. The article itself was fairly neutral in explaining only one small piece of propaganda around the cuban revolution.

There are 18 references listed most of them from the same sources. All of the sources are from Castros propaganda, there is no references to propaganda from different people or parties to provide a more dimensional view of propaganda in Cuba. There is only one link listed in references and it dose not work.

The talk page of this article was about the change in title of this page. It was originally Cuban Revolutionary Propaganda and now it is Propaganda in Cuba. This article was also not rated and did not appear to be part of any WikiProject.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Cuba

For the most part, the article only dealt with information that was about Vilma Espin and her involvement in the revolution. There were some parts of the article, particularly during the “Role in the Cuban Revolution” section that discussed her relationship with the Castro brothers. 

The article remains neutral for almost the entire time. There are some issues regarding her relation with the CIA, General Kirkpatrick, and how she convinced him that there were no communistic beliefs amongst the revolutionaries. 

Due to the fact that this is an article about one person, there did not appear to be any specific viewpoints that were either under-represented or not represented at all. 

The linked citations did work, and they all were from reputable sources. Some of them were only around a year old, and some were closer to ten years old, however upon closer inspection they all seemed reputable despite the age of the sources.

There are only three references for the entire article, and they are all books. One of the references was in Spanish, and so I could not check the reliability of that specific one. The other two books that were referenced were written by reputable authors, and appeared to be relatively unbiased sources.

Some of the sources were close to ten years old, however none of the information in the article appeared to be out of date. The last edit made on this page was in July of 2019. 

The talk page of this article discussed the use of Vilma Espin’s full name, and discussed other pages that also use the full name of the people that they are talking about. They also talked about the “nasty things” that she did. Most of the discussion of the negative things that she did was speculation, based on rumors and gossip. 

This did not appear to be a part of any WikiProject. 

In class, we did not discuss Vilma Espin, so it is unclear as to how this article would differ from any class discussion that we had or would have.

Link to the article

There’s nothing superfluous or exaggerated in her extremely short Wikipedia page, so it’s not fair to say the article’s content is bad so much as it is unspecific and lacking. It’s talk page is even shorter, with most of the entries being about careful wording (Changing the word “venerated” to “revered” to avoid overly religious overtones, i.e.) and conjecture about whether Sánchez and Fidel Castro were romantically involved. The page is part of the Military History, Biography, Caribbean, Women, and Cuba WikiProjects.

This particular article does a good job at staying neutral while conveying the revery pro-revolutionaries in Cuba have for her. That being said, while it highlights her importance within post-Batista Cuba, it fails to communicate to the reader why she is truly important. The Cuban Revolution subheading talks about her role in the conflict as a messenger for guerrilla forces, but this discussion of it never transcends basic historical summary.

The Post-Revolution, Death, and Legacy subsections are far worse in terms of their lack of specifics, stating how she held the position of Secretary to the Presidency in addition to serving in the Council of State without mentioning any of her accomplishments or policies that greatly impacted Cuban society. The latter subsection was the most glaring case of this in my opinion. The article discusses her as an influential figure for post-revolutionary feminism without contextualizing it via the social, economic, and material gains women made after Batista’s government was ousted.

This brings me to my broader problem with the article: the lack of specifics and the emphasis on her ties to Castro give off the implicit understanding of her as a minor figure in the life of the infinitely more famous president. Its emphasis on the late leader makes her seem unimportant, though reading Becker and seeing the Wikipedia subsection about her life in the revolution suggest that this is far from the case.

There were a few books without links and articles specifically about Sánches, but sometimes even those only mention her in the context of Castro. I was frustrated there were no links to the biographies about her – even though this makes sense practicality – though I was happy to find an article about her influence on post-Batista female identity in Cuba, which highlighted her role as a sort of nationalist folk legend far more eloquently than the Wikipedia page citing it. The Becker page, while even briefer and summary-centered, gives the reader a far greater picture of her role as a revolutionary organizer and messenger and how her influence improved the social and material conditions of Cuban women.

Everything in this article is on topic and provides relevant information on the ELN. The article is also very neutral. It provides the viewpoints of the ELN and the groups/countries it interacts with, without interjecting any other opinions. The most represented viewpoints are those of major world powers and especially the Colombian government, but they also provide the most accessible information. Most of the citation links work, however one did lead to a page not found. Many of the sources used were news articles written about the ELN which were a little biased, but they were only used to pull facts. The “history” section of the article does not have enough citations, and the information on the formation of the group is not cited at all. The information seems to be up to date as it goes up to 2019; it only could be missing things from the past couple months. There is only one real conversation on the talk page mostly about the page being biased against the ELN. The article is rated C-class and is part of the Colombia, Terrorism, and Military History WikiProjects. They way this article discusses information is different from our in class discussions because it purposefully does not analyze, or mention historians or themes.

The article I have chosen is the one on Subcomandante Marcos. It is in three WikiProjects: WikiProject Mexico, WikiProject Biography / Military, and WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In all three of these, the article is ranked B-Class and in quality, and Mid-importance in importance.

The balance of information in the article is good. The sections on his popularity and relations with the Inter Milan soccer club are very short, the sections on his writings and his life prior to the Zapatistas are of moderate length, and the longest section is his role in negotiations during the Zapatista Crisis of the 1990s.

However, the section on the Zapatista crisis is rife with errors and just poorly made. It focuses very much on the negotiations Marcos made with the Mexican government, which is understandable, as the bulk of the information on the fighting should not be on Marcos’s personal page, but it includes nothing of his other military actions.

Many statements made in this section are uncited, or very clearly biased. The second paragraph includes the phrase “The facts seemed to confirm”, when that paragraph is completely without citations. The most egregious piece of this article is under the subsection titled “Executive decision.” The paragraph concerns value statements, such as referring to certain decisions as “politically and honorably correct”, and is completely free of citations for statements like “[President] Zedillo avoided innocent bloodshed”, which itself is also somewhat a value statement.

With regards to the citations, many are either in Spanish or behind a paywall, if they are even there at all. The citations which are best paraphrased and sourced are the ones that are used as biographical information on Marcos’s life, such as citations 7 and 8.

The talk page has very little discussion, with only four posts made by users. One user in 2016 mentioned that they were working on a re-boot of the page, but it doesn’t seem to have arrived.

Little information is given on the page about more recent events, such as Marcos’s role in contemporary Zapatista struggles, or his experiences as spokesperson for the Zapatistas during The Other Campaign. There is nothing in the body of the article about Marcos post-2006.

The information differs from what we have talked about in class, as it focuses more on the man Marcos than the Zapatista struggle itself.