Individual Post #3

            This week I have been thinking about the historical context of the play, Manteca.  From previous research, I knew this play was written during the Special Period in Cuba.  I learned that this meant the Soviet Union collapsed, which Cuba relied heavily on. I discovered this week that once the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba had an even harder time than before with food shortages.  While learning all of this I could see the reflection of this part of history in the play.  The play obviously shows the struggle to have food, by the portioning of the food, talking about planting a mango in the morning and eating it for dinner, and how they want to get a plot of land to grow food, which would lead to no shortage of food.  I also noticed, the total struggle of Cuba through them talking about the problem with Cuba was they did not have dinosaurs so therefore had no petroleum.  It seems that Cuba does not have many resources of their own and rely on other countries, specifically the Soviet Union, which hurt Cuba’s economy when the Soviet Union collapsed.

            I consulted Milner Library for the sources I used for this part of the projects research. The roadblocks I came up with in my research was not finding anything during Google searches.  As I said earlier, I used Milner Libraries Search engine to find books and academic articles to overcome this roadblock.  There I found plenty of resources to use for the group blog.