University of Virginia Library

Half-World Tripping

It was heady brew, and many
drank it to seal themselves off
further from the realities that
brewed like mushroom-topped
storm clouds across the country
during the summer. "In revolution,
one species of man is replaced by
another," Frantz Fanon wrote, and
some felt that the replacement
could become a militant, humanistic,
excursion into the half-world of
historical drama: a sort of Wild in
the Streets as directed by Eisenstein
without the preceding reality.

But first attempts to define identities
as clean-limbed, ever-victorious
street fighters - generational
ubermenschen - thrashed toward
ignominy A leaflet summoning the
faithful to celebration of the Tenth
Anniversary of the Attack on the
Moncada Barracks drew 150: a flag
was burned, rocks were thrown,
fires set in trash cans.