Dictatorships_Cold War and Cuba

Series of two lessons designed to give Spanish A-level pupils an understanding of the historical context of the Cold War for the AQA Monarchy and Dictatorship topic, and different perspectives on the Cuban Revolution and Castro dictatorship. Comes with an accompanying timeline for Cuba, Latin America and the rest of the world.

Although the Cold War is not a discrete topic on the Spanish A-level syllabus, I find one of the most challenging aspects of the Monarchies and Dictatorships topics is that often pupils lack the historical background knowledge and framework to comprehend why so many dictatorships emerged in Latin America in the twentieth century and how they were sustained. In my experiences, students access the topic a lot more easily with an introductory lesson on this inserted in.

The lesson on Cuba uses authentic material to offer differing perspectives on the Castro regime.

The timeline is supplied to offer support for one of the more challenging topics, especially for pupils with no grounding in this historical period. You may wish to give to pupils in its digital format so that they can easily add additional dates to it. The timeline can continue to be used as reference in the subsequent Popular Movement topics.