1194604

book-review2023
LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X231194604Latin American PerspectivesChilcote/BOOK REVIEW

Book Review
The Revolutionary Left in Cuba and Latin America
by
Ronald H. Chilcote

Jonathan C. Brown Cuba’s Revolutionary World. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press, 2017.

Elisabeth Dore How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolu-
tion. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2023.

Lillian Guerra Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba,

1946–1958. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

Dirk Kruijt Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America: An Oral History. London: Zed
Press, 2017

Kevin A. Young Making the Revolution: Histories of the Latin American Left.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

My early years as a graduate student were influenced by Cuba and its revo-
lution. The New York Times correspondent Herbert Mathews interviewed Fidel
Castro in the Sierra Maestra in February 1957 and later visited Stanford
University and talked about an experience that had awakened the world to the
fact that a serious revolution was under way. In late 1958, after several months
of finding my way through Mexico and Central America and around South
America, I reached Havana a few months before the revolution came to power.
Its influence throughout Latin America profoundly influenced me and my
graduate student colleagues in our work on the monthly Hispanic American
Report, which late in 1960 reported that Cuban exiles in northern Guatemala
were training for an invasion of Cuba. (A few months later they were defeated
at the Bay of Pigs.) My curiosity led to frequent travel and interviews with left-
ist intellectuals and the compilation of several extensive bibliographies on the
left in Latin America (Chilcote, 1970; 1980) and on Cuba (Chilcote and Lutjens,
1986). Thus, it is with deep interest that I approach a number of significant
recent books allowing a retrospective assessment of Cuba and the revolution-
ary left in Latin America.
Kevin Young’s Making the Revolution: Histories of the Latin American Left is a
welcome study of past left movements dating to early in the twentieth century.
Ten case studies span four historical periods of left activity: (1) the rise of com-
munist movements in Latin America after the Russian Revolution in 1917,

Ronald H. Chilcote is managing editor of Latin American Perspectives.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 251, Vol. 50 No. 4, July 2023, 294–300
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X231194604
https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231194604
© 2023 Latin American Perspectives

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including the political alliances between urban socialists and rural indigenous
communities in the failed 1927 agrarian revolt in southern Bolivia in the essay
by Forrest Hylton and Barry Carr’s chapter on the sugar insurgency of late 1933
in rural Cuba organized by communists and black workers; (2) the Popular
Front period of the late 1930s to the early 1950s, including Marc Becker’s article
on the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, Margaret Power’s on dissident
Puerto Rican nationalists and communists, and Young’s on urban and rural
anarchists in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1946; (3) from 1959 to the early 1970s, with
articles by Michelle Case on progressive and radical Cuban women, Aldo
Marchesi on the failure of Cuban-inspired guerrilla campaigns in Argentina,
Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay, and O’Neill Blacker-Hanson on popular national-
ist and Marxist leftists in the Mexican state of Guerrero; and (4) the more recent
Central American revolutionary movements, including Betsy Konefal’s study
of Maya revolutionary struggle in Guatemala and Diana Sierra Beccera’s of
revolutionary women in El Salvador’s Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación
Nacional coalition. The book offers new understanding of progressive and
revolutionary historical movements, many of them relatively unknown. It is
also noteworthy that Young, Carr, and Becker are LAP editors.
Building upon this background of revolutionary struggle throughout twen-
tieth-century Latin America are four serious studies of Cuba, its internal strug-
gles, its revolutionary triumph, its consolidation, and its influence in Latin
America. Lillian Guerra’s Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary
Cuba, 1946–1958 is of particular interest because it focuses on an evolving revo-
lutionary Cuba in a period not deeply researched and obscured by the Castro
revolution in power after 1958. It begins by examining political activism from
1946 to 1951 and follows with chapters on Fulgencio Batista’s “revolution” and
the struggle for democracy in 1952–1953; the Moncada uprising and civic mobi-
lization, 1953–1954; civil action and the armed struggle against Batista, 1955–
1956; the civil war, 1956–1957, involving Fidelistas, communists, and students;
and the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra, 1957–1958. Guerra sets out to
reconstruct and build on the history of urban Cuban resistance and mobiliza-
tion against Batista rule, emphasizing movements of students, workers, and
the middle class while questioning the importance of the Castro guerrilla strug-
gle in the Sierra Maestra. Carefully constructing a history of this period with
reference to substantial research, she lays the foundation for her central thesis,
set forth in the introduction as “a history that dare not be told” and an epilogue
that seeks to discredit and diminish the significance of the “Revolutionary
Cuba” from December 1958 on.
A Cuban American born in New York, with some years with her exiled par-
ents in Kansas and then in Miami, and now a professor of Cuban and Caribbean
history at the University of Florida, Guerra questions what she considers pre-
vailing views and distortions of Cuban history and political culture. There has
been an exaggerated emphasis on struggle for political democracy within the
guerrilla experiences of the 26th of July movement. She sees workers’ activism
as tied to “a tradition of protest in which class mattered less than personal com-
mitment” and argues that the success of Cuban revolutionary forces in ousting
Fulgencio Batista in 1959 “owed more to underground activists” (4) than to the
guerrilla forces in the Sierra Maestra. Her approach challenges the prevailing
296   LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

understanding of individuals and movements that culminated in the coming

to power of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The seeds of revolution were planted
early, as in the struggle for democracy in Cuba seen in the rise of the Ortodoxo
Party founder and presidential candidate Eduardo Chibás, who died acciden-
tally or by suicide in 1951 but whose “electorally grounded, financially account-
able, nationalist, and anti-Soviet program for the Cuban state emerged in new
form among middle-class activists eager to rebuild civil society.” Castro’s revo-
lution not only defeated Batista and his military but also represented a “his-
torical deviation of Cuba from what should have been its gloriously democratic,
socially just, and racially egalitarian path” (14). She is concerned about “the
dearth of works that analyze Cuba’s ‘democratic era’ of the 1940s” (18). Her
attention is focused on the fragile working of a formal political democracy in a
society long dominated by strong authoritarians (Gerardo Machado, Batista,
Castro).
She minimizes the impact of the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra:
“words were as important as actions” and “the guerrillas’ positive, carefully
constructed image of themselves garnered widespread legitimacy long before
they descended from the liberated zone” (278). Once the revolution was in
power, she suggests, “it was the depth of expectations for true democracy built
up between 1946 and 1956 that made Cubans proclaim that the revolution led
by Fidel fulfilled one hundred years of struggle against imperialism and injus-
tice” (288). Yet her argument turns against Fidel, Che Guevara, and the trium-
phant revolutionaries, and in the epilogue she asserts that Fidel became “little
more than a dictator” and that there is little hope for the formal democracy she
envisages. Nowhere does she acknowledge the fragility of political democracy
in the face the special period of the 1990s, the U.S. embargo and severe sanc-
tions, hurricane devastation, pandemic, and constraints on the economy as
Cubans struggle to improve their way of life.
Those who know Cuba are aware of diverse thinking not only among intel-
lectuals but among the populace as well. Their revolution offered new direc-
tion and desire for a better life in the face of material constraints, yet Cubans
do not hesitate to speak out (as I have experienced in conferences in Havana)
or to write critically with diverse political positioning as in translations of
work published in LAP. And what of the intellectually stimulating and inter-
nationally appreciated Cuban films depicting various problems and ways of
confronting them? Envisioning a participatory democracy in Cuba may be
illusory, but the ideal of formal democracy among political parties and diverse
interests may also be illusory and constrain material progress. Guerra does
not delve into these issues or point to positive outcomes as Cubans seek a
better life such as the advances in medicine that has produced vaccines for
the COVID pandemic not only within Cuba but made available in Africa and
elsewhere And as we witness the Caribbean losing half its coral reefs and
worldwide experiencing the worst decline in ocean life in human history,
Cuba’s ocean waters and coral reefs are healthy. The marine scientist and
conservation leader David E. Guggenheim (2022) asserts that in his decades
of Cuban experience, while having to deal with bureaucratic obstacles, he
found collegiality among Cuban scientists and commitment to rescuing coral
reefs around the world.
 Chilcote/BOOK REVIEW  297

In How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolution, the late
Elisabeth Dore struggled to bring together years of research within Cuba based
on interviews with Cubans from different walks of life. As an LAP editor since
the early years of this journal, she achieved considerable recognition among
Latin Americanists (see 49 [4]: 218). She made multiple visits to Cuba in search
of Cuban discourse about living in Cuba and Cubans’ hopes and fears. Her
study was somewhat patterned after that of Oscar Lewis, whose open-ended
conversations with Mexicans appeared in several books focused on the culture
of poverty. Lewis received support for a similar study of Cuban life, but his
project encountered problems and he was asked to leave (although some of it
was eventually published). Dore tells us that Fidel Castro did not lose interest
in this kind of project and persuaded his friend, the acclaimed Colombian
writer Gabriel García Márquez, to write an oral history of life in revolutionary
Cuba, but after a year of research the writer abandoned it. Dore, however, man-
aged to convince Cubans of the need for a similar study, and over 15 years she
and her team carried out 124 interviews, half of them in Havana and the others
in the provinces of Artemisa, Santiago, Matanzas, Holguin, Sancti Spíritus,
Bayamo, and Granma. The interviews were open and unstructured and simply
asked respondents to tell their life stories.
A prologue briefly describes the project, securing permission to carry out
interviews, working with a team of Cubans, and reaching out to people to learn
their stories. The interviews are broken into three parts focused on the 1980s,
Fidel Castro and the special period from 1990 to 2006, and the changes under
Raúl Castro from 2006 to 2020. Inserted among the interviews in each part is a
thematic selection—racism, Fidel Castro, and the different outlook of Raúl
Castro. (These selections might have been better placed at the beginnings of
their parts.)
The book focuses on a sample of two women and five men who grew up in
relative comfort during the 1980s but questioned their existence in the 1990s, a
decade of economic collapse and then a period of inequality from 2006 to 2020.
These narrators present interesting stories: a digital technology director living
in a poor-majority-black barrio of old Havana; a filmmaker whose documen-
tary film about Havana squatter settlements led to its censorship; an Afro-
Cuban living outside Havana who grew up with racism; a black-marketeer
who fled to Miami; a woman living in a black neighborhood suffering from her
husband’s machismo; a rum industry administrator with an underground
business in digital economy who moved to Miami; and a film school adminis-
trator jailed for his antigovernment activism. Each of the seven narrators speaks
out about life during the three historical periods.
I had read this manuscript before Elisabeth’s passing and considered it
unfinished, its brief and abrupt conclusion that the revolution is essentially
dead premature. For me this book is full not only of complaint but of promise.
We have here a handful of Cubans who experience moments of difficulty but
who persist in advancing their paths in various ways, frustrated over material
conditions, some of them looking for opportunities outside the country but not
necessarily satisfied with the outcomes. Their complaints may reflect some dis-
illusionment within Cuba, but they do not necessarily undermine the will to
improve a way of life, whether in or outside Havana and Cuba. The interviews
298   LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

in this book do not match her brief criticism of a revolution once promising but
for her now failed and hopeless: the promise of equality and founding a self-
sustaining economy undermined by the market—tourism, private enterprise,
the black market, and the rise of the wealthy, leading to a shift from collective
to individual work and racism as African Cubans lost out to white Cubans.
When market forces failed to improve lives, control reverted to repression and
emigration.
In Cuba’s Revolutionary World Jonathan Brown looks at the first decade of the
revolution and its impact upon Latin America. He argues that among the major
social revolutions of the twentieth century “Castro’s of 1959 had the greatest
impact on international affairs,” more than that of Mexico in 1910, Bolivia in
1952, and Nicaragua in 1979. His analysis initially looks at revolutionary and
counterrevolutionary forces in the early years of the Cuban Revolution. He is
also interested that “the Castro regime exported both its revolution and its
counterrevolution” (11), and his particular attention is on the push of revolu-
tion into Latin America at a time when dictatorships in the region were in
decline and armed assaults were launched from Cuba against three of them
through guerrilla insurgencies.
The first part of the book deals with the consolidation of the revolution as
“Fidel proved his mastery with a multifaceted strategy of political consolida-
tion” (45) and the revolutionary push out into Latin America until the death of
Che Guevara. Initially Brown shows how Fidel brought disparate forces into his
revolutionary program and then turns to the Caribbean war of 1959, initiated in
April with the landing of 90 armed men on the Atlantic coast of Panama, an
invasion of Nicaragua by Dominican and Cuban revolutionaries, and an assault
by Cuban revolutionaries on Haiti. He looks at Cuba in the context of Chinese
and Soviet differences. Especially important are the young urban middle-class
Cubans, many of them Catholic, initially drawn to the revolution, who turned
against young communist activists, joined an exodus of Cubans to Florida, and
participated in the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961. The discussion next turns
to the bandidos, small bands of counterrevolutionaries in the countryside among
those who had fought Batista but felt alienated from the revolution. Also sig-
nificant is the offshore counterrevolution led by anti-Castro commandos in
Miami with CIA support. Finally, Brown turns to the young Latin Americans
who visit Cuba for training in guerrilla warfare and political indoctrination and
return to their countries to spread the revolutionary example.
A second part focuses on the Cuban “secret war” in South America, initiated
with Fidel’s visit to Venezuela three weeks after coming to power in search of
financial and political support. This revolutionary diplomacy was carried to
Argentina and other countries, always meeting with the enthusiastic support
of the people but the reserve of diplomats generally committed to the U.S. pro-
grams of the Alliance for Progress. In this Cold War setting Brown tells fascinat-
ing stories of Cuban influence and the rise of revolutionary movements seeking
radical changes throughout South America: in Venezuela, a paramilitary mili-
tary organization uniting communists with radicals who turned to guerrilla
warfare under Douglas Bravo and persisted for 10 years; the rise of peasant
leagues under Francisco Julião in the Brazilian Northeast and the military coup
in April 1964 and the subsequent two decades of repression; a Trotskyist labor
 Chilcote/BOOK REVIEW  299

organization of indigenous workers in the Valley of La Convención north of

Cuzco in Peru under the leadership of Hugo Blanco and guerrilla movements
trained in Cuba; the 1964 riots over the Panama Canal, a coup by Omar Torrijos,
and renewal of diplomatic relations with Cuba; the 1959 insurrection in
Tucumán and Salta in the west of Argentina, the influence of Cuba on Juan
Perón through the anti-imperialism of John William Cooke, and the rise of the
urban guerrilla Montoneros; and, finally, the last campaign of Che Guevara,
ending in his death in 1967.
Significantly, Brown has provided an overview and synthesis not only of the
challenging task in the early years of unifying Cubans and building their revo-
lution but also of the way Fidel and Che reached outside Cuba as an example
of how nations elsewhere in Latin America could open up to peoples in search
of a better society. It was this outreach that not only challenged U.S. interests
and influence in the region but caught the attention of those of us who were
following the Cuban Revolution. Not much has been written about this period.
Brown’s attention to it somewhat complements Young’s effort to awaken us to
past left movements.
The fascinating study of the Dutch scholar Dirk Kruijt updates, and deepens
understanding of the Cuban outreach analyzed by Brown. Kruijt frames his
study in terms of two revolutionary generations, the first involved in the strug-
gle against Batista from 1953 to 1958 and the second participants in the literacy
and health campaigns and efforts to spread the revolution outside Cuba, call-
ing it “the first systematic analysis of the internationalization of the Cuban
Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean” (3). Drawing from some 70
interviews, he focuses on the individual motivations for becoming insurgents,
socialists, and internationalists expressed in the testimonials of members of
Cuba’s Departamento América, which implanted Cuban policy focused on
“the left and the armed left, Latin America’s rebels, guerrilleros and revolution-
aries.” The initial chapter describes the interviews, 30 of them with combatants
from 1953 to 1962, involving young people in the guerrilla movement in the
Sierra Maestra and in the urban resistance movements, and 38 with officials
and diplomats. His study also includes interviews with left guerrilleros from
other Latin American countries who trained in Cuba. An appendix provides
biographical data on the interviewees. The ensuing chapters focus on the his-
tory of Cuba and its independence wars; the revolutionary generation from
1953 to 1959; revolutionaries associated with insurgent movements in Latin
America during the 1960s; progressives including those involved with
Liberation Theology during the 1979s and 1980s; and Cuba’s relations with
progressive movements, including that of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in the
1990s and early 2000s. Excerpts from interviews are interspersed throughout
these chapters, and there are abundant footnotes providing additional detail.
Kruijt builds an understanding of the Cuban revolutionary outreach that Brown
describes and complements the case studies of past revolutionary movements
in Young’s anthology.
In different ways, these books contribute to our knowledge of revolution
and the struggle for better outcomes in Latin America. Young’s anthology pro-
vides a foundation for study of disparate revolutionary movements, successes
300   LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

and failures, and, in particular, opens for Brown a path for the critical assess-
ment of the Cuban Revolution and its outreach and influence in Latin America.
Kruijt carries this farther with interviews with participants. Guerra, with her
retrospective of the years before and after the Cuban Revolution, and Elisabeth
Dore, drawing from open-ended in-depth interviews, provide somber and
pessimistic assessments.

References

Chilcote, Ronald H. (ed.)

1970 Revolution and Structural Change in Latin America: Ideology, Development and the Radical Left
(1930–1965). 2 vols. Stanford, CA.
1980 Brazil and Its Radical Left: An Annotated Bibliography of the Communist Movement and the Rise
of Marxism, 1922–1972. New York: Kraus International Publications.
Chilcote, Ronald H. and Sheryl Lutjens (eds.)
1986 Cuba, 1953–1978: A Bibliographical Guide to the Literature. 2 vols. White Plains, NY: Kraus
International Publications.
Guggenheim, David E.
2022 The Remarkable Reefs of Cuba: Hopeful Sturies from the Ocean Doctor. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books.