Word: cuban
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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SINCE last year's Venceremos brigades re-opened interest in the fate of the Cuban revolution, many books deluged the market to meet the new demand. Two of the most recent entries, both translated from French, Guerrillas in Power by K. S. Karol and Cuba: Socialism and Development by Rene Dumont, provide seriously interested readers with the most thorough studies of Cuba's revolutionary problems. Although sympathetic to the ideals of the Cuban revolution, both Dumont and Karol remain pessimistic about Castro's leadership...
...bloody story of the island was that it could neither take Cuba quite seriously enough nor leave it quite alone. After helping toss out the Spanish in 1898, it asserted the right to intervene in island affairs-through the notorious Platt Amendment, which was incorporated into the original Cuban constitution. Thomas argues that in fact the U.S. would have done better simply to take over the island British-style and prepare it for self-government...
...tyrants who followed Zayas. When Dictator Gerardo Machado (1925-33) snuffed out constitutional democracy, he had student and labor leaders thrown to the sharks off Morro Castle. After ex-Army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista took over in 1934, he remained, both in and out of office, the dominant figure in Cuban political life until the advent of Fidel Castro...
...political gangsters flourished under the control of local bosses. Curiously enough, Fidel Castro ran with the roughest of these gangs while he was a law student at the University of Havana in the 1940s. As a result of this underworld experience, Thomas writes, "the future leader of the Cuban socialist revolution learned much about the nature of Cuban political institutions, their susceptibility to violence and their corruption...
Socialist Shoe Heels. By 1959, the Cuban worker had attained a standard of living equal to that of the U.S. worker in 1941-42. But Cuba's position as a U.S. partner, however profitable, was becoming emotionally intolerable not only to Castro but to masses of Cubans. "To choose to be free meant for many Cubans," says Thomas, "and above all for Castro, to act in a way most calculated to anger the U.S." Thomas agrees with those observers who say that it was no fondness for Communism but a galloping hatred of American power that led Castro toward...