Revolutionary Cuba

Luis Martínez-Fernández sets out "to make sense of the historic, social, and political forces" (p. 2) that led to Cuba's 1959 revolution and its survival, against the odds, into the second decade of the twenty-first century.A historian, he combines narrative and analysis, charting the interconnectedness of continuity and change, grounded in his knowledge of the nineteenth century, "when the island's sugar system reached maturity, generating a host of socioeconomic misfortunes that continue to plague Cuba today [and] nationalism, race relations, and modes of social and political resistance took shape" (p.3).Frequent visits to Cuba during 1994-2004 enabled him to experience the island as a Cuban-Cuban American, and, while his intellectual development was in the United States, he sees this as "a very Cuban book" (p. 5) embedded in Latin America and the Caribbean.He outlines seven threads to the labyrinth of understanding the Cuban Revolution.First are "the many Cubas" (rich/poor, east/west, insular/exile) and the need to integrate "Cuba outside of Cuba" into "the narrative of the revolution" (p. 6).Two other threads are familiar: "The island on horseback," metaphor for militarism and caudillismo, and "the longest 90 miles," referring to Cuba and the United States being in close proximity yet worlds apart.In his fourth, "the pendular revolution," he signals a periodization with three diasporic cohorts: those "socialized" under capitalism; the children of the Revolution whose parents were "socialized" under capitalism; and the grandchildren who along with their parents were "socialized" during the Revolution.The fifth and sixth threads relate to political leadership: "the art of triangulation" as the ability of Fidel Castro especially to apply triangulation strategies, exploiting and creating opportunities, and "the third man" as the telling figure after Fidel and Raúl Castro according to pendulum swings.The seventh is "the persistent plantation," a view of Cuba as profoundly shaped by the sugar complex and concomitant "coercion of labor, rigid social hierarchy, land concentration, foreign dependence, and the like" (p.10).Its corollary is "the persistent counterplantation," and those who resist-some passively (slothful at work, mocking their masters), others violently (rising up, burning cane, killing the overseer), some spiritually, and others escaping or committing suicide.Plantation and counterplantation persist, he argues, to the present day.The seven threads surface throughout.In Part One, " Idealism (1952Idealism ( -1970))": two questions and an answer-"Was Cuba ripe for revolution?Was a revolution necessary?It depends on which Cuba we ask" (p.44); the significance of Carlos

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