New books on the Cuban Revolution

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Los Angeles Times
Sunday, July 21, 2002

COVER REVIEW
The Cuban Conundrum

By LOUIS A. PÉREZ JR.

INSIDE THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground
By Julia E. Sweig
Harvard University Press: 254 pp., $29.95

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED STATES
A History in Documents, 1958-1960
Edited by Mark Falcoff
U.S. Cuba Press: 452 pp., $32

After more than 40 years of confrontation with the United States, Fidel 
Castro remains in power, defiant and determined to outlast one more 
hostile administration in Washington. Ten years after the collapse of 
socialism in Eastern Europe, at a time when the United States projects 
power across the globe virtually uncontested, the Cuban government, a 
mere 90 miles away, amends its constitution to proclaim the inalterable 
character of socialism on the island. The resolve and resilience of 
Cuba's leaders in the face of decades of unrelenting pressure from 
Washington remains a source of perplexity and pain to U.S. policymakers.

Debate and dispute, of course, have long characterized the U.S. response 
to Castro's Cuba. In the Cuban revolution, one comes face to face, at 
one time and in one place, with issues of enduring vitality and moment: 
power and powerlessness, dictatorship and democracy, nationalism and 
imperialism, the quest for social justice and the economic imperative. 
These issues prompt, on every side, vigorous partisanship. Detachment 
and disinterest are almost impossible.

Cuban history is similarly implicated, of course, and especially those 
facets of the Cuban past that bear most directly on the present. One 
such debate involves Castro's 26th of July movement (named for the date 
in 1953 that saw his ill-fated attack against a military barrack) and 
the armed insurrection against the government of president-turned 
dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The debate is over which of the two components of the 26th of July 
movement--the civilians who fought in the urban underground, or llano, 
or the soldiers who made up the guerrilla columns in the mountains, or 
sierra--played the more decisive role in toppling Batista.

It is a debate that is at the heart of the complicated social and class 
composition of the broad-based opposition to Batista. Understanding this 
debate helps to illuminate the purpose to which power was put after the 
1959 ouster of Batista. As Julia E. Sweig makes clear in "Inside the 
Cuban Revolution," the llano was made up principally of middle-class 
professionals seeking to restore civil liberties and free elections 
guaranteed by Cuba's 1940 constitution. The sierra, on the other hand, 
represented by Castro, was composed of peasants and workers and sought a 
thorough-going egalitarianism based on social justice. The sierra 
prevailed, and many of the llano fled into exile, claiming that the 
revolution had been betrayed and that a liberal democratic program, 
rooted in a return to law, had been subverted by a radical socialist 
whose principal objective was his own power.

full: 
http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Books-X!ArticleDetail-66531,00.html

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org



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