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Cuba 1952-1959: The True Story of Castro's Rise to Power

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Castro as the personification of Soviet Intrusion into Cuba

Marquez-Sterling, Manuel 2009 Cuba 1952-1959: The True Story of Castro's Rise to Power. Kleiopatria Digital Press ISBN-10: 0615318568 ISBN-13: 978-0615318561

This book is a magnificent effort, and a very important one. While I might quibble with the author on some details such about who seemed to be the most senior Soviet agent in charge of Cuban subversion, or the importance of the Battle of Guisa (only mentioned in passing in Time Line section (page 229, 30th of November 1958, Rebels dominate Oriente) where IED (improvised explosive devices) were employed extremely effectively by the Castro forces. However, such quibbles do not detract from this work.

What is abundantly made clear that there was an immense and long standing effort on the part of the Soviets to find, train and deploy Cuban nationals, including Castro, to further their cause. Apparently the Soviets spared no effort to this end; they even burned up their other agents and agents of influence. In this regard perhaps the most telling of all material (and there is a great deal of important information here) is on page 145 when they expend perhaps their most valuable agent of influence Herbert Matthews, merely to carry a message from Castro to author's father.

The book also makes a point of Castro's carefully guided duplicity, at a time when too many books on Castro harp misguidedly on Castro's "mistreatment" by U.S. Officials, he had already put into action his continuing plans (now apparently under the overt direction of Hugo Chavez, but in reality merely a continuation of Soviet plans by former KGB agent and now leader of a reduced Russia). One only has to read the material on page 183 to see that Castro even when he while visiting the U.S. was already deeply involved in subversion of Latin America. Other sources concur, for instance in Meredith Daneman's book "Margot Fonteyn: A Life" it is clear that Castro was supporting a failed invasion of Panama (see also my 2007 Amazon customer review of this volume "The dancer as a spy?'...One of the mysteries of Margot Fonteyn is her association and almost certain minor activities as an agent.'"

The author pointeds out that the Soviet subversion of Cuba started with the arrival and actions of Fabio Grobart, (a disciple of "Iron" Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet repression apparatus not in text). It is my personal opinion that Grobart was instrumental in destroying the strength of the conservative Independence fighters and unbalancing for ever the political scene in Cuba. An especially pertinent activity was directing the infiltration and ultimate cooption of the powerfully armed Gibara expedition against Dictator Machado in a 1931 way that brings to mind the misdirection of the "Bay of Pigs" invasion.

Fidel Castro's contacts apparently started via G.W. Bashirov (pages xxiv-xxv), and continued support of the clandestine Soviet apparatus. This included somehow using the communist sleeper cells (especially in the Sierra Maestra, where they had been placed long before by Grobart) at the future communist dictator's command (not mentioned directly in text).

Thus in the view of the author (with which I agree) Castro's triumph and long rule were part and parcel of substantial and long term operations by Soviet Intelligence. It is ironic that once in power, Castro's mismanagement forced the Soviets to spend tremendous amounts of money, and that in turn promoted the collapse of that "Evil Empire." However today, one observes a resurgence of that ruthless command, helped in great part by the aid of Western Hemisphere subversive organizations that Castro engendered all over the Americas from his base in Cuba.

I read this book while taking a short seminar on Cuba, and it was very useful. It was good to be exposed to this "other" history of the Cuban Revolution, and understand that it wasn't just a Batista vs. Castro story. Very important to me, the book did a real service of reminding the reader that beneath major events are always some set of actors, among whom interacting predilections, decisions and actions combine to yield the observable events. The observable events always seem to take on the character of a simple, easily remembered story, which obscures what actually happened. So it was very interesting to read the accounts of the involvement of the different characters. And the book was very nicely produced, too; good layout, look & feel.

My brief assessment of History professor Manuel Marquez-Sterling's book (Cuba 1952-1959: The True Story of Castro's Rise to Power) is that his work has unequaled comprehensive details of politics, diplomacy, and media coverage of Cuba during the 1950's, just before Castro's rise to absolute power in 1959. Among the significant events is Batista's Coup overthrowing fifty years of Cuban democracy in 1952, efforts by the opposition to Batista- by both the violent revolutionaries and the peaceful constitutionalists, the media's erroneous and very favorable portrayal of Castro as a heroic pro-democracy figure (particularly New York Times Herbert Mathews and CBS reporter Robert Taber), the U.S. State Department backing of Castro and the subsequent arms embargo against the Batista dictatorship, events leading to the November 58 elections that Batista fraudulently stole from the author's father, and Castro's takeover in January of 1959 after Batista's chaotic departure. My only negative critique is that the author is a bit too soft on Batista and a bit too harsh on the moderate and liberal revolutionary political leaders that supported the armed struggle against Batista. However, the book is the author's labor of love, for both Cuba and a father that got cheated from been President in November of 1958. As a matter of fact, this book by Marquez-Sterling is recommended in my own book about Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant (available from Blue Note Books) as one of the best describing political events in Cuba before the 1959 Revolution.

Professor Emeritus Manuel Marquez Sterling has lifted the veil that has obscured a clear understanding of what really took place in Cuba leading up to Castro's coup.

"Cuba" is a clearly argued, well documented and very readable history of the 7 years during which too many in Cuba and the US misread Castro's revolution.

A must read for anyone who wants to know the truth about what happened and why.

I've just finished this extremely engrossing book and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the sad TRUTH about the tragedy of Fidel Castro's coming to power. The book was written by Manuel Marquez-Sterling, and no one knows, better than he does, the facts concerning this very turbulent time. He explains quite clearly, the madness that took over common sense and allowed this brutal dictator to take over this beautiful, proud country. Anyone who wonders how something like this, was allowed to happen, will have their answers in this marvelous book !

Very well written by Professor Manuel Marquez Sterling
Amazing historical facts of how Castro took over Cuba
and became a Comunist Dictator.
M. Hidalgo
Miami, FL

CUBA 1952-1959 by Manuel Márquez-Sterling: straight-arrow to reality. "The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Based only on pure proved facts, not hearsay, Objectively written without taking sides, and extremely well documented.

This is a good reminder of how fragile is democracy. The silent majority of reasonable people have to take part in the process.

Speaking frankly, I was disappointed. Despite this book's title it looks rather like hagiography of Carlos Marquez-Sterling based on some demonstrably misleading assumptions than impartial research. Thus, it's highly dubious that the national crisis of such magnitude could be caused solely by political factors, as the author repeatedly claims. Another conceptual weakness is false dichotomy between Constitutionalist/Electoralist and Revolutionary wings of the anti-Batista opposition movement. In fact, a vast majority of the revolutionaries were the constitutionalists who fought Batista to restore the 1940 Constitution in its full glory. There are a lot of them in Miami Cuban community till this day, for example. The author's belief in possibility of "compromise" aimed to save the Old Republic between the opposition forces and the man who staged the coup in 1952 and rigged elections in 1954 and 1958 looks just misplaced. All the more so that he counts on Batista's well publicized but never realized promises to held free and fair elections as the proof of the latter's willingness to compromise. And even those promises hardly could be made without constant pressure from more radical opposition groups. So we can say that in any meaningful sense the Old Republic was actually dead since 1952. As of Castro's role, he has a lot of his own crimes and sins to make him solely responsible for Batista's electoral machinations. Moreover, the author's notion about early and massive Communist infiltration in 26th of July Movement bordering conspiracy theory is based on misconstruing some murky accounts related to the KGB spy net. A broader set of facts gives us a fairly clear picture of Castro as useful and willing Communist fellow traveller in 1950s. In practice, the Cuban Communists' strategy was quite different from Castro's one until the latest stage of the rebellion. By the way it's fairly strange to hear from the man who professes his faith in strictly non-violent action that "government repression and brutality was narrowly limited to a number of revolutionary groups" as if such targeted terror isn't a feature of majority of dictatorial regimes. This book gives some little known information about economic and social development of pre-Castro Cuba and some useful insights into activities of the Electoralist wing of the anti-Batista opposition. But the above mentioned misconceptions coupled with the author's general disinclination to mention precise figures, names, facts and sources make it a good deal weaker than the books by Hugh Thomas, Carlos Alberto Montaner or Frank Argote-Freyre.

This is a frustrating book. Written as an anti-Castro polemic, with, therefore, a highly subjective style with no hint of balance, there are too many occasions when allegations, which may well be correct, are unsupported by examples and/or references. There are some very valuable insights, but one begins to question them with such an unacademic work, surprising from a univesity professor. The author's father was a prominent opponent of Castro and it shows. I challenge Marquez-Sterling to revise the text, so that there are referenced examples of, for instance, Castro's extortion rackets and Batista's exaggerated claims of success in the rebel war. Then this would be a much better book.