Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana [Hardcover]

Ann Louise Bardach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2002

From America’s number one Cuba reporter, PEN award–winning investigative journalist Ann Louise Bardach, comes the big book on Cuba we’ve all been waiting for. An incisive and spirited portrait of the twentieth century’s wiliest political survivor and his fiefdom, Cuba Confidential is the gripping story of the shattered families and warring personalities that lie at the heart of the forty-three-year standoff between Miami and Havana.

Famous to many Americans for her cover stories and media appearances, Ann Louise Bardach has been covering Cuba for a decade. She’s talked to the crooks, spooks and politicians who have made history, and to their hired assassins and confidants. Based on exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, his sister Juanita, his former brother-in-law Rafael Díaz-Balart, the family of Elián González, the friends and family of the legendary American fugitive Robert Vesco, the intrepid terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and the inner circles of Jeb Bush and the late exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Cuba Confidential exposes the hardball take-no-prisoners tactics of the Cuban exile leadership, and its manipulation and exploitation by ten American presidents.

Bardach homes in on Fidel Castro and his cronies, taking us closer than we’ve ever been—and on the militant exiles who have devoted their lives, with CIA connivance, to trying to eliminate him. From Calle Ocho to Juan Miguel González’s kitchen table in Cárdenas, from Guantánamo Bay to Union City to Washington, D.C., Ann Louise Bardach serves up an unforgettable portrait of Cuba and its exiles.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 2000 custody battle between little Elian Gonzalez's father, acting, according to Bardach, as the surrogate for the Cuban government, and his exiled Miami relatives, the surrogate anti-Castro forces, became a relentless media event and international affair. The PEN award-winning investigative journalist uses the Elian story as a starting place to examine the larger issues that have roiled Cuba-U.S. politics for four decades. Relying on interviews with Castro, U.S. and Cuban government officials, relatives from both sides of Elian's family and members of the Cuban-exile community, she explores the sources of American enmity toward Cuba and the blood feuds (for example, the Florida congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart is the nephew of Castro's former wife) that inform anti-Castro sentiments among Cuban exiles. Along the way Bardach finds craven political opportunism (hoping to secure Cuban-exile support, Bush and Gore both backed keeping Elian in the U.S. during the 2000 presidential campaign), political corruption facilitated by the power of the Cuban-exile community in the Miami area, and a shocking tolerance, by post-September 11 standards at least, within the exile community and U.S. government for terrorism directed toward Cuba. Bardach's credibility is sometimes undermined by her failure to critically assess her informants' accusations-innuendoes about Florida governor Jeb Bush's philandering fall into this category-and her tendency to hint at political conspiracies everywhere. All in all, though, Bardach's muckraker is entertaining and disturbing, as it reflects on the power of the dubiously motivated Cuban-exile community. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The quagmire of the shattered Cuban family is the background for PEN Award-winning journalist Bardach's investigation of the tragic parallel universes in the two Cubas: the largest island in the Caribbean and the diverse, multifaceted exile community in Miami. Since 1959, Cuban families have suffered, driven apart by politics, geography, conflicting convictions, secrets, and the anguish of separation. Four decades of seething betrayal, suspicion, and conspiracies culminated in world media attention during the Eli n Gonz lez affair, the single most transforming event of Cuba-U.S. relations since the Bay of Pigs. Drawing on ten years of reporting on Cuba and its exiles, Bardach transitions effectively between profiles of aging patriarch and leader Fidel Castro and Cuban exiles seeking freedom but shunted into silence by hard-liners committed to revenge, retribution, and power. Designed for a general audience, this compact volume offers clear explanations of events, individuals, and dynamics since the Cuban Revolution, telling the story of the Gonz lez family and many others. Bibliographic citations incorporate bilingual print, online resources, and interviews. Highly recommended for purchase by large public and academic libraries and specialized contemporary Latin American studies collections.
Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, LIS Program, Coll. of Education, Univ. of Denver
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504893
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504891
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a refreshing view, October 15, 2002

By 

"kapah" (Coral Gables, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (Hardcover)

Most written materials on either Cuba or the Cuban exiles are biased toward relentless criticisms or else justifications and praise.Not this one. Living in the Miami area, I find that the book has an uncanny portrait of this group impact on anyone who dwells here, whether one cares about Cuba or not. The influence that the Cuban exiles, and their political and local media have in this County is evident for anyone that followed the Elian story, let alone the national electoral events in 2000. This is well described in this book, with immediate character impressions in interviews that make it irresistibly suspenseful, especially in the first few chapters. The juxtaposition of persons of the Elian Gonzalez family in both sides of the exile divide, is presented with candid portraits and fresh information .The personal saga of the Castro family , and of the relatives which are at opposite poles of passion, often hatred, is particularly illuminating, and brings surprising data. The views of the persons left in Cuba give a human dimension that no doubt is a common experience to the over one hundred thousand Cubans that come and go every year, but unavailable to the rest of the US citizens who cannot travel to the Island. This is not a political or socio-economical treatise, and it has a minimum of quantitative information. Political events, especially those at the beginning of the Revolution, are incomplete and critical figures are glossed over. It indirectly describes- I believe impartially- the hardships of life in a one-Party state with few political and economical options, and suggests the adaptations that allow everyday endurance . Overall, it has the freshness and attraction of superb reporting. It cannot be ignored by those who need to understand a community with at times disproportionate influence in American life .

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth Hurts, Huh?, July 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (Hardcover)

Wow! She's got guts. As an earlier reviewer noted, to understand the negative reviews of this book, you have to read the book. I read it in 2 days, although some of the sections on the Cuban exile community are just so disheartening/sad/frusturating that I had to skim over them.
The U.S. public has been fed one version of Cuba by a lazy media and pandering politicians. But more and more people are becoming more and more interested-visiting Cuba and educating themselves....Bardach's book is an excellent contribution!

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to understand the Miami community..., December 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (Hardcover)

A very detailed and carefully written book. And, from my experiences in Miami, accurate. The Elian incident was a watershed period in Miami. Any honest person with any type of interaction with the Miami Cuba community knew how committed most Cubans were to keeping Elian in the United States. The feelings were so extreme that conversations about the boy was difficult; and, with some, it is still difficult. But things are a little different now. Somehow the Elian incident seems to have mitigated some of the more extreme voices in the community, and for that, things are better. This book is an excellent primer for understanding the South Florida community.