Customer Reviews

The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy

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Perez-Stable traces magnificantly the origins and failures of the Cuban revolution to underlying currents in Cuban history. This multifaceted work places an emphasis on the impact of a monocultural sugar economy, and the Imperialist legacy of the United States in the formation of a revolutionary atmosphere in Cuba. She incorporates numerous statistics and raw data to justify her claims. Though impeccably researched, the "Cuban Revolution" is at times difficult to read. The sheer thoroughness of the work at certain points overwhelms the reader, and clouds the lucidity of the work. Nevertheless, the excellent research outshines its periodic unintelligibility, especially in its institutional analysis of Castro's regime's. The book offers a new insight into the functions and paralysis of Cuban political institutions under Castro. In addition, the "Cuban Revolution" makes an important contribution to understanding of womens' role in Castro's consolidation of power. This is a must read for any serious student of Cuban History or Latin American Studies.

This book provides an excellent background to social dynamics in Cuba before, during and after the Cuban Revolution, and does a good job analyzing its causes and consequences. It is indeed a must for anyone trying to understand the Revolution. The right wing exile community in Florida will not like this book because it is one of the few that consciously tries to be objective, but that should not dissuade other readers from purchasing this book. It is a bit too crammed with charts and statistics in places, which makes it cumbersome, but those sections are skimmable. I will certainly use it in my undergraduate classes.

Pérez Stable has done a masterful job. My students like the book for its fairness and balance.Her historical chapters present a more nunaced view of prerevolutionary Cuba than is usually the case. I recommend it for class adoption.

Rarely does one find a book concerning the Cuban Revolution in which the author at least makes an effort to keep there political views out of the analysis. Marifeli Perez-Stable is no exception, as her book will either be praised by the left, or critizied by the right. In writing such a biased account her credibility is jepordized; not only because anyone with half a brain will realize this, but anyone with limited study in regards to the revolution see's many flaws. Amongst the most prevelant is the complete neglect of Cuba's "Counterculture" and the booming tobacco industry in Cuba throughout the 50's (she harbors on sugar as if every Cuban was either a plantation owner or slave). Hopefully Cuban books in the future will steer clear of political biases and present the facts, and only the facts.

Perez-Stable is biased in blaming only the United States and the Cuban-American community for supporting the embargo. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The main reason the embargo continues is not because of US unreasonable demands toward Cuba, or the failure of American presidents to understand the issues at hand. It persists because the last thing the Castro brothers want is to open the eyes of an enslaved people to the outside world, especially to the fruits of capitalism and the American free enterprise system.

In addition, it is very convenient for tyrants to blame a common enemy for their nation's miseries while they continue to pilfer it, and the United States is the perfect escape-goat.

Ask yourself this question: Why is the lifting of the US embargo so vital to Cuba's communist interests when they can do business with the rest of the planet, more so when distance is unimportant and our world is getting smaller?

I suggest the author reads a 2007 Forbes Magazine article in which old Fidel comes out as one of the wealthiest heads of state second to Queen Elizabeth II with a billion dollars in foreign investments.

To the common sense reader who doesn't believe in the infalible wisdom of intellectuals: The Cuba of the last fifty years is nothing but an alligator-shaped island/farm owned and managed by the Castro brothers for their own enrichment. Communism--already an accepted failure--is just their excuse to continue ripping the country off.

Open your eyes, for heaven's sake, and stop calling Castro's unscrupulous betrayal, a revolution.

Andrew J. Rodriguez
Award winning author: "Adios, Havana," a Memoir.

Although the book does contain truthful and revelant empirical raw data, the author severely slants the truth (and even sometimes makes half-truths to the point of incorrectly naming Presidents) to the point of satisfying her own argument. Although Castro may very much enjoy her deptiction of the sustained need for socialism, my exiled family as well as my Cuban colleagues find the book disheartening as it weaves a fairytale for Castro as the glorious Savior of the Republic. The fact is that although the Republic did need change, it needed sustained political evolution, not revoltuion as found in the Castro regime. As my family is and comes from a family of Cuban politicians trying to advocate such change, her book is a tragic misinterpretation of those great ideals the infant Republic was trying to accomplish. If you are interested in knowing more about what actually occurred, not some socialist propaganda, watch Andy Garcia's movie The Lost City.

Despite attempts to keep an open mind, I grew increasingly annoyed at the omissions, exaggerations and half-truths passed off as researched facts in this book. The author calls Cuba - a country under a dictator which holds no elections - a "democracy" and extols the virtues of the revolution without ever presenting the views and the injustices perpetrated against those who opposed the revolution. It is a shame that a work which could have been an objective scholarly book instead is little better than a propaganda pamphlet.