Customer Reviews

Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As a former representative of Castro's Movement in Washington during the insurrection against Batista, I was interested in how Ms Sweig covered a period I was very familiar with. I was surprised and disappointed. The book's many mistakes reflect sloppy research. Grau San Martín was not the Auténtico party candidate in the 1952 elections. It was Carlos Hevia. Those elections were scheduled for June 1952, not November. It was Huber Matos,not Pedro Miret, who brought the shipment of weapons contributed by President Figueres of Costa Rica. Perhaps her most careless mistake is writing that Felipe Pazos was working in the Inter-American Development Bank in the 1940s, when, in fact, the IADB was not established until 1959! The author, tries to convey an image of thorough scholarship, but, probably due to ideological bias, failed to interview anybody mentioned in the book living outside Cuba. Plus, the sources consulted overseas are heavily biased in favor of the Castro regime. In my case, she quotes me at large and attributes to me a political membership in the Ortodoxo Party that never existed. She also writes about my alleged appointment by the Castro sisters as Washington Representative, yet I never met them. If she had bothered to contact me, and she knew where to find me, she would have avoided these inaccuracies. As to her main thrust that Castro was not involved in the great failure of the April 9, 1958 general strike, nobody who worked with Fidel can believe that. Those of us who were in the Movement at the time and are now free to talk know he was deeply involved. He is too much of a micromanager to have allowed such a central event in his effort against Batista to take place without his participation. The entire book is tainted by the biased sources used by the author. -Ernesto Betancourt

This is not an easy book to read. It is as if the author had taken her thesis and expanded it into a book, which is exactly what she did.

The book does seem to affirm the importance of the true martyrs of the Cuban Revolution, those fighting Batista in the cities - the "llano" revolutionaries, which have been somewhat pushed aside in Cuban mythology by the exaggerated myth of the Sierra fighters developed by Che Guevara after the Revolution.

While the book does affirm and establishes the immense contributions of all the other groups and people fighting the Batista dictatorship, it seems to me that it fails to answer the same question that it raises: WHY did Castro and his band diminish their contributions?, why did they splinter their unions? It was of course the threat of potential "other than Castro and his group" heroes sharing in the victory and challenging Castro's caudillismo and eventual brutal dictatorship.

And I wondered what would have happened had Frank Pais not been murdered by Batistianos?

And the answer, of course, is that he would have suffered the same fate later on in Castro's hands as countless other Cuban martyrs, who were not Communist, did.

The book is well researched, and Sweig has obviously had a lot of access to the Cuban regime's doctored archives. It is because of this access that perhaps she is somewhat soft on her evaluation of Castro and his motives. Nonetheless, regardless of this bias and some apparent historical errors here and there, it remains an interesting, if somewhat hard to read, window on a part of the Cuban Revolution that has been diminished by the regime.

A very detailed search for the lost civilian underground of M-26-7, despite Mr. Betancourt's criticism. (She does not state he was a MEMBER of the Ortodoxo Party, and his dispatching to Washington by the Castro sisters is credited to Mario Llerena, who was in a position to know.)

Mario Llerena also recounted, as M-26's public relations chief in exile, how he only met Castro once and spoke with him only one more time, via shortwave radio; proving that the scattered logistics of the Revolution made it physically impossible for Castro to micromanage many important developments, much as he would have liked to.

Without doubt the assassination of Frank Pais and the crushing of the April '58 strike made it easier for the Sierra to consolidate power afterward, but to say that Fidel deliberately sabotaged the urban underground would have him shooting himself in the feet. There was no way he could know that Batista would fold in so rapidly and leave a power vacuum at the top. Castro needed his civilian supporters right up to the end.

Although this book only marginally addresses the post-'59 followup, I'll add my 2 centavos in saying that much of the Communist vs. anti-Communist struggles that year were an ill-cloaked continuation of the Sierra/Llano feud, with Fidel struggling to break free of a liberal tutelage his victorious rebel army no longer needed.

Sweig did a good job. Buy it. Read it. Learn.

The book mainly describes the differences between the llano (that being the middle-class urban based revolutionaries) and the sierra (Castro-led guerillas in the mountains). It tries to assert the importance the the llano, pointing out Frank Pais' role in the movement, the llano dealing with the Cuban exiles in Mexico City and Miami whom were affiliated with the traditional parties, etc... It does that quite well, but I still left off a bit disappointed and I wish there was a 3.5 star rating I could give this book but went with the 4.

I was a little disappointed because the book rarely talked about anything involving the concerns from the guerillas. Fidel's interaction with the Havana-based llano is not properly explained as well. The book also rushed through the fall of Batista, which was one of the bad points, one would think that such an important event would have much more attention. I generally like Sweig's analysis on Latin American situations, she is on the Council of Foreign Relations and is regularly consulted when issues of policy towards Latin American states emerge, so I was under the expectation that this book would be much better.

Sweig draws on many previously confidential sources that historians have long been unable to access to put together a fine piece of work on the power struggles among those active in opposing the Batista dictatorship. Sweig focuses on the rivalries between revolutionary groups, as well as the tension between the 26th of July Movement's rural guerrilla forces (led by Fidel Castro) and the underground urban network that worked to support them. Particularly interesting are the prominent roles played by Frank Pais and Armando Hart in securing monetary and moral support for the small guerrilla band traversing the Sierra Maestra. Sweig's work demystifies the guerrilla movement and examines the complex dynamics that led to the victory of the 26th of July Movement and the course it would take.
This book is probably not for the casual reader of Latin American history. Much of what is detailed can be rightly called esoteric, but, as a whole, the book is useful in understanding the Cuban revolutionary struggle as far more complex than the musings of Che Guevara would suggest. If Guevara's accounts of the episodes of the struggle became the romantic myth of the revolution, let this book be understood as the (sometimes unflattering) reality.

I've been to Cuba and am vehemently anti-communist. I was looking for a book that would give me documented, factual information. I believe I found it. Somewhat difficult to follow at times, it nontheless provided me with insight I have not found elsewhere. While soft on the ruthlessness of Castro, however, it debunked several myths of the so-called "people's uprising" and put things in a bit more perspective.

Julia Sweig is one of the world's leading experts on the politics of the Cuban Revolution and in this groundbreaking book she takes her readers on a voyage of discovery. Using secret documents from Fidel Castro's archives that no other scholars have been able to access, Sweig dismantles old myths about the Cuban revolution and gives readers the best overview of this complex process they are likely to get. It doesn't hurt that unlike so many academics she has a writing style that is clear and accessible. At a time when Latin America is once again seething with political unrest, this book is a timely and substantive contribution to understanding the politics and passions of a vital region.

Julia Sweig, as a young grad student, traveled to Cuba and was given access to documents that no journalists, no academics, and no outsiders had ever been allowed to study. Meanwhile she obtained interviews with many of the most influential members of the 26th of July Movement and other revolutionary groups. With this information, Sweig compiled a book that is no less than revolutionary.

The writing format is well-planned and easy to read, though a certain forehand knowledge of the Cuban Revolution is expected. Much of the history is based around hundreds of letters sent by M267 members within the organtization and to other members of the Civic Resistance. This is not an A-Z history of the Cuban Revolution. True to its name, this is the most profound INSIDE look at the Cuban Revolution that I've seen in my years of studying Cuba.

With a long-time interest in Cuba specifically and in Latin America more generally, I had heard a tremendous buzz about Julia Sweig's new book.

In the week since I bought it, I have not been able to put the book down. I just finished it tonight, savoring every word and every incredible historical detail. I don't know how Sweig got such access to the inner workings of Castro's revolution - but wow, did she ever. And the way she presents all this first-time information is riveting. Sweig has a reputation in foreign affairs as a budding superstar and I see why, from this book. An awe-inspiring work.

The author's research is flawed. The bulk of the information was obtained by the Cuban goverment. The Comunist party was not involved in the struggle against Batista. They actually were against this type of struggle, and in fact in the 40s they were allied with Batista. Only at the end, when it was sure that the Batista goverment was about to fall they ( the Comunist) joined the ranks of the July 26th Movement.