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October 1962: The 'Missile' Crisis as Seen from Cuba

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Diez explains that the missile crisis came not out of the Cold War, but out of the U.S. imperialism's drive to dominate Cuba and other poor countries. For the first time, we have the story not just from the Cuban side, but using the internal documents of the US and Soviet governments, and the experience of the Cubans. This is the full truth about October 1962. The author reveals that the Cuban's main agreement to bring missiles and Soviet troops to Cuba came in the face of an open military and political campaign by Washington to invade Cuba and how Cuban resistance to this invasion threat, both by its military preparedness, the politica determination of its people, and its support around the world was what really stopped the threat of war and invasion. Acosta also explains how from the first, the Fidel and the other Cuban leaders did not want the Soviets to keep the arms and missiles secret and that they believed there would not have been any crisis if they had publically asserted Cuba's right to defend herself. This book is has more than 80 pages of Cuban documents from the crisis including transcripts of the October 30 and 31, 1962, meetings between Fidel Castro and UN Secretary General U Thant. It as 16 pages of end notes, many footnotes, an 8-page glossary, a 6-page bibliography, and 28 pages of photographs, as well as the only existing map that shows the location of Soviet missiles and other military units in Cuba during the crisis.

As the US government prepares for it's invasion of Iraq and the discussions and debates opposing the imperialist aggression increase, this new offering from Pathfinder stands out like a beacon.

The book details events surrounding what is widely known as the Cuba Missile Crisis, when the US administration led by President John. F. Kennedy pushed the world to the edge of nuclear war in an effort to overthrow Cuba's revolutionary government.

A year before the events in question, Cuban armed forces defeated an invasion by a counterrevolutionary force trained and armed to the teeth by Washington at the Bay of Pigs. Realising that direct US military invasion of Cuba was their only viable option, Washington began to lay the groundwork for such an action. In turn, Cuba began preparations to defend the first free territory of Americas, which included accepting a Soviet proposal to deploy missiles on the island.

After a period of negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev agreed to withdraw the missiles without consulting the Cuban leadership. A week after the announcement Washington sent UN secretary general U Thant to Cuba demanding that UN "inspectors" be allowed to "supervise" the withdrawal of the missiles.

"Anyone who tries to inspect Cuba had better arrive in full combat gear!" was Fidel Castro the Cuban Prime Minister's reply.

As Cuban author Tomás Diez Acosta so amply illustrates throughout the book, there was no bluff in Castro's words. It was based in the confidence the Cuban leadership had in the hundreds of thousands Cuban workers and farmers in and out of uniform mobilised and trained - ready to defend their country.

As the book explains, this is the central reason why Washington was forced to back off from its invasion plans.

Killingly funny and deadly serious at the same time. Reading this through the prism of the G7's latest drive to prepare the bombing of Baghdad is electrifying. These pages lay out so simply, so factually, that war was averted because the Cuban people faced down the world's most powerful government. As quotes from US government documents explain, fearing that, if left to its own devices, the Cuban revolution would become too popular to defeat, Washington manufactured hysterical propaganda out of whole cloth about the nuclear threat (sound familiar?) from Cuba. The Cubans, sandwiched between the Soviets' manoeuvrings and the US government's plans, behaved with such aplomb. The transcript of Castro's meeting with the UN secretary-general is priceless -- Castro is so flawlessly polite and so totally unbending in his determination that no UN personnel will inspect anything on Cuban soil and that he will address the Cuban people without delay to explain everything, that the poor diplomat is reduced to quivering about how his wife wants him to take more Sundays off. Read this to see what real politics is all about -- all the "negotiators" had to keep coming back to the one immutable, undeniable, glorious fact that the Cuban people were ready, willing and able to give invaders such a good fight, they didn't dare make the trip.

There is about 50 pages of good information in this book buried in 300 pages of complaints about the US attitude towards the Cuban Revolution.

The book details the Russian missles and nuclear war heads installed in Cuba when the US discovered the missles. Apparently US intelligence did not know that they were there and did not detect the war heads when they were being removed.

The book points out that we were much closer to disaster than we knew.

The book does reaffirm the opinion in "The House of War" that the Soviets did not want the situation to get out of control.

It wasn't the 'reasonableness" of the U.S. and Soviet governments that ended the "Cuban missile crisis" forty years ago.And it wasn't the "greatness" or "iron nerve" of the Kennedys and their imperial henchmen of both capitalist parties. It was the will to resist of the Cuban people, to defend to the death their nationhood and their socialist revolution.It was their political consciousness and confidence in themselves and in THEIR government and revolutionary leadership.In this book, besides the exciting blow by blow account of events that will leave you breathless, is a true picture of the "new human being" that Fidel Castro speaks of and that Che Guevara spoke so often of, in flesh and blood, facing down without a flinch the empire's threat to immolate them, and the world, in their mad desire to destroy the Cuban revolution's shining example of what we, the working people, can do if we decide to act in a revolutionary way and determine our own destiny. The Kennedys and their bipartisan Demo-Republican henchmen and their military thugs , when they realized that the Cuban people's resistance would cost them almost 20,000 casulties in the first TEN DAYS of an invasion, were forced to stand down their forces. The cowardice and duplicity of the Khrushchev Stalinist (NOT communist) bureaucrat leadership is well examined here too.Finally, first hand accounts of the equally unflinching actions of the U.S. Fair Play For Cuba Commitee , told by a leading socialist militant who with her co-fighters later helped lead the anti-Vietnam war movement, rounds the picture out. As Bush and the Democrats prepare the next in their series of wars to defend the Sacred Market System and the Almighty Dollar, fighters for fundamental social change young and old, workers, farmers, students, etc. here in the Belly of the Imperial Beast REQUIRE THIS BOOK ASAP.