Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom

by Hugh Thomas

This first-time paperback edition, now updated, describes and analyzes Cuba's history from the English capture of Havana in 1762 through Spanish colonialism, American imperialism, the Cuban Revolution, and the Missile Crisis to Fidel Castro's defiant but precarious present state.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, World History

1710 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1971

About the author

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, was a British historian and Hispanist.

Thomas was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before taking a BA in 1953 at Queens' College, Cambridge. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. His 1961 book The Spanish Civil War won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1962. A significantly revised and enlarged third edition was published in 1977. Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1,500 pages tracing the history of Cuba from Spanish colonial rule until the Cuban Revolution. Thomas spent 10 years researching the contents of this book.

Thomas was married to the former Vanessa Jebb, daughter of the first Acting United Nations Secretary-General Gladwyn Jebb.

From 1966 to 1975 Thomas was Professor of History at the University of Reading. He was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, as an ally of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He became a life peer as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, of Notting Hill in Greater London in letters patent dated 16 June 1981. He has written pro-European political works, as well as histories. He is also the author of three novels.

Thomas's The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 "begins with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, before Columbus's voyage to the New World, and ends with the last gasp of the slave trade, long since made illegal elsewhere, in Cuba and Brazil, twenty-five years after the American Emancipation Proclamation," according to the summary on the book jacket.

Thomas should not be confused with two other historical writers: W. Hugh Thomas writes about Nazi Germany and Hugh M. Thomas is an American who writes on English history.

Reviews

[Owain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very big. It's also inadequate. I would not recommend this to anyone who wants to gain a general overview of the history of Cuba. It's also biased and spends a lot of time dwelling on the things it's biased against.

The author does a good summary of Cuba's early history and goes into quite a bit of detail about the slave trade. Packing the chapters out with extra info of events that happened outside of Cuba but that still affected important goings on on the island. Like the British attitudes to the slave trade over the years. Which helps the reader gain a more in-depth understanding of, not just the slave trade relative to Cuba but to the international slave trade. Which the book is very good at. The book also gives a good portrayal of Cuban-US relations before the revolution particularly with regards to the potential for full Cuban annexation that existed several times pre-revolution.

The book is most interesting, particularly from my point of view in regards to the history of the Communist Party in Cuba, particularly before the 26th July movement. The author gives a detailed view of the party from the earliest relevant moment and this is interesting to learn how the party operated along more orthodox Marxist-Leninist lines than the 26th July movement and Castro and then how these two forces were melded together in the government of Cuba. Trade union activities are given less of a focus. Also what was really fascinating is that the book mentions a Cuban Communist Party delegate heading to Europe (I forget which country) to attend the general assembly of the World Federation of Democratic Youth. I was a delegate to the same assembly (much more recently though!) in Havana.

I felt some of the minor political details of the 1800's and early 1900's could have been left out in favour of a more overarching historical narrative in the vein of 'the political debate gradually shifted towards x which eventually led to y taking place' rather than tedious page after page of relatively insignificant facts that would be more suited to books with a more defined topic than just a general history of Cuba. Although fair play to Thomas for putting the hours in.

What really irritates me is the author's biased against Castro. He must spend at least the latter quarter of the book focusing on this man he obviously doesn't like. The author also uses some very loaded terms to describe Fidel. Comparing Fidel's speeches to Hitler's is not clever. 'Oh! This guy is a very charismatic speaker, so was Hitler!' is a fucking dumb thing to say considering both people's politics are completely different and have led to vastly different things. This is merely the author's cheap way of trying to dismiss someone who's politics he doesn't like with a flippant sentence rather than engaging in an intellectual critique.

Thomas is also very down on some of the immensely positive things Cuba has done. 'What literacy levels taken from like 30% to near 100%? Nah, let's make that seem not important.' His account of the Cuban Missile Crisis is also brief and fleeting which, you would think, would be an important topic to dwell on considering. Weirdly, nothing is mentioned of the Sino-Soviet split which, considering it happened a decade before the book ends, might be considered worth a mention, especially considering it was a deciding factor in Cuba's direction at the time.

Also the book proper ends in 1970 (the author says that by the time the book reaches 1959 he is treading the line between history and journalism). Although the author adds a tiny little epilogue in an attempt to update it. This doesn't make up for the near half-century since the book was first published. Yes things are in flux, the process of history makes that inevitable. But fifty years? This book's perspective is out of date.

TL;DR: book is ok for some of the facts and figures and the earlier portion but basically get something newer (I found Gott's Cuba: A New History better and more concise).

[Murilo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I only read half of it (I was interested in Castro's antecedents and first months in power, so I only read starting from the fall of Machado in 1933 to october 1959) but this book is amazing. The research put into it is stunning. It is highly detailed, but it is able to leave only relevant information and form a coherent narrative where even if the reader does not remember each one of the details, they all serve a purpose to make us understand the context where the outstanding events happened.

It undertandably puts a lot of emphasis in the revolution, and the chapter "Dawn of the old Cuba" is astounding. I'm yet to find such a detailed panorama of the social situation in another historical time.

That being said, the writing is a little lacking. Sometimes the details are overwhelming and force the writer not to put emphasis in the right places. While he devotes a lot of citations about the political situation (that could be understood just by explaining it), the protests and uprisings are narrated in an even more sterile way. I believe books like "the last two years of Salvador Allende", with all of its faults, did a better job on calibrating the emphasis for the layman reader.

Also, I missed sourcing. Nowhere in the book are the sources mentioned in text. As much as that is not in any way discrediting of his work, it is a good practice in history books and lets the reader check the sources (especialy primary) for themselves.

Nontheless, it is one of the best books to read if you are interested in the details of the history of Cuba, and wish to understand where the revolution came from and what could've been different.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What other country in the world has a province named Matanzas (massacres?"---Guillermo Cabrera Infante, A VIEW OF DAWN IN THE TROPICS
"Cuba was the Viet Nam of the Nineteenth century".---Fidel Castro

Yes, and what other country has played a pivotal role in the histories of the United States, Spain and Great Britain? Perhaps it was inevitable and appropriate that a British historian should have written the best history of Cuba in any language. The iconoclastic Hugh Thomas, before Thatcher granted him a peerage and he became Lord Thomas, published this mammoth yet eminently readable account of the tragedy of Cuban history by beginning not with Columbus and 1492 but the English occupation of Havana in 1762, which launched the first large-scale sugar plantations in Cuba before the island was traded back to Spain. (Stupidest idea in geopolitics until Russia sold Alaska to the U.S.) After that came waves of slaves with their idioms, religions and dances, and the rise of the Creoles, Cuban-born plantation owners who naturally wanted to trade the Spanish empire for the American, without losing their slaves in the process. What followed was war, slave rebellions, U.S. invasion in 1898 (to be repeated ad infinitum in the next century). This cycle would not be broken until Fidel Castro convinced his compatriots that only an anti-U.S. revolution and the abolition of capitalism went hand-in-hand. All of this is told by Thomas with sharp observation and even irony:"From who else but Castro would Jean-Paul Sartre have accepted the line,"If someone asked me for the moon it is because they needed it?"

An important note on the publishing history is in order: a hardback book on the history of Cuba stretching over 1,000 pages naturally fell out-of-print the moment it was published. (My own copy is a Spanish translation of the original English!) In the late Seventies an abridged paperback came out, THE CUBAN REVOLUTION, covering only the years 1959-1969. (Avoid it at all costs; Cuban history can't be abridged.) Finally, in 1998 a full paper back English edition came out, with a new forward by Lord Thomas: "My history, THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR was banned by Franco and CUBA: THE PURSUIT OF FREEDOM by Castro. " We should all be so lucky in book-banning.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugh Thomas's Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (first published in 1971, intermittently updated over the years) is a massive look at the island's tumultuous history, from the British occupation of Havana in 1762 through the early years of Castro's regime. When I say massive, I mean the first edition's over 1,600 pages. It's to Thomas's credit that, for all the painstaking depth he provides, the book's never boring. He charts Cuba's evolution under Spanish rule from a complacent slave colony to an island seething with tension; the nationalist movements of the late 19th Century, culminating in the Spanish-American War and the island's nominal independence under American economic suzerainty; the succession of impotent democrats and authoritarian goons in the 20th Century; the constant interference of outside powers, and particularly the United States, in its affairs; the Batista Regime and, of course, Castro's rise to power. If nothing else, it's an interesting case study of how thoroughly imperialism and external meddling can warp a society struggling to forge its own identity. After centuries of abuse and trampling, even a despot like Castro (whom Thomas doesn't seem to particularly like) can seem appealing if he says and does the right things. To Thomas's credit, the book's not a diatribe but a clear-eyed analysis allowing facts, figures and events to tell their own damning tale.

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Más bien una visión de cómo España, Estados Unidos y la URSS han influido en la historia cubana que la historia cubana propiamente tal. De todos modos, un buen libro que a pesar del tamaño no aburre en su relato.

[Gus V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive History of Cuba from 1762 to 1971. Although it has minor inaccuracies and a few typos, Thomas narrative is both entertaining and informative and easy to read despite the 1700+ pages. It covers the last 100+ years of the Spanish colonial period, the several wars for independence, and the days of the early Republic, with nearly the second half of the book covering the periods of the Batista and Castro dictatorships. Impressive is Thomas' coverage of the early days of the Cuban Revolution (1959-60): A detailed description of how the naïve and trusting provisional President Urrutia and his cabinet agreed to Castro's proposal for them to rule by decree, subtly dismantling rights in the 1940 constitution, with the purpose of prosecuting Batistianos; and we are also told how Castro deceived his liberal and moderate allies in the struggle against Batista and was able to form an alliance with the Communists starting in early 1959, consolidating his power as defense minister and the implementer of the agrarian reform, eventually having a strong enough power base by mid-1960 when he cancelled elections, suppressed freedom of the press, and continued a campaign of property confiscation. Thomas will sometimes go into detailed narration of events, such as the agrarian reform, and gives a brief description of the initial implementation of Castro's police state by the G2 (Cuba's undercover police equivalent of the KGB) and the neighborhood watch committees. Events in 1959-60, such as the cancellation of elections and the confiscation of private property, set up confrontations with the U.S., which resulted in the Bays of Pigs in 1961 and the Missile Crises in 1962. As a matter of fact, this book by Thomas 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 about Fidel Castro Castro and the Cuban Revolution.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s amazing how little Americans know about neighboring countries. Actually it’s amazing how little Americans know about America, but that’s another matter. Miami is closer to Havana than it is to Orlando or Atlanta and yet a lot of people couldn’t name the capital of Cuba if you asked them. What some people do know abut Cuba doesn’t extend much farther beyond cigars, salsa, and communism. Obviously there is so much more and a lot of Cuban history has been directly influenced by American politics and business. Hugh Thomas’s Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom gives an epic rundown of Cuban history that is far from complete. Yet with about 1.500 pages, you can’t fault the author for leaving a few things out.

This history book, which weighs weighs about as much as an iron dumbbell, doesn’t start with the Taino or Arawak Indians. It doesn’t even start with the arrival of Columbus. It starts with the British invasion of Havana led by Lord Albemarle. This might be a strange starting point considering how minor an event it is in Cuban history and all that came after, but as stated before, a book of this length wouldn’t benefit from any extra information. In any case, the 18th century was when Cuba became an island of central importance to colonial businessmen in the Caribbean. The tropical jungle island had a perfect climate for sugarcane and tobacco farming and its location made it ideal as a hub for distribution and transport of cargo. This led to an influx of Spanish criollos and, regrettably, a thriving trade of slaves brought over from West Africa and indentured servants from China.

The most interesting parts of these early chapters include descriptions of the social lives of Cuba’s inhabitants. It’s especially interesting to learn about how the plantation and factory owners allowed the slave laborers to practice their traditional religions, something that helped them to cope with slavery and later catalyzed the thriving of African diaspora religions in the Caribbean. It’s also interesting that slaves were allowed to buy their own freedom and a class of African craftsmen grew in Havana as a result.

Yet as agriculture and industry in Cuba grew, more Africans were brought in from Jamaica and Haiti, making them the dominant demographic of the colony. The Spanish criollos grew uneasy because small slave rebellions broke out, setting off a long string of political violence and rebellions that culminated in the Cuban Revolution of 1958. On the other side of that was a small group of Spanish businessmen who wanted Cuba to be annexed by the United States. At this time, Cuba was owned and politically dominated by the Spanish crown who paid little attention to the distant island. Simultaneously, the economy and industry were largely influenced, if not outright controlled, by the U.S.

The annexation movement may have been obscure and ineffective, but it did inspire a nationalist movement and an eventual War of Independence. During this time in the 19th century, the journalist and poet Jose Marti emerged as the voice of Cuban independence. Rebellions were led from the eastern province of Oriente by the mulatto captain Antonio Maceo as well. Both of these men are considered to be Cuba’s first national heroes. Adding to the turbulence of the 1800s were also the boom and bust cycles of sugar production and their reliance on the fickle international market. Sugarcane was the dominant crop of Cuba’s agriculture and the island’s economy relied heavily on the sugar market, something that could be easily offset by the farming of sugar beets in Europe and the United States where transport costs were lower and import tariffs non-existent if grown locally.

By the end of the 19th century, the Spanish-American War had broken out. As the Spanish Empire grew weaker and they began to lose control over their overseas territories, the U.S. used the explosion of the battleship Maine, anchored off the coast of the Florida Keys, as an excuse to “liberate” the remaining colonies of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. For the Cubans, this meant the much desired nationhood they craved, but it also meant a subservient position to the United States. The Platt Amendment was attached to the first Constitution of Cuba, giving the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs under certain circumstances. This remained a sore point in the minds of nationalists who wanted complete independence. But Thomas argues that some guidance was necessary for the fledgling nation. Early Cuban politicians lacked political will and expertise, and the economy was largely dependent on businesses owned by Americans. The American government was paternalistic and patronizing to Cuban politicos and this caused friction with the Cuban populace, something that Americans were too blind and arrogant to see.

Eventually, a democracy emerged on the island nation, but it was fraught with difficulties and instability from the beginning. The term “gangsterismo” was coined to describe the Cuban political style. After the election of Fulgencio Batista to his first term of office, corruption and violence took hold of the government. The lines between politics, organized crime, and guerilla warfare became blurred as different factions emerged out of the underground to fight for power. These political gangs had less to do with ideology than they did with violence, graft, and loyalty, a factor that made Havana volatile and sporadically dangerous until the middle of the 20th century. After a string of corrupt and ineffective presidents who were constantly under threat of assassination, Batista returned to power as a dictator; at first he was welcomed as a savior, but the Cubans quickly turned against him when they saw he was all about business as usual.

Enter Fidel Castro.

The future Cuban dictator was raised by a wealthy family of sugarcane farmers. After passing the bar exam, the young intellectual worked for a law firm of no importance before assembling a small army and launching a raid against the Moncada military barracks. After a stint in prison, Castro went to Mexico and met up with his right hand man Che Guevara. The two of them trained a small band of guerillas, sailed a decrepit boat through a storm to Oriente province in Cuba, and launched a revolution that caught on in the rural areas and mountains of the island nation. It is important to note that Fidel Castro was never an ideologue. He was an adventurer and a natural born leader with outsize charisma. This goes a long way in understanding what the Cuban Revolution of 1958 was all about. To the surprise of many, the revolution quickly gained momentum and soon the CIA and American media were lending some reluctant support to his cause. The CIA, seeing Batista as a weak leader, convinced him to step down and allow Castro to take over the country. Castro’s success did not come solely from his charisma; his revolutionary message about Cuban independence was sufficiently vague enough to appeal to varied groups of people, many of which had opposing points of view. One thing they all had in common was the weariness of political instability and economic backwardness, something they ironically coped with by nurturing a strong and passionate culture.

After the rise of Castro, Hugh Thomas revisits the state of Cuban society around the time of the Revolution. It’s an interesting contrast with the section at the beginning of the book that addresses the same issues as they stood in at the turn of the 19th century. The book ends with America’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also ends with an analysis of Cuban politics and society after the Revolution. Thomas is certainly biased against Castro although he does a fair job of presenting nuanced views of the country in the 1960s. Living standards rose for some while going down for others. Massive amounts of refugees left to settle in the United States. Castro, with no political experience or ideology, grasped on to communism and made everything up as he went along. He appointed Che Guevara to manage Cuba’s industry and economy, but Guevara made a mess out of that due to his similar lack of experience in the real world. Thomas accuses Guevara of being a quasi-fascist due to his enthusiasm for political violence and warfare over the less exciting nuts and bolts of economic policy. Fidel Castro essentially turned Cuba into a personality cult.

Due to its length, this book is not for readers looking for a quick and easy understanding of Cuban history. It starts out strong with its sociological history of the colony in the 1700s. The author clearly identifies and outlines the key events, rebellions, wars, and political movements of the subsequent century. His analysis of the sugar and tobacco industries is top notch in its detail even if it is a bit dry. But some of the politics get bogged down in excessive detail. There are a lot of obscure arguments made by obscure men with obscure intentions over obscure issues. There are times when the reader has to keep a stiff upper lip while plowing through all the muck. The same can be said for some passages of the democratic and gangsterismo era of the 20th century that led up to the Revolution. The peaks of early and mid Cuban history are fascinating enough to keep the narrative going though. And Fidel Castro’s Revolution is one of the most exciting political adventure stories I know of. As a reader, Thomas makes it easy to see how people could get caught up in all the intrigue. I have read better accounts of the Cuban Revolution though.

The worst part of this book is the way Thomas insists on listing the names of every single person who contributed to the Revolution so that you get long lists of people like Jose Garcia Ecehvarria Gonzales y Fuentes de las Casas. I’m not saying this to make fun of Spanish names. I’m just saying that these lists can be off-putting to even the most dedicated of readers especially because most of these people never reappear in the narrative after being mentioned once. It’s like reading the genealogies in the Old Testament. It’s the kind of information that should be included in an appendix.

The chapters on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis are hasty and brief; there are far better accounts written in more recently authored books. The chapters on post-Revolutionary Cuba are interesting, but since this book was published in 1972, it is obvious that the author did not have the sufficient historical distance to give a well-rounded perspective. It would be interesting to read accounts of life inside Cuba from the time of the Revolution up to the present.

By the end a pattern emerges. From early slave rebellions to independence movements and liberation from the domination of the United States, Cuban history is marked by a desire for freedom. Ironically, the price they paid for national independence was a dictatorship that restricted civil liberties and political opposition while being somewhat under the wing of the Soviet Union and still economically tied to the turbulent international sugar market. The subtitle of this book is appropriate as it gives form to the chaos of Cuban history. Fortunately, Thomas does not over-emphasize this thesis since doing so would have contained the narrative in an unnecessarily narrow theory of interpretation. Perhaps Cuba’s shortcomings in the pursuit of freedom are overridden in the cultural expressions of their music, dance, and easy going lifestyle as well as the thriving of the African diaspora religious societies known as Abakua, Palo Monte, and Santeria or Lukumi. When political oppression is all-pervasive, passions for freedom can be expressed in other creative ways.

After finishing Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas, it is clear that the author is anal retentive in attention to detail, yet it is written without losing sight of the bigger issues guiding the study of Cuban history. At times, the writing is dense, but when you break through to the more interesting parts, it becomes clear that this is a monumental achievement both for the author and the reader who has enough patience to see it through to the end.

[Marrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book gives a thorough history of Cuba. It takes a while to read and digest all of the information. It's more for studying Cuba than it is for pleasure reading, but its a very satisfying read. Best read in combination with the Motorcycle Diaries and Che: A Revolutionary Life.

[Matias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una obra quizá demasiado ambiciosa en cuanto al periodo de la historia que abarca, 1762 a 1962 y con algunos epílogos que se refieren a los años 70 y los años 90.
En general el autor trata de ser imparcial, pero aún así tiene algunos rasgos típicos de la historiografía anglo-sajona cuando se refiere al mundo hispano. El principal de ellos es la utilización de la corrupción para explicar la ineficiencia de las sociedades o bien españolas o bien latinas. En parte es así pero la realidad es que corrupción ha habido en todas las sociedades humanas y aún así han evolucionado y tenido éxito durante periodos largos de la historia. En realidad no es menos corrupta la sociedad del s.XIX estadounidense que la española del mismo período. El autor pasa de puntillas sobre lo que hoy llamaríamos 'capitalismo de amiguetes' que imperaba en la primera mitad del s.XX en USA sobre todo respecto a su política exterior y más concretamente en el favorecimiento de los intereses de un puñado de empresas estadounidenses en toda América latina. Esto también es corrupción y de hecho igual de dañina, o más, que un gobernador ingresando en su cuenta particular los impuestos recaudados en un país.

Referente a la actitud de EEUU durante el s.XIX y principios del s.XX respecto a Cuba, creo que el autor da en el clavo comentando que no quería ser colonialista al estilo inglés pero tampoco quería ser realmente respetuoso con la soberanía de lo que de hecho eran sus colonias. De esta manera, ni hacía una cosa ni otra, se quedaba corto o se pasaba. El resultado es que el resto de América ha entrado en el s.XXI con grandes problemas que muchas veces se tratan de justificar por ser sociedades latinas, cuando el causante de dichos problemas es la cercanía de la principal potencia.

Me he leído la obra en inglés pues me interesaba practicar un poco con un tipo de prosa que no fuera demasiado poética y en este sentido creo que el autor escribe razonablemente bien aunque a veces utiliza frases demasiado largas.

En el tema de Castro también creo que el autor es demasiado indulgente, aunque lo critica severamente y hace un retrato de él que si se lee entre líneas, es desastroso. Creo que le ha faltado insistir en el tema psicológico, aunque insinúa el excesivo egocentrismo. Varias veces menciona el 'ajedrez internacional' como una de las obsesiones de Castro y lo que en el fondo le permitió perpetuarse en el poder a pesar de su absoluta incompetencia para mejorar la vida de su pueblo. En este sentido sería interesante hacer un paralelismo entre Franco y Castro. Ambos aprovecharon la guerra fría para gobernar largos años y morir en la cama y en el poder.

[Connor Milstead · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex and deep dive into Cuba's history (and struggle) for freedom. It's not at simple as we've always thought, Mr. Thomas opens up this labrynth of turns the beautiful country had to face. Ultimately turning into her original form centuries later. A very, very dense read. However, a rewarding one.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very boring and poorly structured. It is shamefully easy to lose salient points in a book like this.

[Felipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buena novela y detalla la historia de Cuba

[Roger Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was a major driver for me to visit Cuba

[Joseph Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has become fairly difficult to find literature on Cuban history that isn't tainted with the stains of political goals. This is a remarkable exception.

The unitary Cuban regime is often an unreliable narrator as it paints Cuban history as a justification for the historical culmination or "final form" that was the 1959 revolution and the 6+ decades proceeding it it. That which paints the current state of affairs negatively is de-emphasized or excluded all together.

The anti-regime writers, often based in the US, tend to suffer from the opposite problem. There is a tendency to whitewash or diminish the real political, sociological, and economic realities of Cuba at the time. Yes Cuba was relatively wealthy, yes there were real economic disparities, yes there was a dictatorship, yes the post-1940 democracy was flawed and fragile.

Thomas's book therefore offers a rare authoritative and comprehensive account of Cuban history that stands above the political framings. This is absolutely essential reading if one wants to truly understand the Cuban historical context. It is only through these lenses that we can understand Cuban-American relations and the internal machinations of the Cuban government today even as its undergone historically significant changes in the last 10 years. Highly recommend.

[Dember Fernández · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo compré justo antes de mi viaje a Cuba. Quería empaparme de la historia de Cuba, tratar de comprender a ese pueblo encapsulado en el tiempo y de la magnánima figura de Castro. Si bien es la historia a grandes rasgos quedé perplejo ante ella. Existe una Cuba antes de Castro y una Cuba después de Castro. En la primera, Cuba siempre dependió o se sometió a países extranjeros como España o USA. En la segunda Cuba es independiente aunque aún arrastró su característica de dependencia ahora por la URSS. En síntesis es un buen libro que me ayudó a comprender la historia de esta revolucionaria isla.

[Eduardo Garcia-Gaspar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia de Cuba a partir de 1762, el año de la invasión inglesa, hasta después del colapso de la URSS. Fascinante, especialmente los años últimos de Batista y los primeros de Castro. Muy recomendable.

[Alfredo González · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive historical account of the people of Cuba, whose whole philosophy of life is revolution, and mostly for the sake of it.
VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!!!!!