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Cuba’s Revolutionary World
On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supporters. Recalling the failed popular uprisings of past decades, Castro assured them that this time “the real Revolution” had arrived. As Jonathan Brown shows in this capacious history of the Cuban Revolution, Castro’s words proved prophetic not only for his countrymen but for Latin America and the wider world.Cuba’s Revolutionary World examines in forensic detail how the turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the twentieth century’s most transformative events. Initially, Castro’s revolution augured well for democratic reform movements gaining traction in Latin America. But what had begun promisingly veered off course as Castro took a heavy hand in efforts to centralize Cuba’s economy and stamp out private enterprise. Embracing the Soviet Union as an ally, Castro and his lieutenant Che Guevara sought to export the socialist revolution abroad through armed insurrection.Castro’s provocations inspired intense opposition. Cuban anticommunists who had fled to Miami found a patron in the CIA, which actively supported their efforts to topple Castro’s regime. The unrest fomented by Cuban-trained leftist guerrillas lent support to Latin America’s military castes, who promised to restore stability. Brazil was the first to succumb to a coup in 1964; a decade later, military juntas governed most Latin American states. Thus did a revolution that had seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America bring about its tragic opposite.
- GenresHistory
585 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2017
4 people are currently reading
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About the author
Jonathan C. Brown
14 books2 followersFrom the University of Texas at Austin Department of History:
Jonathan C. Brown has published four single-authored books: A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (1979); Oil and Revolution in Mexico (1993), Latin America: A Social History of the Colonial Period (2nd ed., 2005), and A Brief History of Argentina (2nd ed., 2009). Two of these books have been translated and published in Latin America. His first book on Argentina, published by Cambridge University Press, won the Bolton Prize. Brown also edited a collection of essays on workers and populism in Latin America and co-edited books on the Mexican oil industry and on Argentine social history.
Jonathan C. Brown has published four single-authored books: A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (1979); Oil and Revolution in Mexico (1993), Latin America: A Social History of the Colonial Period (2nd ed., 2005), and A Brief History of Argentina (2nd ed., 2009). Two of these books have been translated and published in Latin America. His first book on Argentina, published by Cambridge University Press, won the Bolton Prize. Brown also edited a collection of essays on workers and populism in Latin America and co-edited books on the Mexican oil industry and on Argentine social history.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 13, 2022
Pretty much by the numbers… I have nothing else to add
October 19, 2018
A valuable read about the web of international alliances and influences that surrounded the Cuban Revolution. I appreciated that Brown looks at the Revolution's impact on Latin American countries, not just on Cuba's relationship with the U.S., China, or the USSR. This is not a read from which to gather details about the Revolution, but rather to consider how Cuba was (or continues to be) a catalyst for political change.
May 31, 2018
In seeking agency for Latin Americans in determining their own fate, Professor Brown states it was up to them to steer their nations left or right; that outside pressures from Havana or Washington were secondary. This is only partially true, for even a large mass is susceptible to penetration from a small point well-fixed: this is how a blade works. His contention is that the Cuban Revolution destabilized the region and provoked the counter-revolutions and military regimes that endangered and often destroyed political democracy for a generation from the Rio Grande to Punta del Este. But his long argument, however well-presented and fact-laden, is too one-sided; too many questions are left a-begging like roadside Bolivian squatters gazing at passing motorists.
As my headline suggests, which Latin Americans were in position to determine their countries' fates? Nearly all were run by entrenched oligarchs, who tolerated political democracy insofar as it was "safe." Long before Castro - and frequently in Cuba - politicians were removed by force the minute their brainstorms touched vested interests. Political democracy was usually a game, excluding the majority from real participation. To include the rank and file citizenry of Peru, Colombia, Brazil - or even Chile - in the political process would in itself require an act of revolution. That's why Cubans felt no contradiction between the two in the 1950s. If this deceived them, it was due to contradictions in Hispanic political culture from the 19th century onward.
The Cuban Revolution was provocative not chiefly because it exported guerrillas, arms, or social revolution; but because it served as a regional mirror for Latin American nations to confront themselves. Whether of the left or right, few liked what they saw. Their elites, with definite help from Northern Friends, reacted violently as they had in earlier generations; disfranchised masses and intellectual "vanguards" found new inspiration for old dreams. Provocative violence was not even necessary, as witness Allende's demise, unless Castro's state visit is interpreted as such. At its deepest level, the Cuban Revolution was part - and representative - of the generational divide of its time. The same folks who hated hippies and Liberals and Commies and war protesters and minority militants and druggies in the US could, in Latin America, act out their violent proclivities as well as leftists. (The Beatniks had a love affair with the early Revolution; the beards, long hair and scuffiness of their movement was strongly influenced by the "guerilla look.")
But if the counter-revolutionary backlash that destroyed political democracy for years, unleashing coups, torture, and death squads, was the predictable outcome of "Castro's provocations," the reverse is also true. "El Lider Maximo" had no intention of restoring the Cuban political democracy overthrown in 1953; but would he have been the Communist totalitarian tyrant of a half century if *he* had not been provoked by armed contras financed by the CIA? Or the failed invasion of 1961? Or the embargo, the assassination attempts, and all the rest that justified the CDRs, the rule of state security police, and Cuba's closure to its closest neighbors? Maybe so, but it didn't take Castro to overthrow Arbenz in Guatemala in '54. Food for thought not well digested in Brown's analysis.
The Cuban Revolution did embroil Latin America in a civil war within the Cold War, as Brown contends. But was it really necessary or inevitable? In the end, the rest of the Hemisphere learned to co-exist with Red Cuba as it had with Black Haiti: the Hemisphere's pariah regime of the previous century that "provoked" the same kind of regional backlash. Perhaps - if the US had led the way by cooling its own counter-revolutionary passion, instead of forcefully leading counter-revolution in the Western Hemisphere - the rest of the region would have followed suit, and the "inevitable" confrontation not so bitter and bloody.
We'll never know for historical certainty. Professor Brown can therefore marshal his prodigious notes to state that what did happen had to. But human affairs are never one-way roads; and journey often decides destination.
As my headline suggests, which Latin Americans were in position to determine their countries' fates? Nearly all were run by entrenched oligarchs, who tolerated political democracy insofar as it was "safe." Long before Castro - and frequently in Cuba - politicians were removed by force the minute their brainstorms touched vested interests. Political democracy was usually a game, excluding the majority from real participation. To include the rank and file citizenry of Peru, Colombia, Brazil - or even Chile - in the political process would in itself require an act of revolution. That's why Cubans felt no contradiction between the two in the 1950s. If this deceived them, it was due to contradictions in Hispanic political culture from the 19th century onward.
The Cuban Revolution was provocative not chiefly because it exported guerrillas, arms, or social revolution; but because it served as a regional mirror for Latin American nations to confront themselves. Whether of the left or right, few liked what they saw. Their elites, with definite help from Northern Friends, reacted violently as they had in earlier generations; disfranchised masses and intellectual "vanguards" found new inspiration for old dreams. Provocative violence was not even necessary, as witness Allende's demise, unless Castro's state visit is interpreted as such. At its deepest level, the Cuban Revolution was part - and representative - of the generational divide of its time. The same folks who hated hippies and Liberals and Commies and war protesters and minority militants and druggies in the US could, in Latin America, act out their violent proclivities as well as leftists. (The Beatniks had a love affair with the early Revolution; the beards, long hair and scuffiness of their movement was strongly influenced by the "guerilla look.")
But if the counter-revolutionary backlash that destroyed political democracy for years, unleashing coups, torture, and death squads, was the predictable outcome of "Castro's provocations," the reverse is also true. "El Lider Maximo" had no intention of restoring the Cuban political democracy overthrown in 1953; but would he have been the Communist totalitarian tyrant of a half century if *he* had not been provoked by armed contras financed by the CIA? Or the failed invasion of 1961? Or the embargo, the assassination attempts, and all the rest that justified the CDRs, the rule of state security police, and Cuba's closure to its closest neighbors? Maybe so, but it didn't take Castro to overthrow Arbenz in Guatemala in '54. Food for thought not well digested in Brown's analysis.
The Cuban Revolution did embroil Latin America in a civil war within the Cold War, as Brown contends. But was it really necessary or inevitable? In the end, the rest of the Hemisphere learned to co-exist with Red Cuba as it had with Black Haiti: the Hemisphere's pariah regime of the previous century that "provoked" the same kind of regional backlash. Perhaps - if the US had led the way by cooling its own counter-revolutionary passion, instead of forcefully leading counter-revolution in the Western Hemisphere - the rest of the region would have followed suit, and the "inevitable" confrontation not so bitter and bloody.
We'll never know for historical certainty. Professor Brown can therefore marshal his prodigious notes to state that what did happen had to. But human affairs are never one-way roads; and journey often decides destination.
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February 23, 2018303.64098 B8786 2017
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews