Before Che

by Peter M. Rutkoff

Set in early 1950s Cuba, this novel explores the earliest days of what became the M-26-7 movement -- the Cuban Revolution. Ultimately, the socialist regime initiated by Fidel Castro governed Cuba from 1959 to 2008 and remains in power to this day. This novel evokes the earliest days of revolutionary struggle before Che’s arrival in 1955. Author Peter Rutkoff has taught American Studies, African American History, African American Migration, and Baseball in American Culture at Kenyon College since 1971.

286 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2019

Reviews

[Brian Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work of historical fiction begins with a note from a journalist to New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger in December, 1957, reporting first-hand on the then little-known 26th July Movement, the band of rebels that would bring Fidel Castro to power in Cuba in 1959. The reporter is keen to bring to Sulzberger’s attention the deeper history of the rebels, which Che Guevara eventually transformed into a revolutionary army. The reporter’s account becomes this book, titled Before Che, which documents ties between fighters who first supported the Loyalist cause in Spain in 1936-37 and later joined the first, failed coup attempt in Cuba in 1953.

Kenyon College American Studies Professor Peter Rutkoff ‘s work centers on four fighters and a nurse who join the Loyalists in opposition to Nationalist forces led by Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Despite early successes, the Loyalist efforts to defend Madrid fail, and the surviving members of the International Brigades (supported by Soviet Union) of which they were part, scatter.

Seventeen years later, four of the former International Brigade members who had met during the conflict in Spain-- an African-American, a Cuban, a Cypriot, and a Basque -- gather in the mountains of eastern Cuba to train a motley group of Cuban leftists preparing to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista. Having Rutkoff’s account of their brutal defeat, the eventual success of the Cuban revolution seems all the more striking. Rutkoff brings to light the connections between the conflicts in Spain and Cuba – and the close ties between some of their fighters. It also penetrates the political and personal motivations of this disparate group of men and women in making such immense sacrifices, not once, but twice.

-Brian E. Miller