Books on the Cuban Revolution?

[Bardo]

I'm looking for a good non-critical book on the history and details of the Cuban revolution.

Any suggestions?

[x359594]

Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara, The Cuban Story by Herbert L. Matthews, Insurrection and Revolution: Armed Struggle in Cuba by Gladys Garcia-Perez.

[Fulanito de Tal]

Can you read spanish? I have a book from Cuba called, "50 Years of Revolution" but it's in spanish. If so, I could attempt to scan it one day and put it online.

[flobdob]

It depends on what you want to know, and about what period! There are some key books though which I would recommend as essential - these are bolded, and linked where possible! Many of them may have accents on the letters though but in lieu of not being able to work them on my keyboard, you might have to do this yourself!

For the best overview of Cuba's revolution, I would suggest Sergio Guerra Vilaboy and Oscar Loyola Vega's Cuba - A History. It's a concise introduction to the long run of Cuba's history but covers the struggle for independence, the years before the revolution, and the revolution itself - it is therefore excellent to provide a background for understanding the historical development of the revolution. These I would supplement with the two excellent RATB pamphlets Revolutionary Cuba - the streets are ours (http://revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/our-shop) and 50 years of Cuban socialism (http://ratb.org.uk/images/pdf/cuba_50_pamphlet.pdf). These are two short pamphlets written by Rock Around the Blockade, a UK campaign group in solidarity with Cuba, and give succinct and detailed overviews of the revolution and its gains, and tackle the propaganda we hear blurted out in the press. Alongside these I would suggest Silvia Martinez Puentes' Cuba - Beyond our Dreams, as it gives both a broad history of all sorts of aspects of Cuba post-revolution alongside a contemporary(-ish, it was written in the mid 2000s) view of how Cuba works. It helps, however, to read alongside this some of the important documents of the revolution - I would suggest the one edited by Julio Garcia Luis, the Cuban Revolution Reader, which covers speeches from the most fundamental periods of the revolution. And it's worth sticking in something about Fidel and Che - try Fidel Castro's My Life and Lavretsky's Ernesto Che Guevara (although it bears the scars of its time and likes to rant on about Maoists a lot).

To find out about the revolutionary process in 1959, there are a few really good books. Huberman and Sweezy's Cuba - Anatomy of a Revolution provides a very readable introduction. Covering the 26th July Movement in the Sierra Maestra, the classic remains Che's Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. Many people seem to only focus on this part of the 26th July Movement, however, and ignore the important urban movement - this is wonderfully described in Armando Hart's Aldabonazo - Inside the Cuban revolutionary underground. On the role of women I'd suggest Puebla's Marianas in Combat.

The revolution of course didn't end on 1 Jan 1959. Despite this, however, it is hard to find a book which comprehensively covers the steps taken thereafter. The best two here for a general overview would be Antoni Kapcia's Cuba in Revolution and Luis's reader. It is a tad easier to find stuff which details the period soon after, however - Huberman and Sweezy's Socialism in Cuba is an example of such an overview until the early 1960s. However, getting an overview of what happened afterwards becomes a bit more diverse, so apologies for the amount of books here!

First, I would suggest that you acquaint yourself with the history of attacks against Cuba - these help contextualise and understand certain things about the revolution. Juan Carlos Rodriguez Cruz gives a good overview of this in Cuba - The Untold History. A similarly nice overview is Keith Bolender's book Voices from the Other Side, which has a very personal overview of the terrorism that Cuba has faced. Elliston's Psywar on Cuba has facsimile pages demonstrating US plots against Cuba. Such plots have been written about further by Fabian Escalante, whose books The Cuba Files, The Cuba Project and Executive Action are brilliantly written books on the attempts to destroy the revolution by one of its greatest sons. Castro and Ramon Fernandez have a good book called Playa Giron which collects speeches on the Bay of Pigs, and similarly October 1962 by Tomas Diez Acosta gives a history of the missile crisis.

The construction of Cuba's socialist economy is best covered in two books, Tablada's Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism and Helen Yaffe's Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (http://revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/our-shop). Of these two, the second is by far the best. Strictly speaking both are about Che's conception of building socialism, but Yaffe's covers the application of this in the construction of socialism in Cuba (the debates, the different applications, the changes between the AFS and the BFS, etc), and generally gives a broad understanding of the development of Cuba's economic system.

Internationalism has been at the heart of the revolution, so this is worth reading up on. The obvious examples here would be Che's Bolivian Diaries and his Congo Diaries. Of course this doesn't stop here. There is a collection of Fidel's speeches called Cuba's Internationalist Foreign Policy which provides an effective overview of some of these. One of the most blindingly obvious however is Gleijeses' Conflicting Missions, which covers Cuba's work in solidarity with African revolutionary movements.

Obviously many other things have to be considered. The late Theodore MacDonald wrote some magnificent books on Cuba, including The Education Revolution (covering the development of the revolutionary education systems) and Hippocrates in Havana (covering the development of healthcare in Cuba - read alongside his excellent although less nicely named A Developmental Analysis of Cuba's Healthcare System since 1959). For overviews of democratic structures in Cuba I suggest Roman'sPeople's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government and Harnecker's Cuba: Dictatorship or Democracy? For an understanding of women in the revolution I suggest you read Women and the Cuban Revolution, a collection of speeches by VilmaEspin and Fidel Castro. Rosset and Benjamin's The Greening of the Revolution considers the development of Cuban agriculture and its development of a sustainable economy. Davalos Fernandez's United States vs the Cuban Five covers this recent issue of much importance. Arboyela's Havana-Miami discusses the issues of migration, and Calvo and Declercq's The Cuban Exile Movement considers the role that these play towards Cuba.

Hope this is of some use. Happy reading!

[Bardo]

Whoa thanks guys!

I think I'm going to check out Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and The Education Revolution right off.

Thanks for the offer Fulanito, but I'm limited to english :(