Chapter 5: Cuba
Students of Cuban history are deeply indebted to Hugh Thomas for his superbly researched and highly readable Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). An excellent general history is Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). The origins of Cuban struggles for national identity are analyzed in Lillian Guerra, The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). The same author has written an engaging and critical account of the first years of the Cuban Revolution in Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). For a compact reference work see Julia E. Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Several recent works on slavery and freedom in nineteenth-century Cuba are: Michele Reid-Vazquez, The Year of the Last: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), Manuel Barcia Paz, The Great Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Matanzas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), Sarah L. Franklin, Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-century Colonial Cuba (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2012), and William C. Van Norman, Jr. Shade Grown Slavery: The Lives of Slaves on Coffee Plantations in Cuba (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).
An ambitious and authoritative study of race in modern Cuba is Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Ada Ferrer examines the relationship of race to late nineteenth-century independence struggles in Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1968–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). The troubled history of Afro-Cubans is told in Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). To understand the impact of scientific racism on the island, see Alejandra Bronfman, Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). The process by which Afro-Cuban culture became a part of national identity is carefully analyzed in Robin Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanism and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997). Challenges to racism over the course of the twentieth century are documented in Melina Pappademos, Black Political Activism and he Cuban Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
A pioneering study of women is Verena Martinez-Alier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). The emergence of women as political players is presented in K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Women’s Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991).
A key turning point in Cuba’s relationship to the United States is examined in Louis A. Pérez Jr., The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). The same author has produced a richly detailed portrait of Cuban society in On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
Key works on Cuba’s continuing conflicts with the United States include Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Peter Kornbluh (ed.), The Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (New York: New Press, 1998). The missile crisis of October 1962 is reviewed in Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). More specialized analyses can be found in Sheldon Stern, Averting “The Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); and Alice L. George, Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Critical assessments of a central U.S. policy initiative in the post-Cold War era appear in Joaquín Roy, Cuba, the United States, and the Helms-Burton Doctrine: International Reactions (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001). An exhaustive recent study of the bilateral relationship is Lars Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). A recent collection of articles on the Cuban Revolution and its international impact is Soraya M. Castro Mariño and Ronald W. Preussen, Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
Despite the sensational (and misleading) title, there is much valuable information in Andrés Oppenheimer, Castro’s Final Hour: The Secret Story Behind the Coming Downfall of Communist Cuba (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). The charismatic personality of Che Guevara is captured in Jorge C. Castañeda, trans. Marina Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). Cuba’s most significant foreign policy venture is recounted in Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Cuba’s response to the economic crisis following the collapse of the USSR is the subject in Susan Eva Eckstein, Back from the Future: Cuba Under Castro (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), and in Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Are Economic Reforms Propelling Cuba to the Market? (Miami, Fla.: North-South Center, 1994). The failure of the revolutionary government to transform personal relations is documented in Lois Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) and in Julia Marie Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). For the darker side of the Revolution, see Jacobo Timerman, Cuba: A Journey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), and Human Rights Watch, Cuba’s Repressive Machinery (New York: Human Rights Watch, June 1999).