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Cuba: A New History (Yale Nota Bene)

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Edit of Richard Gott: always a literary Sendero Luminoso
Honestly folks, really I needed to come over the pessimistic catastrophic scenarios of contemporary global events and their intrepid interpreters, so here are some books I have recently read instead on Cuban history, on its regional impact and on the Bolivàrian revolution in Venezuela, as an antidote. Despite the massive bibliography on Cuba's revolution, remarkably few books in English cover the island's story from its earliest days. This alone justifies ex-Guardian Latin American specialist Richard Gott's new work, Cuba: A New History, Yale University Press, 2004 [Yale Nota Bene paperback, 2005] 325 pages [alt. 359 incl. Notes]. Like his informative articles on Latin America over the past 40 years, this book is easy to read, comprehensive, thoroughly researched and partisan.
Hugh Thomas's 1971 book, Cuba - the inevitable comparison -starts only in 1762, with the British invasion of Havana that gave a major boost to the import of slaves and the sugar industry, and stops with the early years of the Revolution. However, Gott begins with the irruption of the Spanish adventurers in 1511, although he provides some sense of the shifting indigenous populations, Taínos, Guanahatabeyes and Siboneys, who made their way up from the mainland's Orinoco delta through the vast Caribbean archipelago in pre-Colombian times; and he brings the story of the Cuban revolution up to the present day, with an new Epilogue.
Gott is also more concerned to trace historical continuities: geographic and climatic determinants (including those `malignant forces which took the form of winds of awesome proportions' that the Taínos dubbed the huracán); piracy and corruption; social and racial strife; the pervasiveness of Africanity and the terrified white consciousness of neighbouring Haiti; all in the context of an overarching dependence on foreign empires, whether Spanish, British, American or Russian.
Born in 1783, midway between the US Declaration of Independence and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Simón Bolívar's life and ideas were stamped--though asymmetrically--by both events. If the British could be driven out of North America by a people belonging to the same race and religion, why not the Spaniards in the South? The three hundred years of colonial rule that had followed the 1521 fall of Mexico were more than enough. And if the wisdom of the French Enlightenment had laid the foundations of the French Revolution, might it not serve the same purpose in Spanish America?
Travelling through Europe in the early 1800s, Bolívar would compare the decay and lethargy of the Madrid Court with the ferment of revolutionary Paris, albeit on the eve of Napoleon's coronation. Till the emperor's final defeat and the Restoration, Paris would remain qualitatively superior to Madrid and quantitatively ahead of Philadelphia.
And, of course, there was always sly, opportunist and expansionist London, which was not to be ignored. Despite the loss of its American colonies, it remained the hub of a strong and growing mercantilist Empire and its mastery of the seas was now unchallengeable. For that reason alone it had to be won over to the cause of South American independence and reminded of its own imperial interests in the continent.
Ever since Hector de Crèvecaeur posed the question, `What then is this American, this new man?' in 1782, North Americans have endlessly ruminated on their uniqueness. Yet they have rarely considered what they have in common with the `Other America', the sister-continent to their south. Such has been the ingrained Protestant provincialism and pietism of Anglo-American thinking that Spain's Atlantic Empire has too often been consigned to the shadows of the Black Legend, according to which the greed and depravities of the Old World were visited on the New by Iberian conquistadors and viceroys.
That same view is alive and flourishing since the national trauma of US post-9/11: the erosion of America's national identity by foreign immigration, and the undermining of its culture of Protestant individualism by Hispanic bilingualism; multiculturalism and the de-nationalization of elites and middle-class integration. `Fortress America' is today symbolized by the police-patrolled Iron Curtain erected on the US-Mexican border to exclude illegal Spanish-speaking, predominantly Catholic and poor, migrant immigrants wanting to survive after the slums and devastating slumps of their origins and share in the American Dream.

Rating:

- There are better books out there
If you're looking for a fast, shallow treatment of Cuban history, written by a largely uncritical supporter of the Cuban Revolution, then look no further, you've found it.

I've read Hugh Thomas' book "Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom" (which is 1800 pages long or so, it's only flaw being that its coverage of history ends in the late 1960s). Naturally, I expected Gott's book to pick up where Thomas' book left off. And, while Gott's book does cover the revolution between 1970 and now, it does not provide any real depth or insight. Thomas' book was obviously written by a scholar who is looking to form a complete picture of Cuba's history; Gott's book, on the other hand, reads more like a newspaper article - perhaps because Gott is a journalist by training.

If you're looking to really learn about Cuba, definitely get Thomas' book. Gott's isn't TOO bad, as long as it's what you're looking for.

Rating:

- Ignore the disinformation
-- of those one-star reviews. They have their own biases and axes to grind, as they link you to rightwing websites full of lies and distortions of their own. These folks want to squelch and slander anyone with a differing point of view, especially regarding Cuba. When talking about "agents of influence," it is pertinent to remember these "reviewers" are likely themselves members of organizations sent here to trash this book.

Mr. Gott is a well-respected journalist on Latin American affairs, one who has been avowedly sympathetic to the Left, armed struggle, and the Cuban Revolution. However one may agree or not with his views, they are necessary to read if one would wish a well-rounded education on Cuba. Beware anyone who tries to suppress this book, as they are guilty of the same thing of which they accuse Fidel Castro.

Rating:

- Not for the uninitiated in Cuban history.
A tolerable book, only if read as one of several Cuban history books, because of its thoroughly sympathetic (and apologist) depiction of Fidel Castro's 1959 Revolution. It is perfect example of a view of Cuban history that pretends to be academic and unbiased but in reality closely spouses the current government's portrayal of Cuban history, devoid of democracy and equality and where the past is little more than the struggle that leads to Socialism. In that context, it is a good book to read because it illustrates what the current Cuban Governments is attempting to do to the country's history.

Many basic spelling errors of a significant number Spanish words or names the author introduces are off-putting and bring into question his qualifications as a Cuban scholar thoroughly familiar with his subject. The author uses very few source documents, opting instead to quote prejudiced opinions of earlier academics (who tend to quote earlier academics) or casual observers to prove the points he wishes to stress. He also buys into (and sells) the mythology of Fidel Castro earlier year as the chosen one, the inheritor and sum all of Cuba's past "caudillos." Moreover, the author omits or manipulates important facts if they interfere with the storyline. The book should be ignored if it is intended to be your only source of Cuban history.

Rating:

- Richard Gott Agent of Influence
When I picked up this book in a used book store, I read selected sections on matters I knew very well, read the authors passages on these matters and decided that this book was not only biased but deliberately and maliciously so. Pertinent data was omitted and selectively included data distorted.

Thus I did not purchase it. I will buy it here in used form so that the author does not receive any of my money, my purpose of this purchase is to fully document this and other malicious presentations of Cuban history.

At that the time I picked up this volume did not know that letters to London Times had labeled Richard Gott as an "Agent of Influence" e.g.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1376998/posts

or that he had been said to be a former KGB agent

e.g.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/583hqfaw.asp?pg=2

What I did know was from family history in Cuba that the author Richard Gott was re-writing the past. I concentrated in my sampling on the so called "race war of 1912" (it would seem that the author misdates it, and mixes it with the rising of 1906 in which my grand uncle Mambi General Carlos Garcia Velez was deeply involved). In this 1912 horror some of my family's property was burned.

Initially this sad 1912 matter had come to my attention some years ago when I was puzzled why the so called Mambi of the "Independentes de Color" would burn down property of the Mambi of my family.

Soon it became clear through critical readings that what the "Independentes de Color" were attempting to make a separate country, where they could rule despotically. This was apparent to most of the Mambi of that time and place and thus they, what ever pigment shaded their skins, did not take their war skills and courage to this fight.

These Mambi who refused to join the revolt had already used all their influence to try to avoid this clash, and to have some of the future revolt's leadership released from jail for inciting racial murder at the most trivial of excuse.

This lack of participation of the majority of the Mambi doomed the the revolt attempt from the very beginning. Then it was widely perceived, although apparently never quite proven, that this revolt was Haitian in origen and in intent. Some Dominican Republic activists of similar shaded skins, but few Cubans were shown to be involved. It was a racist revolt, where virtue was thought to reside only in those with the very darkest of skin.

As to the Siboney (Cuban Taino, Cuban Island Arawak) involvement much touted on the cover I see very little proof of that in this volume although there were a good number of such, including members of my family, involved in the Cuban wars of Independence. One may note in this reagard that my Mambi ancestor whose property was destroyed was probably part Siboney and certainly his wife (one of my maternal grandmothers) was Taina.

All this does not excuse the bloody actions of former General Monteagudo that followed the repression of this revolt, yet it does make their outraged anger far more understandable. For it was characters of this type and racial background that joining with Spanish General Weyler as "Guerrillas" slaughtered massive numbers of other Cuban in the Cuban Wars of Independence. One may note that butcher Weyler prided himself in choosing these very dark skinned Guerrillas as his bodyguards....

Larry Daley (Garcia-I~niguez Enamorado)

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