For most people familiar with the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro was a highly idealist radical who led a revolution that began with an assault on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953, and ended with the fall of dictator Fulgencio Batista after the battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Eve of 1959. There was certainly a growing dissatisfaction with Batista's authoritarian government, but Castro's charismatic leadership is considered key to the victory of this small guerrilla against a modern and significantly larger army.

According to Lillian Guerra, this narrative is incomplete. In her most recent book, Guerra highlights a culture of resistance among Cubans that created the conditions for the fall of Batista and the rise of Castro. She insists that Cubans were not passive observers of Castro's revolution. Rather, many Cubans challenged Batista by joining public mass demonstrations and underground radical movements outside of Castro's orbit. However, she points out that most of these have been ignored or erased from historical memory. She is certainly not the first scholar to discuss this. As Guerra acknowledges, Steve Cushion's A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution (2004) and Julia Sweig's Inside the Cuban Revolution (2009) have explored. respectively. the anti-Batista activities of workers and the urban resistance. However, her work exposes a wider resistance and a political culture of resistance betrayed by Castro's revolution.

For Guerra, the revolution began with Eduardo “Eddy” Chibás, a disenchanted politician who hosted a radio show, popular for his vociferous rants and denunciations against what he perceived to be a vastly corrupt political class. Chibás's unique style on the radio helped popularize the revolutionary ideas that resulted in the toppling of President Gerardo Machado in 1933. He considered it the duty of all Cubans to free the island from US intervention and establish a democracy based on a morally responsible government. He was instrumental in bringing political activism to the forefront of Cuban culture, making criticizing politicians a Cuban pastime.

Chibás killed himself in August 1951. Although not the only politician to do so during those tumultuous times, Chibás's popularity inspired a sense of sacrifice for the fatherland. The following spring, Batista assumed the presidency in a coup staged to pre-empt his losing in the ballot box. Many Cubans saw in this act the shameless political corruption that Chibás had denounced. A growing opposition took to the streets, while others went underground and formed an armed resistance; among those was the young Fidel Castro. The growing brutality of the Batista regime against its critics only increased the opponents’ resolution to depose the dictator. Cubans became hopeful that a savior, a selfless messiah, like Chibás, would deliver the revolution.

In this light, Castro first follows and later imitates Chibás's theatrics, especially his dramatic rhetorical style and the use of the radio airwaves to project an image of the moral hero, the selfless martyr, the Cuban messiah. After the fall of Batista, Castro appears to have tried to obscure the memory of Chibás, insisting that his own 26th of July Movement was the beginning of the revolution and his practically the only significant group in the Cuban resistance. However, even Che Guevara admitted the limitations of Fidel's movement. In the fall of 1958, Batista had killed about 250 members of the 26th of July Movement; the rest of the resistance at that time counted between 3,000 and 4,000 casualties (5).

What makes Guerra's book particularly compelling is that she brings to light the experiences of forgotten or ignored rebels. Through access to their private archives and interviews, she exposes a Cuban culture of resistance. Her effort is commendable even if she cannot avoid Castro's persistent shadow throughout her narrative. Guerra's work is perhaps the most significant effort to date to bring back the memory and legacy of a Cuban culture of resistance based on democracy and social justice. This resistance exposed the feeble political support that prompted Batista's self-imposed exile. From the remote Sierra Maestra, Castro snatched the opportunity, hijacking Chibás's idea of the self-sacrificed Cuban and claiming the mantle of the long-awaited messiah. Thus, he presented himself as the leader of the victorious guerrilla that defeated the dictator. While many people may still admire Castro, Guerra shows that Castro betrayed the spirit of the Cuban culture of resistance. Instead, Castro consolidated a new dictatorship—one as antidemocratic, corrupt, intolerant, and violent as the one he helped destroy.