This book is a significant contribution to the research on the ideological impact of the Cuban Revolution on many Americans who have sought to subvert the US political and economic model. In this groundbreaking book, subtitled Havana and the Making of the United States Left, 1968–1992, the author draws most of his information from direct sources such as newspaper articles, interviews, and original testimonies from important historical figures. The dates covered in the book's subtitle are somewhat misleading, as the text goes into more recent history. The book's introduction sparks interest for its original content. The roles played by the black liberation movement, the American left, and the Cuban government are connecting threads throughout the book.
The Venceremos Brigade is the focus of Chapter 1. The chapter illustrates how this so-called “people-to-people” organization, sponsored by the American left, became an anti-American propaganda tool of the Cuban revolution beginning in the late 1960s. Venceremos had great appeal among American university students and academics and served as a multiethnic umbrella that incorporated others such as the Chicano and Puerto Rican liberation movements. Next, Latner examines the impact of the Venceremos Brigade as a risk to American security in this chapter, and the claims of the CIA and the FBI that some of its members were being trained in guerilla warfare and espionage during their travels to Cuba. The accuracy of such information is challenged by the author, who argues that no evidence of this has ever been found. However, in the same chapter, he later states that some Black Panthers have revealed that there were promises of military training by the Cuban government.
Chapter 3 focuses on how hijackings of airplanes traveling from the United States to Cuba became attractive to some American citizens and others escaping political prosecution. The two types of American hijackers are discussed in this chapter, which describes some of the most notable cases, such as that of the Black Panthers’ William Lee Brent. Nonetheless, the author, making a comparison, states that to the Cuban government's credit it was always willing to return the civilian airplanes to US authorities. This comparison misses the fact that most US hijackers were escaping criminal prosecution and most Cuban hijackers were average citizens on board small fishing vessels.
Chapter 4 deals with the Antonio Maceo brigade, comprised mostly of young Cuban Americans who began to visit the island and were in favor of normalizing relations between the US and Cuba. This group soon became the target of many anti-Castro exiles in the Cuban American community and for the first time exposed divisions on what had until then appeared to be an almost monolithic group. The 1978 talks that became known as the Dialogue are also mentioned in this chapter. However, there is no mention whatsoever of the 1980 Mariel boatlift crisis and its profound impact on the Cuban American community, or the image of the Cuban revolution in the American left.
Chapter 5 draws on the role of Cuba as a haven for American political dissidents, and especially those in the black liberation movement. Such is the case of former Black Panther Assata Shakur. The chapter also provides information on other American dissidents whose asylum in Cuba did not live up to their expectations. Some of these individuals lost all hope of Cuban support for their political struggle, and others began to question race in Cuba itself and the Cuban government's treatment of its own Afro-Cubans.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in Cuba-US relations.
