- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2148
Ada Ferrer’s history of Cuba begins with Columbus and the island’s Spanish colonisation, and ends with Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Ferrer takes a pro-Cuba view that sees the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion on 17 April 1961, as “optimism bordering on lunacy.” In 1968 Fidel Castro introduced a radical land reform that distributed agricultural land from large private owners to individual families and state-controlled farms and directed state resources to produce sugar for export to the Soviet Union in exchange for imports.
In Algeria in 1965, Che Guevara wrote in Socialism and Man in Cuba: “The new society in formation has to compete fiercely with the past.” People had to defeat the past in themselves and adopt a “new scale of values.” By 1970 Cuba had made an irreversible push for socialism, transforming social relations, and creating new institutions.
Ferrer argues that the poverty in Cuba in the 1990s was created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the crippling US embargo. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 increased already existing sanctions. The Cuban National Assembly passed the Law Reaffirming Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty declaring the Helms-Burton Act illegal. Despite the tough years that followed Cuba retained the permanence of revolution and socialism. The revolutionary government’s power is borne by the revolution fulfilling the independence of Cuba. On one side is Cuba’s revolution, the communist party and Fidel Castro. On the other side is US imperialism, US capitalism and counter-revolution.
Raúl Castro replaced his brother in 2008. That same year Barack Obama was elected president. Obama suggested an improved treatment of Latin America, including Cuba. Fidel wondered if for all Obama’s hopes it was useless when facing the great contradictions within the US government and capitalism. He concluded that Obama could change little, which history quickly showed was correct. Obama visited Cuba in 2016, “to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.” That year Fidel died, and Donald Trump was elected president, placing extra political and financial pressure on Cuba.
The antipathy of Cuban exiles toward Castro framed how many US citizens perceived the island state 90 miles off the Florida coast.
Ferrer’s interesting book concentrates on the neighbour to the north and like other US historians of Cuba shows little regard to what other powers, such as the United Kingdom, were doing in Cuba. There is little analysis of Cuba’s military interventions in Africa and Latin America, fighting for independence movements, nor Cuba’s great political influence across Latin America.
Despite these shortcomings it is a good place to start, well worth the read.
