Cuba's grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island's achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation's Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba's multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.

After Fidel Castro's guerrilla war against dictator Fulgencio Batista triumphed on January 1, 1959, the Cuban Revolution came to be seen as a major watershed in Latin American history. The three decades following Castro's victory gradually marginalized Cuba from the Latin American mainstream. But, as long-time Cuba observer Thomas C. Wright shows, the Cuban Revolution owed its vast influence in Latin America to the fact that it embodied the aspirations and captured the imaginations of Latin America's masses as no other political movement had ever done. After reviewing the background to Castro's Cuban Revolution, Wright examines the radical social and economic transformation of Cuba and Castro's efforts to actively promote insurrection against established governments and bourgeois power throughout Latin America. He then analyzes,in detail, the military revolution in Peru, the Allende government in Chile, and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Then Wright looks at the phenomena that affected all or major parts of Latin America—the impact of fidelismo, U.S. responses to revolution, rural guerrilla warfare, urban guerrilla warfare, and the new-style institutional military regimes created to fight revolution. He concludes with a summary of the rise and fall of Cuban influence in the hemisphere and offers an overview of the Latin American political landscape in the 1990s. An engaging synthesis for students and scholars interested in the Cuban Revolution and its impact on Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.

The Cuban revolution served as a rallying cry to people across Latin America and the Caribbean. The revolutionary regime has provided vital support to the rest of the region, offering everything from medical and development assistance to training and advice on guerrilla warfare. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America is the first oral history of Cuba’s liberation struggle. Drawing on a vast array of original testimonies, Dirk Kruijt looks at the role of both veterans and the post-Revolution fidelista generation in shaping Cuba and the Americas. Featuring the testimonies of over sixty Cuban officials and former combatants, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America offers unique insight into a nation which, in spite of its small size and notional pariah status, remains one of the most influential countries in the Americas.

Sweig shatters the mythology surrounding the Cuban Revolution in a compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the revolutionary roles of Castro and Guevara and restores to a central position the leadership of the Llano. Granted unprecedented access to the classified records of Castro's 26th of July Movement's underground operatives--the only scholar inside or outside of Cuba allowed access to the complete collection in the Cuban Council of State's Office of Historic Affairs--she details the debates between Castro's mountain-based guerrilla movement and the urban revolutionaries in Havana, Santiago, and other cities.

Describes Castro's insurrection from a 1955 fund raising trip to the United States to the Cuban Revolution.

From its independence from Spain in 1898 until the 1960s, Cuba was dominated by the political and economic presence of the United States. Benjamin studies this unequal relationship through 1934, by examining U.S. trade, investment, and capital lending; Cuban institutions and social movements; and U.S. foreign policy. Benjamin convincingly argues that U.S. hegemony shaped Cuban internal politics by exploiting the island's economy, dividing the nationalist movement, co-opting Cuban moderates, and robbing post-1933 leadership of its legitimacy.

This is the first book in more than three decades to offer a complete and chronological history of revolutionary Cuba, including the years of rebellion that led to the revolution. Beginning with Batista’s coup in 1952, which catalyzed the rebels, and bringing the reader to the present-day transformations initiated by Raúl Castro, Luis Martínez-Fernández provides a balanced interpretive synthesis of the major topics of contemporary Cuban history. Expertly weaving the myriad historic, social, and political forces that shaped the island nation during this period, Martínez-Fernández examines the circumstances that allowed the revolution to consolidate in the early 1960s, the Soviet influence throughout the latter part of the Cold War, and the struggle to survive the catastrophic Special Period of the 1990s after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. He tackles the island’s chronic dependence on sugar production, which started with the plantations centuries ago and continues to shape culture and society. He analyzes the revolutionary pendulum that continues to swing between idealism and pragmatism, focusing on its effects on the everyday lives of the Cuban people, and—bucking established trends in Cuban scholarship—Martínez-Fernández systematically integrates the Cuban diaspora into the larger discourse of the revolution. Concise, well written, and accessible, this book is an indispensable survey of the history and themes of the socialist revolution that forever changed Cuba and the world.

Analyzing the crucial period of the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1961, Samuel Farber challenges dominant scholarly and popular views of the revolution's sources, shape, and historical trajectory. Unlike many observers, who treat Cuba's revolutionary leaders as having merely reacted to U.S. policies or domestic socioeconomic conditions, Farber shows that revolutionary leaders, while acting under serious constraints, were nevertheless autonomous agents pursuing their own independent ideological visions, although not necessarily according to a master plan. Exploring how historical conflicts between U.S. and Cuban interests colored the reactions of both nations' leaders after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, Farber argues that the structure of Cuba's economy and politics in the first half of the twentieth century made the island ripe for radical social and economic change, and the ascendant Soviet Union was on hand to provide early assistance. Taking advantage of recently declassified U.S. and Soviet documents as well as biographical and narrative literature from Cuba, Farber focuses on three key years to explain how the Cuban rebellion rapidly evolved from a multiclass, antidictatorial movement into a full-fledged social revolution.