A revelatory memoir of the 17 years Juan Sanchez spent as one of Fidel Castro's personal soldiers, in his innermost circle

By his mastery of the spoken word, Fidel Castro reveals the unfolding process of the Cuban revolution, its extraordinary challenges, crises, chaos and achievements. Part of a two-volume anthology, this first volume is based on Castro's speeches.

The issues confronting a changing world are frankly discussed in this lively dialogue between two of Latin America's most controversial political figures. In this wide-ranging conversation, Fidel Castro discusses the collapse of the Soviet Union, an historical evaluation of Stalin, the future of socialism, the role of ideas in today's world, Cuba's relations with the United States from Kennedy to Bush, human rights in the Third World, homosexuality, literature and music. Face to face with Fidel Castro is one of the most important political books to emerge from Latin America in the 1990s.

In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba’s National School of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever. In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto–now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America– resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act. Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.

For the first time Fidel Castro writes with candor and affection of his relationship with Ernesto Che Guevara, documenting his extraordinary bond with Cuba from the revolution's early days to the final guerrilla expedition in Bolivia. (Also in Spanish as Che en la memoria: 1-875284-83-4)

In The Power of Race in Cuba, Danielle Pilar Clealand analyzes racial ideologies that negate the existence of racism and their effect on racial progress and activism through the lens of Cuba. Since 1959, Fidel Castro and the Cuban government have married socialism and the ideal of racial harmony to create a formidable ideology that is an integral part of Cubans' sense of identity and their perceptions of race and racism in their country. While the combination of socialism and a colorblind racial ideology is particular to Cuba, strategies that paint a picture of equality of opportunity and deflect the importance of race are not particular to the island's ideology and can be found throughout the world, and in the Americas, in particular. By promoting an anti-discrimination ethos, diminishing class differences at the onset of the revolution, and declaring the end of racism, Castro was able to unite belief in the revolution to belief in the erasure of racism. The ideology is bolstered by rhetoric that discourages racial affirmation. The second part of the book examines public opinion on race in Cuba, particularly among black Cubans. It examines how black Cubans have indeed embraced the dominant nationalist ideology that eschews racial affirmation, but also continue to create spaces for black consciousness that challenge this ideology. The Power of Race in Cuba gives a nuanced portrait of black identity in Cuba and through survey data, interviews with formal organizers, hip hop artists, draws from the many black spaces, both formal and informal to highlight what black consciousness looks like in Cuba.

Fidel Castro had ruled the island of Cuba for fifty-two years when ill health forced him to step down in 2008. Over the course of that time, he changed Cuba from a republic to a communist state and became one of the most divisive leaders in the second half of the twentieth century. For some, he is a champion of humanitarianism, socialism, and environmentalism. For others, he is a monster and dictator who perpetuated human rights abuses at home and abroad. Providing a rare, evenhanded account of Castro’s life, journalist Nick Caistor brings together interviews with people who have known Castro with discussion of the ideas that drove him. Caistor follows Castro’s life from his birth as the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer in 1926 to the developing of his leftist, anti-imperialist ideas at the University of Havana and his primary role in the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s. He explores Castro’s economic and military alliance with the Soviet Union and his hostile relationship with the United States while also looking at how he simultaneously introduced free health care and education while squelching freedom of the press and suppressing dissidents. As Caistor shows, Castro’s numerous writings on politics, capitalism, and other topics have influenced leaders from Nelson Mandela to Hugo Chávez, but allegations of corruption, human rights abuses, and dictatorship never ceased during his long career. Using stories and opinions to enliven the debate about Castro’s choices, strengths, and weaknesses, this concise biography gives readers the opportunity to judge for themselves how they feel about the former Cuban president.

Guevara's best-known presentation of the political tasks and challenges in leading the transition from capitalism to socialism. Includes Castro's 1987 speech on the 20th anniversary of Guevara's death.

Secret Missions to Cuba reveals new insights into Fidel Castro's personality, details secret missions to Cuba under the Carter and Reagan administrations to negotiate the restoration of US-Cuban relations and provides an in-depth look at Miami's exile community since 1959. This groundbreaking story is told through Bernardo Benes - a lawyer who joined the refugee exodus from Castro's Cuba in 1960. Benes quickly became one of the leading voices advocating the integration of Cubans into the city's Anglo, old-boy power structure. In 1978, Cuban Intelligence recruited him as an emissary between the Carter administration and Cuba. He did the same for the CIA under Reagan in the early 1980s. In all, Benes made seventy-five secret trips to meet with high-ranking Cuban officials, spending about 150 hours face-to-face with Fidel Castro. The 1978 dialogue resulted in the release of 3,600 Cuban political prisoners and the right for Cuban exiles to visit family members on the island. Rather than being received as a hero on his return to Miami, however, Benes was branded a traitor by the Miami Cuban media for having dealt personally with Castro. His career ruined, he became a pariah in the community. Secret Missions to Cuba also examines the motives of those who vilified Benes and explores why so many Cubans in Miami have permitted themselves to be silenced - much in the same ways, Levine claims, as Cubans under Castro. But what differentiates Levine's book from any other is that he is literally breaking new ground by documenting these top-secret missions to Cuba. Furthermore, he has the corroboration of key players like Ambler Moss, who was the Ambassador to Panama under Carter; Bob Pastor, who was Carter's Latin American advisor on the National Security Council, and General Vernon A. Walters, the former Deputy Director of the CIA. The twenty-five photos in the book, some which depict Bernardo Benes with Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy and, of course, Fidel Castro, emphasize the importance of Benes' story internationally.