Edit of Richard Gott: always a literary Sendero Luminoso | Cuba: A New History (Yale Nota Bene)

book: Cuba: A New History (Yale Nota Bene) | Richard Gott

books:


	• Cuba: A New History (Yale Nota Bene) Richard Gott Yale University Press, 2005 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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Ignore the disinformation

-- of those one-star reviews. They have their own biases and axes to grind, as they link you to rightwing websites full of lies and distortions of their own. These folks want to squelch and slander anyone with a differing point of view, especially regarding Cuba. When talking about "agents of influence," it is pertinent to remember these "reviewers" are likely themselves members of organizations sent here to trash this book.

Mr. Gott is a well-respected journalist on Latin American affairs, one who has been avowedly sympathetic to the Left, armed struggle, and the Cuban Revolution. However one may agree or not with his views, they are necessary to read if one would wish a well-rounded education on Cuba. Beware anyone who tries to suppress this book, as they are guilty of the same thing of which they accuse Fidel Castro.

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Edit of Richard Gott: always a literary Sendero Luminoso

Honestly folks, really I needed to come over the pessimistic catastrophic scenarios of contemporary global events and their intrepid interpreters, so here are some books I have recently read instead on Cuban history, on its regional impact and on the Bolivàrian revolution in Venezuela, as an antidote. Despite the massive bibliography on Cuba's revolution, remarkably few books in English cover the island's story from its earliest days. This alone justifies ex-Guardian Latin American specialist Richard Gott's new work, Cuba: A New History, Yale University Press, 2004 [Yale Nota Bene paperback, 2005] 325 pages [alt. 359 incl. Notes]. Like his informative articles on Latin America over the past 40 years, this book is easy to read, comprehensive, thoroughly researched and partisan.
Hugh Thomas's 1971 book, Cuba - the inevitable comparison -starts only in 1762, with the British invasion of Havana that gave a major boost to the import of slaves and the sugar industry, and stops with the early years of the Revolution. However, Gott begins with the irruption of the Spanish adventurers in 1511, although he provides some sense of the shifting indigenous populations, Taínos, Guanahatabeyes and Siboneys, who made their way up from the mainland's Orinoco delta through the vast Caribbean archipelago in pre-Colombian times; and he brings the story of the Cuban revolution up to the present day, with an new Epilogue.
Gott is also more concerned to trace historical continuities: geographic and climatic determinants (including those `malignant forces which took the form of winds of awesome proportions' that the Taínos dubbed the huracán); piracy and corruption; social and racial strife; the pervasiveness of Africanity and the terrified white consciousness of neighbouring Haiti; all in the context of an overarching dependence on foreign empires, whether Spanish, British, American or Russian.
Born in 1783, midway between the US Declaration of Independence and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Simón Bolívar's life and ideas were stamped--though asymmetrically--by both events. If the British could be driven out of North America by a people belonging to the same race and religion, why not the Spaniards in the South? The three hundred years of colonial rule that had followed the 1521 fall of Mexico were more than enough. And if the wisdom of the French Enlightenment had laid the foundations of the French Revolution, might it not serve the same purpose in Spanish America?
Travelling through Europe in the early 1800s, Bolívar would compare the decay and lethargy of the Madrid Court with the ferment of revolutionary Paris, albeit on the eve of Napoleon's coronation. Till the emperor's final defeat and the Restoration, Paris would remain qualitatively superior to Madrid and quantitatively ahead of Philadelphia.
And, of course, there was always sly, opportunist and expansionist London, which was not to be ignored. Despite the loss of its American colonies, it remained the hub of a strong and growing mercantilist Empire and its mastery of the seas was now unchallengeable. For that reason alone it had to be won over to the cause of South American independence and reminded of its own imperial interests in the continent.
Ever since Hector de Crèvecaeur posed the question, `What then is this American, this new man?' in 1782, North Americans have endlessly ruminated on their uniqueness. Yet they have rarely considered what they have in common with the `Other America', the sister-continent to their south. Such has been the ingrained Protestant provincialism and pietism of Anglo-American thinking that Spain's Atlantic Empire has too often been consigned to the shadows of the Black Legend, according to which the greed and depravities of the Old World were visited on the New by Iberian conquistadors and viceroys.
That same view is alive and flourishing since the national trauma of US post-9/11: the erosion of America's national identity by foreign immigration, and the undermining of its culture of Protestant individualism by Hispanic bilingualism; multiculturalism and the de-nationalization of elites and middle-class integration. `Fortress America' is today symbolized by the police-patrolled Iron Curtain erected on the US-Mexican border to exclude illegal Spanish-speaking, predominantly Catholic and poor, migrant immigrants wanting to survive after the slums and devastating slumps of their origins and share in the American Dream.

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Events in Fidel Castro?s island nation often command international attention and just as often inspire controversy. Impassioned debate over situations as diverse as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Elián Gonzáles affair is characteristic not only of modern times but of centuries of Cuban history. In this concise and up-to-date book, British journalist Richard Gott casts a fresh eye on the history of the Caribbean island from its pre-Columbian origins to the present day. He provides a European perspective on a country that is perhaps too frequently seen solely from the American point of view.
The author emphasizes such little-known aspects of Cuba?s history as its tradition of racism and violence, its black rebellions, the survival of its Indian peoples, and the lasting influence of Spain. The book also offers an original look at aspects of the Revolution, including Castro?s relationship with the Soviet Union, military exploits in Africa, and his attempts to promote revolution in Latin America and among American blacks. In a concluding section, Gott tells the extraordinary story of the Revolution?s survival in the post-Soviet years.

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