"Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba's economic and social performance." — Foreign AffairsUncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution's impact and legacy."The Cuba...

From 1932 until his death in 1990, Hal Draper was a prolific Marxist writer and socialist organizer who successfully combined rigorous research and passionate outrage to assess his political era. In this still-indispensable collection of essays written in the 1950s and 60s, Draper grapples with the role of the United States in the world, situating post-war American imperialism in a global picture of capitalist competition and expansion. The essays in this volume include Draper’s discussion...

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 ideolog...

This reexamination of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's thoughts on socialism, democracy, and revolution is a must-read for today's activists—or anyone longing to fight for a better world.Fifty years after his death, Guevara remains a symbol to legions of young rebels and revolutionaries. This unique book provides a way to critically engage with Guevara's economic views, his ideas about revolutionary agency, and his conduct as guerrilla commander and government administrator in Cuba....

In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba’s six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what...

This thesis seeks to provide an explanation for the contents of three foreign policy decisions implemented under the government of General Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979). It does so by analyzing the decision-making process which led Brazil: 1) to abstain in the Meetings of Consultation of American Foreign Ministers for voting the lifting of sanctions against Cuba; 2) to restore diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China; and 3) to recognize Angola’s MPLA government. The central h...

On the fortieth anniversary of revolution and rebellion in Chile, a searching history of the rise and fall of the world's first and only democratically elected Marxist president.On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile was deposed in a violent coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The coup had been in the works for months, even years. Shortly after giving a farewell speech to his people, Allende died of gunshot wounds-whether inflicted by his own ...

Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Chávez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chá...

Latin America experienced an epochal cycle of revolutionary upheavals and insurgencies during the twentieth century, from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 through the mobilizations and terror in Central America, the Southern Cone, and the Andes during the 1970s and 1980s. In his introduction to A Century of Revolution, Greg Grandin argues that the dynamics of political violence and terror in Latin America are so recognizable in their enforcement of domination, their generation and m...

The regime of Juan Perón is one of the most studied topics of Argentina's contemporary history. This new book—an English translation of a highly popular, critically acclaimed Spanish language edition—provides a new perspective on the intriguing Argentinian leader. Mariano Plotkin's cultural approach makes Perón's popularity understandable because it goes beyond Perón's charismatic appeal and analyzes the Perónist mechanisms used to generate political consent and mass mobilization. Mañana e...

The story of Fidel Castro has few parallels in contemporary history. None of the outstanding Third World leaders of the twentieth-century played such a prominent and restless part on the international stage and none survived as head of state for as long. Over almost 50 years, he was one of the most controversial political figures in the world, and his legacy has yet to be fully evaluated. Some of his most cherished plans were realized and are a model for many Third World countries. Yet des...

The recent retirement of Fidel Castro turned the world’s attention towards the island nation of Cuba and the question of what its future holds. Amid the talk and hypothesizing, it is worth taking a moment to consider how Cuba reached this point. Antoni Kapcia provides this with his incisive history of Cuba since 1959.Kapcia’s history takes the Cuban Revolution as its starting point, analysing the process of social revolution, its benefits and disadvantages, popular participation in...