Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira’s updated and revised version of his 1998 study of the Cuban Revolution and its broader meaning for Latin America remains a key work for understanding the broad sweep of Latin American politics in the post-1945 period. De Martí a Fidel provides a much-needed Latin American perspective on the revolution itself, its reception throughout the hemisphere, and US attempts to overthrow and/or undermine it. Bandeira researched the book in European, US, and Brazilian archives and produced a well-written and comprehensive study of perhaps the key event in post– World War II Latin American history.
The first quarter of the book is a concise and thoughtful history of the conflict between Latin American nationalism and reformism, on the one hand, and US opposition to it, on the other. Bandeira begins with nineteenth-century Cuban nationalism and the ways the United States co-opted it with the Spanish-American War and subsequent...
