Known by some people in Brazil and elsewhere as poet, essayist, and historian, the author of this book and his party arrived in Havana in January, 1961, to observe on the spot Fidel Castro’s revolution. Included in the company was another notable poet-journalist, Stefan Baciu, who was once with the political section of conservative Lacerdo’s journal, but who more recently had joined the rapidly-growing leftist revolutionary band of Latinos. Significantly enough, the leader of the visiting party—very probably others—was given guest accommodations in the Habana Libre hotel, which recently had been converted from the palatial $27,000,000 Habana Hilton. With this cordial reception by the Castroites—and many others of a similar vein—one wonders whether the author’s treatise was as “important and definitive” in nature as the publisher announced to the potential reading public. Let us see what a brief, critical examination of its contents will reveal.
In the introductory chapter (A Descoberta da Ilha), amongst the confused and unrelated topics the reviewer supposes that the author is trying to emphasize the Fidel philosophy for the long-suffering Cuban worker. In doing so, he quotes extracts from Fidel’s long, rambling harangues over the radio, cites remarks from United States citizens who are sympathetic to the Cuban cause, and produces poems from bards of many lands. At the same time, he embalms capitalists and political autocrats of many Western Hemisphere countries, but particularly from Yankeeland.
In the next chapter (Fidel’s apparition), one finds ghosts chasing each other through thirty pages! The phrases are drawn from similar sources, a few words from the Prophet Isaiah added.
To add chaos to confusion, the reviewer fails to find pages 65-80 of this chapter. Still the loss may be of little consequence!
The long chapter (c. 65 pages) on agrarian reform is by far the best chapter in the book, as indeed it is the most important and successful aspect of the current Cuban revolution. The necessity of ameliorating the wretched conditions of the rural population and the agencies and methods employed in accomplishing the colossal task are subjects relatively well-handled. In this section of the treatise, the Brazilian author avails himself of an unusual opportunity to draw parallels between situations in Cuba and his own country.
Although titled Urban and Other Reforms, the final section of the volume deals largely with a great variety of city and community problems badly in need of renovation. To show the crying want in this vast area, the author brings to the task of exposition numerous spokesmen from a varied field of literature, many of them foreign to his main areas—Cuba and Brazil. Again the author indulges himself in the sport of diversion, introducing a bewildering variety of subjects which have little or no connection with the announced theme of the book. But the reviewer noted with hearty agreement the allusion to the fact that the official guides steering tourists on their itineraries through various areas seldom lead their charges in sight of the wretched tenement quarters.
In this allegedly comparative study of the relationship between Castro’s active revolution in Cuba and the socio-economic forces now rumbling near explosion in Brazil, the author utters serious words for his country and countrymen. They are in his short, dramatic conclusion: Brazil becomes socialistic or Brazil disappears!
In the opinion of the present commentator, the publisher failed to get from his author a definitive and scholarly treatment of his subject, but a treatment shot through and through with a bias in favor of a Castro-flavored regime. More irritating to this reviewer, is the fact that the work is presented in a state of unorganized confusion.
