In his foreword to the book, the editor modestly states its purpose as not to exhaust the subject—Marxist analysis of and prescription for Latin American society—but only to arouse the reader’s interest. The book does considerably more than this, and one might even say that at the level of the layman or beginning student, Luis Aguilar’s long introduction (a fifth of the book) and carefully selected readings do indeed exhaust the subject or at least cover it completely and in well-balanced fashion.
The book, an unpretentious reader in Knopf’s Borzoi series of paperbacks on Latin America, has merits beyond what one has a right to expect. Although most of the readings are only three to five pages long, they always convey the sense of just that point of view which needs to be represented at that juncture of the story. The readings are culled from a wide variety of sources, some of them quite obscure and perhaps even known to no one in the United States but Aguilar The uniformly good translations are anonymous, although the editor thanks the Institute of Language and Linguistics of Georgetown University for its assistance. The editor’s headnotes to the individual readings are informative, the chronologies that introduce selections from each historical period comprehensive, and the final bibliographical note helpful. Errors in the spelling of a surname or the placement of an accent mark are infrequent.
The authors and readings for the earlier periods (1890-1945) are of course more familiar; some of them are virtually automatic choices. For the postwar period, this is not the case, however, and the selection of readings on Cuba in particular shows a sensitivity to the theoretical and practical issues and the viewpoints on them that speaks well of the editor’s sophistication.
Aguilar’s introduction breaks no new ground and develops no new theory of Latin American Marxism. Also the division of the years covered into periods is conventional enough, and the content is narrative and descriptive. But the history is sound; the style is literate; and the footnotes (which the publisher sensibly puts at the foot of the page) are interesting and intelligent. In the introduction, as in the selection and presentation of the readings, one can appreciate not only the editor’s considerable knowledge, but even more his attitude toward the subject. Especially notable in a Cuban exile writing about Marxism, this is rational, objective, unemotional understanding in the spirit of Spinoza’s non ridere, non lugere neque detestare, sed intelligere—in a word, scholarly.
