In the past few years studies of the Cuban Revolution—what used to be called Castro’s revolution—have become more analytical. This study, by a Cuban exile who prefaces his work with the disclaimer that he neither supports nor opposes the revolution, is a thorough empirical examination of the many and profound changes in the politics and society of modern Cuba.
Domínguez begins his assessment of modern Cuba with two probing chapters on Cuba’s government and political system from 1902, when American troops departed, until 1958, the final year of Fulgencio Batista’s rule. In the first three decades of the republic, he argues, Cuba’s political system was characterized by pluralism. The first experiment in self-government under Tomás Estrada Palma was rudely interrupted by the second American occupation in 1906, an act that polarized not only Cuba’s political parties but other segments of Cuban society as well. Later, in the 1920s, Cuba experienced a rise in social mobility and political expectation, yet the Cuban economy suffered severely due to the decline in sugar prices. Reiterating the arguments of political theorists, Domínguez maintains that Cuba’s political institutions were incapable of adjusting to such wrenching changes in political and social expectation, and the tragic outcome was the anti-Machado movement and the 1933 revolution. After 1933, Cuba remained subservient to American policy but its government espoused a modified nationalism and conducted its affairs more independently of the United States. In the Batista era, the Cuban government rapidly expanded its internal influence in Cuban life by striving to regulate the disparate political and economic elements that had disrupted the old republic. Unlike other scholars of the Batista era, notably Robert F. Smith and Irwin Gellman, Domínguez contends that a vigorous Cuban “bourgeoisie” developed as American economic interests retreated. The government, more bureaucratized, permitted interest groups a stake in the larger society; Batista’s system, through its performance, acquired respectability and even loyalty.
Batista’s fall and Castro’s triumph, Domínguez contends, were attributable to the widespread feeling that Batista’s last government, which came to power by coup d’etat in 1952, was illegitimate, corrupt, and, with its pursuit of foreign investment, increasingly indifferent to Cuban nationalism. When Castro took over, then, he inherited a highly regulatory state which reached into virtually every segment of Cuban society, and he ruled a people highly suspicious of outside influence. The confrontation with the United States permitted Castro to acquire far more power than that assumed by any of his predecessors in the republic. As American influence had encouraged pluralization in Cuba, Soviet intrusion promoted centralization and the enhancement of Castro’s authority and, more significantly, the assumption of broad powers by the revolutionary bureaucracy.
How, then, does Domínguez “measure” the success of the revolution? His work is, after all, less theoretical than analytical. Before Castro, the Cuban economy’s growth compared favorably with other Latin American countries; after 1959, the record of the revolution in distribution has been impressive, though the economy was stagnant in the 1960s. But Cuba has been molded into a centralist society. Beginning with the avalanche of laws in 1959 and 1960, the revolution has brought an order to an historically disorderly society. After the first two years, all that remained was the implementation of the sweeping legislation that had been enacted. Domínguez omits little, and his probing of the revolution includes discussions of agrarian reform, education, the Communist party, political participation, the armed forces, health, and myriad mundane activities of the omnipresent revolutionary government. In the final chapters which focus on the political process, the author assesses the changing currents of Cuban life and offers a suggestive evaluation of the revolution’s agrarian reform plan and its reception by Cuban peasants.
As one would expect in an empirical study, the book includes a large number of tables (90), but, surprisingly, these are not obtrusive and may be skipped or, if the reader is so inclined, profitably scrutinized. Cuba: Order and Revolution will almost certainly become the major reference for students of the revolution. If there is a flaw in this encyclopedic account of Castro’s revolution, it is the author’s (perhaps unintentional) contention that Castro’s personality—his charisma—is no longer the most significant aspect of the revolution that bears his name.