Lords of the Mountain examines social banditry during the modernization of Cuba after the Ten Years’ War (1868-78), with a particular focus on the marginalization of traditional cultivators under the growing hegemony of modern sugar plantations owned by North American investors. It provides a systematic overview of the structural context of rural displacement, with statistical analyses of economic development, class structure, political organization, and demographic changes. Perez’s analysis of lawlessness and rebellion is particularly valuable, less for its theoretical argument about Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of social banditry than for its presentation of data. The analysis shows the complexity of shifting historical constellations that determined the choices of social actors at particular moments. It examines how given acts were socially defined as criminal or not by different groups and indicates how historical conjunctures affect whether banditry becomes fused with genuine revolutionary movements or not.
Within such a broad range of variables, the author brings out the social component of banditry in the rural communities and its ties to governmental authorities. Bandits were less successful to the degree that their protests were merely “social” and not simultaneously “political. Such ambivalence is a key characteristic of primitive rebels. The systematic and consistent destruction of plantations manifested the rational and class-based component of their movement.
With the gradual reestablishment of political order, a small group of desesperados retreated to the mountains, at the margin of the economy, the polity, and the law. It was this group’s heirs who, decades later, constituted the social base of Fidel Castro’s army. The sketch of these developments in the epilogue shows that in 1958 primitive rebellion became organized; its social and political components were joined.
The book is thoroughly documented and elegantly written. It should appeal to a broad audience interested in general problems related to the colonial heritage, social transformation under peripheral capitalist development, and the particular conditions under which social banditry expresses broader social turmoil with a revolutionary potential.
