Jules R. Benjamin’s book is exceptional scholarship. The work is impressive not only in its mastery of historical information but above all in its approach to the study of the happy and sad and always complex relationship between a big nation and its smaller neighbor. The book is not “a traditional diplomatic history. It attempts to uncover not only how the United States acted toward Cuba but also what elements in North American institutions and culture directed the use of its power. This work is a study in the nature of hegemony” (p. 3).
Focusing on the U.S. interest in “Americanizing” Cuba from the colonial period to the 1960s, Benjamin discovers that the U.S. project toward the island was “flawed” from its conception, for it rested on a contradiction: change Cuban society while keeping it stable. The relationship produced a host of unexpected consequences, including a sense of frustrated nationalism that eventually fueled the Revolution of 1959. The revolutionary outcome and the ensuing break between the two countries points to another irony and truism about power: big countries do not always get their way in world affairs. If the United States failed in its project it was because “the tremendous power of the United States in Cuba produced challenges to its own influence at the same time that the North American world view obscured the origins and nature of these challenges.”
This book departs from the bulk of the existing literature. It probes the uncertain territory where two countries and two cultures meet, the cutting edge of research today. Its conclusions are sobering and valuable for our own sense of the past, as well as for present and future choices in U.S.-Cuban relations.
