This thoughtful work attempts to bridge the 1959 barrier in Cuban studies, integrating an analysis of both pre- and post-1959 eras into a seamless cloth of the Cuban experience. The author laments our past tendency to separate ourselves and the field into two camps, artificially divided. Her book is a testament to the heightened understanding that can be achieved when this error is avoided. Clearly, the Castro government has wrestled with old questions and problems in Cuban history.
In the introduction and the first two chapters, Marifeli Pérez-Stable isolates five fundamental characteristics of the revolution for special analysis. They are mediated sovereignty (or U.S. influence), sugar monoculture, uneven modernization, the crisis of political authority, and the strength and importance of the labor movement. She contends that post-1940 political compromises that allowed informal consultations with the United States damaged Cuban governments by prolonging U.S. hegemony. Cuba’s traditional ills were perpetuated, the labor movement co-opted, and economic modernization postponed.
The subsequent five chapters focus on the 1959-92 period, beginning with the creation of a socialist revolution from 1959 to 1961 (chapter 3). Pérez-Stable attempts to explain how this could be feasible at this time when it had not been earlier: U.S. mediation ceased to be possible, and organized labor lost its clout. Here we discover the evolving importance of Fidel-Patria-Revolution, an identity that the regime persistently fostered in the public mind. Chapter 4 treats revolutionary economic policies and their results, noting the country’s failure to achieve a fundamental departure from sugar monoculture or external dependence. We can see why the fall of the Soviet Union had such an impact on Cuba.
In chapters 5 and 6, Pérez-Stable traces the fate of the Communist Party, the CTC, and the Federation of Cuban Women from 1961 through 1986, when the present crisis commenced. She divides the analysis at 1970-71, when institutionalization was attempted; before then, these organizations had exhibited some independence. Chapter 7 guides us through the 1986-90 rectification process, which witnessed Castro’s reaction to Gorbachev’s reforms. Here the author recognizes the importance of the leader’s determination to retain centralized authority above all other objectives. Hence the abandonment (temporary, as we now know) of experiments with market reforms, which decentralized control and limited the party’s prerogatives.
In the conclusions, Pérez-Stable brings the historical analysis to its apogee, noting the similarity of the political crises experienced by Machado, Batista, and Castro. There are also differences, of course: under Castro, Cuba has achieved higher levels of equality, and the opposition remains weak and disorganized. The effort continues to maintain the salience of Fidel-Patria-Revolution, though the island’s youth are less inclined to conformity. Pérez-Stable warns that if the party elite remains too dogmatically tied to its old beliefs and methods, the probable result will be the destruction of the revolution’s achievements in the conflict to follow.
