Carlos Alberto Montaner - Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

I bought Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution a few years ago, but didn't get around to reading it. Written originally in the 1970s, Montaner last updated it in the 1980s before the fall of the USSR, so there are a number of arguments that he makes that are no longer really relevant, and it would be interesting to see an updated version especially now that Raul Castro is at least nominally in charge of Cuba.


One of the things that I most appreciated about the book was that Montaner addresses his biases against the Castro regime upfront, and spends a fair amount of time confronting the anticipated arguments against his point of view. As someone who participated in anti-Castro actions and is now living in exile he is quite biased (as is evidenced by his somewhat tedious use of sarcasm throughout the book) but overall I think that he did a fair job of looking at the struggles that Cuba was undergoing. I especially liked that he spent an entire chapter examining the claims of progress that Castro claims Cuba had made. He admits that for some people (specifically the very poor and the black community) standards of living are indeed better than they had been, but he counters that this has been achieved by a drastic reduction in the quality of life for everyone else, including not just the rich and middle class but also the working poor. For each of the so-called successes (such as education, healthcare, race relations, and gender equality), Montaner devotes a section to looking at what has actually improved, what has been manipulated by propaganda, and what has deteriorated.

I would have liked if Montaner had spent more time examining resistance to Castro within Cuba. He spent quite a bit of space discussing how the average Cuban is dissatisfied with the regime and how many of them have fled or attempted to flee, but very little time to actual resistance. What few resistance movements he does examine are entirely ones that were backed by the US decades ago. He does not clarify whether or not with the cessation of US support for Cuban resistance all resistance ended, or if there are still some resistance movements.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the last chapter, in which Montaner examines what he believes might happen to Cuba in the decades to come. He looked at what the consequences for Cuba might be if the USSR and USA ended up on friendlier terms, but does not discuss the possibility of the complete collapse of the USSR. The closing section of the book is eerily prescient, as Montaner predicts a time in which Fidel fades into the background of Cuban governance, giving control of day-to-day operations to Raul, after which Raul begins a period of slow liberalization.

Overall, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was a very good book. It started off somewhat slowly, and there are sections that drag, but in general it is a very interesting look at Cuban society between 1959 and 1989, and I would highly recommend it.