Contesting Castro
Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LAMSADM%UCONNVM.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu)
Tue, 08 Mar 94 15:15:04 EST
Thomas G. Paterson, a faculty associate of the Center for Latin American and
Caribbean Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, has just published
CONTESTING CASTRO: THE UNITED STATES AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
(Oxford University Press, 1994, $30.00). Based on international research in
documentary and manuscript collections and oral histories in Britain, Canada,
Cuba and the United States, this book explores the sources of the troubled U.S.
-Cuba relationship, especially as it took form in the critical 1956-1959
period. In this book, which Professor Louis A. Perez, Jr. calls a "magnificent
study," Paterson presents a detailed narrative that moves from Sierra Maestra
hideouts to White House meetings, from Havana casinos to Miami rallies, from
hostage-taking to CIA plotting. Paterson's analysis probes why a hegemonic
United States that launched several "third force" conspiracies failed to block
Fidel Castro's rise to power, and failed again to upend the revolution that
followed. The roles of Cold-War international relations, anit-Communism,
regional associations, domestic politics and ideologies, terrain, timing and
prominent individuals such as Castro, Batista, Eisenhower, and Kennedy are
weighed in CONTESTING CASTRO. Professor Walter LaFeber says "the book will
become standard on the subject" because of its "sure grasp of this fascinating,
instructive story."