5 Decades Of The Cuban Revolution

"Trutie's photographs, most of them never before seen, capture everything - the Revolution's soldiers and firing squads, President John F. Kennedy's 1962 address in Miami to Cuban exiles, and Brigade 2506, the liberation army that sought to overthrow Castro. These images vividly document the inner life of a revolution with candid images of rebels dining together, jeeps moving through rustic, muddy camps, and Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara walking side by side in a reflective moment. Trutie's camera also sees the tragic side of revolutionary activity - burning sugar mills, jungle hospitals, and corpses with pockets turned inside out, lying in open graves. These raw, unfiltered photos, combined with the narrative text of Teo A. Babun and noted Cuban-American historian Victor Triay, offer a one-of-a-kind, intimate eyewitness account of the Cuban Revolution as it unfolded."--BOOK JACKET.

This is the first book in more than three decades to offer a complete and chronological history of revolutionary Cuba, including the years of rebellion that led to the revolution. Beginning with Batista’s coup in 1952, which catalyzed the rebels, and bringing the reader to the present-day transformations initiated by Raúl Castro, Luis Martínez-Fernández provides a balanced interpretive synthesis of the major topics of contemporary Cuban history. Expertly weaving the myriad historic, social, and political forces that shaped the island nation during this period, Martínez-Fernández examines the circumstances that allowed the revolution to consolidate in the early 1960s, the Soviet influence throughout the latter part of the Cold War, and the struggle to survive the catastrophic Special Period of the 1990s after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. He tackles the island’s chronic dependence on sugar production, which started with the plantations centuries ago and continues to shape culture and society. He analyzes the revolutionary pendulum that continues to swing between idealism and pragmatism, focusing on its effects on the everyday lives of the Cuban people, and—bucking established trends in Cuban scholarship—Martínez-Fernández systematically integrates the Cuban diaspora into the larger discourse of the revolution. Concise, well written, and accessible, this book is an indispensable survey of the history and themes of the socialist revolution that forever changed Cuba and the world.

Essays on cultural change, economic reform, political development and foreign policy initiated by the 1959 revolution in Cuba - analyses educational policy, health services, food security, social status of women, and evolution of the Catholic Church; examines the emergence of popular culture, film industry and literature; looks at economic policy, economic planning, the political system, the legal system, working class, etc.; discusses international relations, partic. The role of USA and role of USSR. References, statistical tables.

In the years since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, eleven men have served as president of the United States, arguably the most powerful nation on earth. Yet none of them has been able to effect any significant change in the stalemate between the United States and Cuba, its closest neighbor not to share a land border. Fifty Years of Revolution features contributions from an international Who's Who gallery of leading scholars. The volume adopts a uniquely nonpartisan attitude, a departure from this topic's generally divisive nature. Emerging from a series of meetings, conference panels, and lectures, the book coheres more strongly than the typical essay collection. Organized to analyze--not describe--Cuba’s foreign relations, the work examines sanctions, the embargo, regime change, Guantánamo, the exile community, and more. Drawing from personal experiences as well as recently declassified documents, these essays update, summarize, and explain one of the prickliest political issues in the Western Hemisphere today.

When the Cuban Revolution succeeded in overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, rebel commander Fidel Castro declared, "The Revolution begins now." In the following decades, Castro remade Cuba into a one-party socialist.