Month: February 2019

After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba’s Revolution by Brian Latell, “A Book Review”

For a leader to emerge, the only thing needed is the need for a leader.
– Fidel Castro, 1985

After the extremely laudatory Anita’s Revolution (LINK, review posted February 4 2019), readers will find this review offers a quite different “take” on the Cuban revolution. After Fidel, written by former CIA agent Brian Latell, colours the Cuban revolution with American political perspective.

In his analysis, Latell contrasts the characters and personalities of Fidel and his brother Raul Castro. To his credit, he also identifies some of the historic and root causes leading up to the revolution, even reaching farther back to the Imperialist American ideals that led to Guantánamo as U.S. territory and to the Helms-Burton law that rubbed further salt in the wounds of Cubans. These issues, along with the U.S.-enabled Batista dictatorship, set the stage for revolution. However, the bulk of After Fidel, focuses on Fidel’s leadership since the overthrow of Batista and the revolutionary government of the Castro brothers. The analysis is detailed and gradually builds to increased insight into Raul’s governance role and style projects into musings about Cuba and U.S. relations After Fidel as the title makes clear.

Published in 2005, projections were bases on informed analysis and the bias of governments. Now, with a bit of history on the reader’s side, we have a clear picture of the actions and reactions of a Raul-led Cuban government, along with the intricacies of U.S. unfolding policies. However, this does not take away from the intriguing story that the former CIA analyst sets out in the 289-pages, which includes references and index.

After spending much of four years in Cuba plus a subsequent visit, I have my own Canadian and personal biases. Nevertheless, I can recommend After Fidel for its documentation of events as well as for the analysis into the characters of the brothers and how their personalities and individual strengths played into a partnership that survived through to Fidel’s death and set the stage for the shift that has taken place as power was transferred. An updated afterward by Latell would be useful and it is now time for newer policy projections about both Guantánamo and the strangle-hold of the Helms-Burton law.

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Available through your local bookstore or online: After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba’s Revolution

For a recent article that focuses on Guantánamo, please see “A Brief History of Guantanamo Bay, America’s ‘Idyllic Prison Camp’”

 

Anita’s Revolution by Shirley Langer

Anita’s Revolution targets young adult readers. It is a coming of awareness story—both in a personal context as well as a social one. It is also an historical fiction and a teen adventure. But travellers to Cuba of all ages will enjoy the story and gain insights into a past no longer evident, yet still in the memories of people they will meet. Writers of YA fiction will be interested in figuring out how Shirley Langer gets under the skin of her protagonist and how she creates a time and place that readers can experience. Pay attention, too, to her language, pacing, and the literary techniques she employs to keep youth interested and turning pages.

Anita, the protagonist of Anita’s Revolution, is a young teen in 1960 when Fidel Castro announces to the United Nations and the world that Cuba will stamp out illiteracy by the end of 1961. To accomplish this extraordinary goal, he elicits the aid of Cuba’s youth. In 1961 more than 100,000 volunteers answered the call—many of them students, along with teachers and others. They streamed across the island with energy and enthusiasm. The fictional Anita is one of them.

Anita must overcome her own fear given the real danger of volunteering, since counter-revolutionaries have killed a young brigadista. She must also overcome the concerns of her parents. She joins forces with her brother and they win their parents over, even if a bit reluctantly. With others from her school, Anita sets off for training and for the adventure of her life. Anita is a determined girl. Besides the literacy focus, Anita’s Revolution, takes us along on a journey from the innocence of a protected childhood to the awakening of a young woman.

Besides Anita’s personal story, Anita’s Revolution is a social justice story, and a story that demonstrates the very positive difference youth can make in a society. She arrived, not exactly welcomed by the people she would teach to read and write. But when she left, she left family behind.

Anita returned to her suburb of Havana knowing that more needed to be accomplished and wondering how she’d adjust into her relatively privileged life. The story doesn’t end like a fairy tale; it presents a believable girl in a real situation with the ideals and dreams of youth, but the bigger job beyond literacy isn’t finished.

Shirley Langer lived in Cuba for five years in the 1960s and writes with the immediacy of knowing a time and place. She writes with the knowledge of having lived among the people of whom she writes. During my research, I learned that she also lived for a period in the Bay of Quinte region (Ontario, Canada), which is my home. Langer has lived at Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) since 1995.

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Available through your local bookstore or online: Anita’s Revolution

Cuba aficionados will also want to see my review of A Simple Habana Melody for a pre-revolutionary novel. And perhaps two of my travel blogs: A Cultural Portal: Windows and Doors and scroll through my travel blog.

Readers and writers of YA fiction, will want to take another look at The Great and the Small, a YA novel by A.T. Balsara that I reviewed last February.