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Thinking for Ourselves

Leading Cuban intellectual and militant of the revolutionary generation discusses his path through the 26 July Movement to Batista’s overthrow and founding Pensamiento Crítico, a beacon of critical Marxist thought throughout Latin America.

Unexpected Cuba

Alone among the ex-Comecon countries, Cuba has forged a distinctive path since 1991—not transition to capitalism but careful adjustment to external change, safeguarding its gains in social provision and national sovereignty. Emily Morris challenges the view that Havana will have to embrace the market and submit to foreign capital if it is to survive.

Cuba’s Longue Durée

Alistair Hennessy on Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History. Town and country, race and immigration, revolution and isolation, in Spain’s pearl of the Antilles, from Columbus to the heirs of Castro.

Cuba in Africa

Victoria Brittain on Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions. The remarkable record of Cuban assistance to African insurgencies, in Belgian, French and Portuguese colonial zones alike.

Cuba under the Hammer

How has the Cuban Revolution withstood the American siege at the end of the century? In the wake of the Elián González affair, Robin Blackburn looks at exile politics in Miami, the record of the White House, and the scene in Havana.

Play It Again, or, Old-Time Cuban Music on the Screen

“A friend of mine, a Cuban film director, writes to me about visiting the Salzburg Festival. After enjoying operas by Berlioz and Mozart, he says, the big surprise was the Festival’s closing event, a concert by the Cuban old-timers La Vieja Trova Santiaguera, chosen by the Festival’s special . . .” read more

Che Guevera and the Congo

“It’s Che Guevara time again in the pleasure gardens of the West, as publishers and television companies gear themselves up for the thirtieth anniversary of the guerrilla leader’s death in 1997. We’ve already had the early motorcycle diaries, published all over Europe in 1995, and no less than . . .” read more

Cuba and Southern Africa

“After eight months of talks in Geneva between Angola, Cuba, South Africa and the United States, 1988 is drawing to a close with the distinct possibility that Pretoria may have been forced to end ten years of procrastination and redraw its regional strategy in such a way as . . .” read more

Operation Carlota

“The United States first made known the presence of Cuban troops in Angola in an official statement of 24 November 1975. Three months later, during a short visit to Venezuela, Henry Kissinger remarked in private to President Carlos Andrés Pérez: ‘Our intelligence services have grown so bad that . . .” read more

Che Guevara

“Che communicated by actions; and his words were weapons in the struggle. In the Renaissance, there were ‘universal men’, who were great in art, science and literature. In the 20th century, politics—understood as man’s mastering of his own destiny in history—is the true form of universality. Che was . . .” read more

Vietnam Must Not Stand Alone

“Now is the time of the furnaces, and only light should be seen.” read more

Culture in Cuba

“I flew out to Cuba in January as guest of the Casa de las Américas, an organization roughly corresponding to the British Council, but with a lively publishing house appended, also a first-class literary magazine. I was invited to form one of a jury of five to judge . . .” read more

Prologue to the Cuban Revolution

“The Cuban revolution is now widely recognized as an event of world-historical importance. For the first time there has been a socialist revolution in the Americas. For the first time the new forms of colonialism have been unequivocally rejected. For the first time a socialist revolution has been . . .” read more

Cuba Week

“The sighs of relief have been let off; Wall Street has recovered; the “guilty” have recanted (like Philip Toynbee who wrote to The Times to express his “disgust at the wanton act of aggression committed in that island [Cuba] by Russia”). The pundits have instructed—not least Sir William . . .” read more

Cuba

“Dear Sir,” read more

Notes on the Cuban Dilemma

“only those who did not follow Mr. Kennedy’s pronouncements on Cuba in the days before his election were surprised by the American intervention. For Mr. Kennedy has never wavered on Cuba. When his Administration undertook yet another agonising reappraisal of foreign policy, Cuba remained the one territory . . .” read more

Cuba: The Present Reality

“To analyse the Cuban revolution is one thing: to understand its present reality and its possibilities, another. This interview helps to fill out the actual conditions of the revolution, and highlights the problems which it faces. The speaker is Saul Landau, one of the editors of the . . .” read more

Cuba: America’s Lost Plantations

“This long extract is taken from two articles which originally appeared in the American magazine, Liberation. They are by one of its editors, Dave Dellinger, who spent some time recently in Cuba, and who discusses, in this article, both the exciting achievements of the Cuban Revolution and the . . .” read more

The Siege of Cuba

“the most important events in the international socialist movement in 1960 took place in Cuba. And it may be that the most important event of 1961 will be the consolidation or overthrow of Cuba’s socialist revolution.” read more

History Will Absolve Me...

“. . . As a result of low and illegal tactics by the will of those who rule today, and the weakness on the part of those who judge, here I am in this little room in the Civil Hospital, where I have been brought up to be . . .” read more