FIDEL CASTRO

by Herbert L. Matthews ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1969

Matthews was the New York Times reporter who notified the world in 1957 that Castro was alive and well in the Sierra Maestra. Since then, Matthews has repeatedly revisited Castro and sustained a battle with Theodore Draper over the nature of the ongoing Cuban revolution. The book is a polemical biography of that revolution, viewed as Fidel's baby. Matthews' efforts at self-justification are engagingly earnest. To Cubanologists he recommends intellectual humility and less literal interpretations of public statements. He draws on a mammoth collection of scholarly and primary sources, which he himself sometimes uses uncritically (Debray, for instance). And he deals too casually with many major issues: the class structure of pre-revolutionary Cuba, the guerrilla force's relation to the party, material versus ""moral"" incentives to production. Contra Draper and others, he argues that Castro is not unwashed or antireligious; that he didn't promise one kind of revolution and make another; that Castro was not a Marxist-Leninist all along and Communism was not a cause of the revolution but a result. Matthews describes the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis as Cubans saw them, recording an extraordinary conversation he had with JFK in between. His remarks on the Alliance for Progress, Russo-Cuban relations, and the unique powerlessness of the Communist Party are provocative and incomplete. He is quite capable of calling Cuba ""a totalitarian dictatorship,"" yet not only lauding its accomplishments with sincerity but reminding Yankees, that, e.g., middle-class refugees were opposed to the new racial equality. The book will take flak from all sides--only one of the lesser reasons it's well worth reading.

Pub Date: May 1, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION