What everyone needs to know about Cuba.

BOOK REVIEW
'Cuba' by Julia E. Sweig
What everyone needs to know about Cuba.
By Marjorie Miller
May 24, 2009
Cuba

What Everyone Needs to Know
Julia E. Sweig

Oxford University Press: 304 pp., $16.95 paper

Despite decades of heated rhetoric from Washington and Miami, most of
the time Americans don't give a lot of thought to Cuba. Then, once or
twice a decade, some great drama erupts on the island 90 miles off
Florida, sending great waves of fear, shock or refugees across the
straits to remind Americans of its existence -- until the ruckus dies
down and Cuba again fades from U.S. consciousness.

Not so in the reverse, however. For most of Cuba's history, and
certainly since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro's Communist
government to power, U.S. policy has penetrated nearly every facet of
life in Cuba, making it virtually impossible for average Cubans to
forget about the superpower next door.

This is driven home in "Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know," Julia E.
Sweig's forthcoming portrait of the country, where even chapters on
domestic issues are as much about Cuba's relationship with the United
States as they are about Cuba itself. Beginning with the Cuban war of
independence from Spain through the end of Castro's rule in 2006, the
long arm of the United States has reached across to the island.

For those Americans who have not followed Cuba, or who might start now
that the Obama administration has signaled a new beginning in relations
between the two countries, this is an excellent and refreshingly
evenhanded primer. Part of the Oxford University Press' "What Everyone
Needs to Know" series, it is presented in a question-and-answer format
that, while not leaving much room to capture the evocative sights and
smells of Cuba or the character of its people, packs a phenomenal amount
of complex history into clear and simple prose. It also seeks to explain
why the Cuban revolution, battered as it might be, has outlasted the
Cold War, nine U.S. presidents and even the decades-long presidency of
Castro. Part of the answer lies in Cuba's defiance of and ability to
adapt to U.S. power.

As Sweig tells it, the David-versus-Goliath mentality that is central to
Cuban nationalism can be traced back to the writings of Cuban exile and
patriot José Martí, who advocated independence from Spain while warning
against U.S. interference. Indeed, the United States intervened and,
soon after defeating the Spanish in 1898, began a military occupation
that was a humiliation to Cubans who had fought for independence. While
the occupation ended after the turn of the last century, the U.S. via
the Platt Amendment of 1901 limited Cuban sovereignty for decades until
a revolt by an obscure Cuban army official, Fulgencio Batista, led to
its abolishment. Nonetheless, U.S. companies controlled 40% of the Cuban
sugar industry, 50% of its railways and 90% of the telephone and
electric services as Batista ruled first behind the scenes and then at
the forefront following a military coup in 1952.

Enter Castro. Along with his brother Raúl and a band of 135 insurgents,
he launched an armed insurrection on July 26, 1953. The attack on the
Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba was a failure that landed the
survivors in jail, but they were released in an amnesty a couple of
years later and relaunched their insurgency with their Argentine friend
Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After just 22 months of fighting, Batista fled
and much of the pro-U.S. elite soon followed. Castro rolled into Havana
in January 1959.

Sweig argues that Castro's eventual move into the orbit of the Soviet
Union was as much a reaction to U.S. opposition to the Cuban revolution
as it was driven by shared ideology. The new regime wanted a
redistribution of wealth, which was by definition at the expense of U.S.
interests, but it also wanted national independence; instead, the
country ended up trading one imperial power for another. It wasn't
always a happy marriage either, as, for example, when Castro's efforts
to wean Cuba of its sugar economy were reversed by Soviet demand for the
crop.

Castro created a one-party state that consolidated control of land, the
economy and the media in the hands of the Communist Party and
government. Limited room for dissent diminished even further in the face
of U.S.-backed challenges to the Castro regime, such as the failed 1961
Bay of Pigs invasion and at least eight CIA-backed attempts to
assassinate Castro. "For Cuba's new leaders, the liberal democratic
order came to be seen as central to Cuba's vulnerability to capitalist
exploitation and political control by the United States," Sweig writes.

The worst chapter in the two countries' relations, the 1962 Cuban
missile crisis, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war until, as
Sweig notes, the United States and the Soviet Union cut a deal that left
Castro fulminating and Cuba watching from the sidelines.

Cuba under Castro was always a little island with big ambitions. Sweig
argues that Cuba's long history of foreign engagements, helping
revolutionaries and liberation movements from Africa to Central America,
stemmed from the leadership's own ideology (and perhaps the leader's own
ego) more than from Soviet expansionism. American strategists, she
writes, "never really grasped Havana's capacity to make its own foreign
policy decisions." The collapse of the Soviet Union and the cutoff of
subsidies hobbled Cuba's economy in the early 1990s, causing a period of
severe hunger, blackouts and despair, but it also released Cuba from the
Soviet hold. Defying predictions, the Castro government survived these
hardships by allowing tens of thousands of rafters to flee the island,
letting off political steam. But it also survived because the revolution
was homegrown. Even amid growing skepticism and frustration, Sweig
writes, "many Cubans felt a sense of lasting ownership of their revolution."

Still trying to relieve the economic pressure, the government eventually
legalized possession of American dollars that Cubans received from
relatives in the United States. At the same time, Castro resisted
further market openings. "Fidel never let anyone forget his profound
allergy to the profit, accumulation, avarice, and social inequality
inherent in the market," she writes.

Nor did he let up on dissenters. Even now, with Castro in the wings and
Raúl in the presidential palace, Cuba watchers should not expect a
radical transformation, Sweig writes. Whatever changes might take place,
Cuba "in the short term is unlikely to look like multi-party political
democracy in the liberal Western world."

Miller is an editorial writer at The Times.

'Cuba' by Julia E. Sweig - Los Angeles Times (26 May 2009)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-julia-sweig24-2009may24,0,5097015.story