Reinventing the Revolution?

A Contemporary Cuban Reader. Reinventing the Revolution
Edited by Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk and William M. LeoGrande
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008
413 pages.

It is always difficult to achieve coherence in a book that is based on a compilation of articles by different authors. This is especially so when the work deals with separate disciplines, authors with incompatible political perspectives and contributors from two countries that have been in dispute for almost 50 years. Despite this daunting challenge and forty-nine chapters, this amalgamation of Cuban politics, economics, foreign policy, social issues and culture leaves even the experienced cubanologist feeling that she or he has been on an essential crash course to understand contemporary Cuba.

All the contributions are good, especially if understood in the spirit of the diversity of the book. Some are exceptional, starting with the introduction: 'History as Prologue. Cuba before the Special Period'. Every analyst and student of Cuba knows how difficult it is to provide a synopsis of Cuban history as a lead into a study of some aspect of Cuba's revolutionary process. However, this anonymous section performs the task successfully and leaves the reader eager to engage with the rest of the book. Sub-introductions to the various sections are also informative and helpful.

Saul Landau's short piece on Fidel Castro, 'July 26. History Absolved Him. Now What?' is very provocative and one wishes he would have gone on to answer his own question more fully. In the politics section the Cubans - Rafael Hernández, Haraldo Dilla and Gerado González - write insightful chapters on Cuban democracy and local government respectively. The economics section, which is the weakest part of the book, produces perhaps the best chapter of all, by Margarite Rose Jiménez, entitled 'The Political Economy of Leisure'. She has assembled very effectively a mix of cultural, economic and psychological issues in Cuba that I have given passing thought to, but never subjected to analysis. I feel that this chapter by itself improved my understanding of Cuba. Jiménez' essay is complemented by Susan Eckstein's excellent study of the 'dollarization' of the Cuban economy. Other outstanding chapters include Soraya Castro's analysis of US-Cuban relations after 9/11; Julia Sweig on Castro, Maria Isabel Dominguez on Cuban youth and Michael Chanan on Cuban cinema.

Although I congratulate the editors and contributors for producing an informative, well-organised and timely book, the exercise leaves me feeling that there has been an omission. Cuba's internal process of change will decide the island's future, but this should not just be treated as a subject of neutral study or interpreted as an attempt to find a measured accommodation with the 'New World Order' (1). One must also consider the Cuban socialist alternative to capitalist globalisation which is the revolution's cause célèbre, especially considering that Cuba is now becoming deeply involved with anti-neoliberal progressive governments and new social movements in Latin America - not to mention the wider failings of the world financial system and its possible implications.

Where then are the chapters on Cuba and Venezuela; Cuba and Latin America; the massive critical output by Fidel Castro (except chapter seventeen) and other leading Cubans on globalization and its effects (2); and most importantly the relevance of Cuba's socialist experiment, with its emphasis on social justice, in an increasingly unequal world? Even the chapter by Cuban economist Pedro Monreal seems to assume that Cuba is seeking some kind of accommodation with the West based on liberal economic 'logic'. As for the tantalizingly titled chapter 'Cuba's Counter Hegemonic Strategy' by Michael Erisman, remarkably, globalisation does not even get a mention.

Cuba has always sought to legitimize and protect its revolution through integration with like-minded processes and movements throughout the world. Now that the stakes are so high, and the challenge so great, both for Cuban socialism and indeed for progressive forces throughout the world, why does the Cuban revolution continue to be treated either as an internal issue of US foreign policy or a curious socialist anomaly that has failed to notice the 'end of history'? (3)

George Lambie is Co-Director of the International Public Administration Unit, De Montfort University, UK and visiting Professor of the University of Havana.


Notes

(1) See for example, Noam Chomsky (1996)World Orders Old and New, Colombia University Press and Anne-Marie Slaughter (2004) A New World Order, Princeton University Press.

(2) See reports of the 10th International Conference on Globalization and Development Problems, March 2008.

(3) See Francis Fukuyama (1992)The end of history and the last man, London: Penguin.


Copyright

Copyright for this work is held jointly between George Lambie and the International Journal of Cuban Studies under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative 3.0 Licence