Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent...

If you want to discover the remarkable history of an effort that should never have succeeded, then keep reading...Cuba had only just gained its independence when the country found itself in a brutal tug-of-war between dictator after dictator.The Americans that had been so intensely involved in liberating it from the grasp of the Spanish quickly began to exploit it using the Platt Amendment; even after the amendment was abrogated, Cuban presidents...

Explore the Captivating History of Fidel CastroFidel Castro. Depending on whom you ask, the name can inspire revulsion, hatred, admiration, incredulity, awe, fear, or even love. His story is one that has changed the course of the history of the world and the face of the island of Cuba.Castro was more than just a politician. His is a story that involves heroic voyages through turbulent oceans, affairs with young women from all over the world, spies,...

Author Desi Sanchez, a native of Cuba, was twenty-two years old when the Bay of Pigs incident took place there in 1961. He had made the decision to side against Fidel Castro long before the confrontation and served as a merchant marine in the SS Houston during the invasion. In 2010, Desi Sanchez received an honorary crew member certificate of the DDE-510 Eaton. Havana was Desi Sanchez's home. He was born there, grew up there, went to school there,...

Vintage U.S.-made cars on the streets of Havana provide a common representation of Cuba. Journalist Richard Schweid, who traveled throughout the island to research the story of motor vehicles in Cuba today and yesterday, gets behind the wheel and behind the stereotype in this colorful chronicle of cars, buses, and trucks. In his captivating, sometimes gritty, voice, Schweid blends previously untapped historical sources with his personal experiences,...

Malin, a Russian literature professor, is sent to translate between Cuban doctors and children sent from the USSR for medical treatment. Torn from the abstract world of academia and forced into the relentlessly real world of medicine, Malin becomes increasingly depressed. When he meets a child who tells him a story, Malin connects with the kids and finds his way through. Just as he adapts to his new job, the Berlin Wall falls and Cuba enters the deepest...

Focusing on a period of history rocked by four armed movements, Lillian Guerra traces the origins of Cubans' struggles to determine the meaning of their identity and the character of the state, from Cuba's last war of independence in 1895 to the consolidation of U.S. neocolonial hegemony in 1921. Guerra argues that political violence and competing interpretations of the "social unity" proposed by Cuba's revolutionary patriot, Jose Marti, reveal conflicting...

Daniel A. Rodriguez's history of a newly independent Cuba shaking off the U.S. occupation focuses on the intersection of public health and politics in Havana. While medical policies were often used to further American colonial power, in Cuba, Rodriguez argues, they evolved into important expressions of anticolonial nationalism as Cuba struggled to establish itself as a modern state. A younger generation of Cuban medical reformers, including physicians,...

In this cultural history of Cuba during the United States' brief but influential occupation from 1898 to 1902--a key transitional period following the Spanish-American War--Marial Iglesias Utset sheds light on the complex set of pressures that guided the formation and production of a burgeoning Cuban nationalism. Drawing on archival and published sources, Iglesias illustrates the process by which Cubans maintained and created their own culturally...

"These are new Cubans. Twenty-first-century Marielitos. Balseros, as the bartender had referred to them. I know, because my mom tells me that these are the kinds of Cubans I need to stay away from." In eight captivating stories, In This World of Ultraviolet Light-winner of the 2021 Don Belton Prize-navigates tensions between Cubans, Cuban Americans, and the larger Latinx community. Though these stories span many locations-from a mulch manufacturing...