Contesting Castro

Contesting Castro PDF

Author: Thomas G. Paterson

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780195101201

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Describes Castro's insurrection from a 1955 fund raising trip to the United States to the Cuban Revolution.

The Americano

The Americano PDF

Author: Aran Shetterly

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2007-08-10

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1565128524

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"Why do I fight here in this land so foreign to my own? Why did I come here far from my home and family?...Is it because I seek adventure? No...I am here because I believe that the most important thing for free men to do is to protect the freedom of others." —William Morgan, in a letter to Herbert Matthews at the New York Times When William Morgan was twenty-two years old, he was working as a high school janitor in Toledo Ohio. Seven years later, in 1958, he walked into a Rebel camp in the Cuban Jungle to join the revolutionaries in their fight to overthrow the corrupt Cuban president, Fulgencio Batista. They were wary of the broad-shouldered, blond-haired, blue-eyed americano but Morgan's dedication and passion, his military skill and charisma, led him to become a chief comandante in Castro's army—he was the only foreigner to hold such a rank, with the exception of Che Guevera. Vicious battles in the jungles were followed by victorious revelry in the cities. Morgan married a Cuban beauty. He single-handedly thwarted the Dominican Republic's attempt to overthrow Castro. And he was chosen to work with Castro and other high ranking Rebels to improve the quality of life for all people. This man who had lived under the radar in America was now a Cuban hero on the watch lists of several governments, all of whom wondered whose side he was really on. It all ended in 1961, when, at age thirty-two, Morgan was executed by firing squad, at the hands of Fidel Castro. Journalist Aran Shetterly takes us back to an era when democracy could have flourished in Cuba. He interviewed Morgan's friends and family and former Cuban Rebels, and examined FBI and CIA documents in search of the truth. What emerged was the true story of a young man who had never fit in but finally found his place in the world by fighting another country's war.

Contesting Castro

Contesting Castro PDF

Author: Thomas G. Paterson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-10-12

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0190282835

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Today they stand as enemies, but in the 1950s, few countries were as closely intertwined as Cuba and the United States. Thousands of Americans (including Ernest Hemingway and Errol Flynn) lived on the island, and, in the United States, dancehalls swayed to the mambo beat. The strong-arm Batista regime depended on Washington's support, and it invited American gangsters like Meyer Lansky to build fancy casinos for U.S. tourists. Major league scouts searched for Cuban talent: The New York Giants even offered a contract to a young pitcher named Fidel Castro. In 1955, Castro did come to the United States, but not for baseball: He toured the country to raise money for a revolution. Thomas Paterson tells the fascinating story of Castro's insurrection, from that early fund-raising trip to Batista's fall and the flowering of the Cuban Revolution that has bedeviled the United States for more than three decades. With evocative prose and a swift-moving narrative, Paterson recreates the love-hate relationship between the two nations, then traces the intrigue of the insurgency, the unfolding revolution, and the sources of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA assassination plots, and the missile crisis. The drama ranges from the casino blackjack tables to Miami streets; from the Eisenhower and Kennedy White Houses to the crowded deck of the Granma, the frail boat that carried the Fidelistas to Cuba from Mexico; from Batista's fortified palace to mountain hideouts where Rau'l Castro held American hostages. Drawing upon impressive international research, including declassified CIA documents and interviews, Paterson reveals how Washington, fixed on the issue of Communism, failed to grasp the widespread disaffection from Batista. The Eisenhower administration alienated Cubans by supplying arms to a hated regime, by sustaining Cuba's economic dependence, and by conspicuously backing Batista. As Batista self-destructed, U.S. officials launched third-force conspiracies in a vain attempt to block Castro's victory. By the time the defiant revolutionary leader entered Havana in early 1959, the foundation of the long, bitter hostility between Cuba and the United States had been firmly laid. Since the end of the Cold War, the futures of Communist Cuba and Fidel Castro have become clouded. Paterson's gripping and timely account explores the origins of America's troubled relationship with its island neighbor, explains what went wrong and how the United States "let this one get away," and suggests paths to the future as the Clinton administration inches toward less hostile relations with a changing Cuba.

Che

Che PDF

Author: Fidel Castro

Publisher: Ocean Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 192088825X

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Castro's own description of the historic political partnership that changed the face of Cuba and Latin America. He vividly portrays Che - the man, the revolutionary and the thinker - recounting in detail his last days with Che in Cuba and giving a frank assessment of the Bolivian mission.

To Speak the Truth

To Speak the Truth PDF

Author: Fidel Castro

Publisher: Pathfinder Press (NY)

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Castro and Guevara explain why the U.S. government is determined to destroy the example set by the Cuban revolution and why their effort will fail.

My Early Years

My Early Years PDF

Author: Fidel Castro

Publisher: Ocean Press (AU)

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13:

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This is the first autobiographical selection to be published in English that gives a glimpse of Fidel - the boy and the young man - who was to become one of the outstanding, if controversial, political leaders of the century. The book brings together a range of interviews and talks in which Fidel Castro speaks candidly about his family background, his religious education and political influences.

Fighting over Fidel

Fighting over Fidel PDF

Author: Rafael Rojas

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1400880025

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New York in the 1960s was a hotbed for progressive causes of every stripe, including women's liberation, civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War—and the Cuban Revolution. Fighting over Fidel brings this turbulent cultural moment to life by telling the story of the New York intellectuals who championed and opposed Castro’s revolution. Setting his narrative against the backdrop of the ideological confrontation of the Cold War and the breakdown of relations between Washington and Havana, Rafael Rojas examines the lives and writings of such figures as Waldo Frank, Carleton Beals, C. Wright Mills, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, and Jose Yglesias. He describes how Castro’s Cuba was hotly debated in publications such as the New York Times, Village Voice, Monthly Review, and Dissent, and how Cuban socialism became a rallying cry for groups such as the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the Hispanic Left. Fighting over Fidel shows how intellectuals in New York interpreted and wrote about the Cuban experience, and how the Left’s enthusiastic embrace of Castro’s revolution ended in bitter disappointment by the close of the explosive decade of the 1960s.

Cartas Del Presidio

Cartas Del Presidio PDF

Author: Fidel Castro

Publisher: Bold Type Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1560259833

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Early in Ann Louise Bardach's Cuban voyage she came across Cartas de Presidio or The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro. Edited by Luis Conte Aguero, who was the recipient of most of these letters, they are cited in every important work from Hugh Thomas' opus Cuba to Tad Szulc's Fidel biography, and everything in between and since. These twenty-one letters (nine to Conte Aguero, six to his late sister and close collaborator, Lidia, one to his wife Mirta, one to his comrade in combat, Melba Hernandez letters, one to the great scholar Jorge Manach) are regarded as the single most valuable and revelatory document regarding Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Never before published in English, these letters were written when Castro was imprisoned for his failed attack on the Moncada from 1953 to 1955 and reveal a man of spectacular ambition and steely determination. A man, who despite being incarcerated to serve a lengthy prison term, never wavers in his confidence that he will one day rule Cuba.

Cuba at the Crossroads

Cuba at the Crossroads PDF

Author: Fidel Castro

Publisher: Ocean Press (AU)

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13:

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English texts of Castro's speeches given between Nov. 25, 1994 and April 30, 1996, which first appeared in the Cuban weekly Granma International.