Antoni Kapcia
Cuba in Revolution
Essentially this book was written in an attempt to explain to the interested lay reader why a curious phenomenon still called 'the Cuban Revolution' had managed to survive for so long, despite everything that had happened to it or been thrown against it over five decades. Whatever one feels about the Revolution, its greatest achievement may well be the simple fact of its survival against all the odds. And let us remember what the 'odds' have been: almost five decades of US economic sanctions—still in existence and now easily the longest sanctions in history, repeated crises, the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Socialist Bloc in 1989-91, and finally the slow retirement of Fidel Castro between 2006 and 2008.
I intended the book to go beyond the usual explanations–and, I think, somewhat hackneyed or clichéd explanations–i.e. that the survival of the Cuban Revolution is due to Soviet support, fierce repression, some sort of mindless popular loyalty to the charismatic authority of a single leader, and so on.
At best, those reasons can only explain part of the longevity. But for the most part they simply succeed in distorting our understanding. Above all, those explanations miss the enormous complexity of the political system which has been built up in Cuba since 1959.
The book itself was actually based on my inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Nottingham in 2004. In that lecture, 'Reassessing the Cuban Revolution: past, present – and future', I managed to predict that Fidel Castro would stand down in 2009. I got the date wrong by one year, but, in my defence, Castro’s retirement was accelerated by a serious illness which no one foresaw. That prediction was based on my reading of the process of Revolution and the politics of Cuba—a reading which, I hope, has gone into this book.
Editor: Erind Pajo
Cuba in Revolution
Antoni Kapcia Cuba in Revolution: A History Since the Fifties Reaktion Books 272 pages, 8.4 x 5.4 inches ISBN 978 1861894021
Available here →March 31, 2009
20090331-kapcia-antoni-cuba-revolution-history-since-fifties-1-1
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Simon Collins
Antoni Kapcia
Antoni Kapcia has been researching and writing prolifically on Cuba since 1971. His books include Cuba. Island of Dreams, about the workings of ideology and political myth, and the cultural history Havana: The Making of Cuban Culture. After studying at University College London (B.A. and Ph.D.), Kapcia lectured in Latin American studies (1974-2003) at what eventually became the University of Wolverhampton, then moved to the University of Nottingham where he become Professor of Latin American History and Director of the Centre for Research on Cuba / Cuba Research Forum. He was made Profesor Invitado at the University of Havana in 1998.
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The Cuban Revolution survived on loyalty generated by cubanía, the belief in an independent and socially just Cuba.
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