Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution

By Thomas C. Wright

Book Overview

After Fidel Castro's guerrilla war against dictator Fulgencio Batista triumphed on January 1, 1959, the Cuban Revolution came to be seen as a major watershed in Latin American history. The three decades following Castro's victory gradually marginalized Cuba from the Latin American mainstream. But, as long-time Cuba observer Thomas C. Wright shows, the Cuban Revolution owed its vast influence in Latin America to the fact that it embodied the aspirations and captured the imaginations of Latin America's masses as no other political movement had ever done.

After reviewing the background to Castro's Cuban Revolution, Wright examines the radical social and economic transformation of Cuba and Castro's efforts to actively promote insurrection against established governments and bourgeois power throughout Latin America. He then analyzes, in detail, the military revolution in Peru, the Allende government in Chile, and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Then Wright looks at the phenomena that affected all or major parts of Latin America--the impact of fidelismo, U.S. responses to revolution, rural guerrilla warfare, urban guerrilla warfare, and the new-style institutional military regimes created to fight revolution. He concludes with a summary of the rise and fall of Cuban influence in the hemisphere and offers an overview of the Latin American political landscape in the 1990s. An engaging synthesis for students and scholars interested in the Cuban Revolution and its impact on Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275967069
• ISBN13: 9780275967062
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

And you thought you were paranoid before...

Overall, the amount of exposure American policy toward Latin America receives in the media is sorely lacking. The public remains ignorant of our government's role in shaping the internal politics of Latin American countries. Wright documents how the US government responded to the Cuban revolution and the revolutionary/reformatory movements that arose as a result of it in other Latin American countries. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, Wright recounts how in instance after instance, America chose to support pro-American governments while bringing about the downfall of anti-American governments, or any administration that might possibly have socialist or communist leanings. Although information dense, this book is both compelling and easy to read.