Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 by Lillian Guerra (review)

The author summarizes the essential nature and goals of her book as follows:

In the early years of the Revolution, strategies to politicize Cubans uniformly and uncritically generated countercultures of discursive subversion…. During the second half of the 1960s, these strategies, which had been almost the exclusive domain of alienated Cubans or gusanos, were taken up by a generation of revolutionary intellectuals and youth activists who. … attacked the limits that the state imposed on their own freedom to express and define revolutionary faith. … This book charts such actions. … as claims to self-representation and a more radical social democracy

(pp. 7–8).

In the process of implementing this agenda, which emphasizes exasperation and disillusion with the government and the Revolution, Guerra produces a book that is very thought-provoking on some levels and occasionally frustrating on others. A defining characteristic of Guerra’s approach to the dynamics of power in the Revolution’s early years (1959–1971) is her rejection of what she asserts are two common and ultimately unsatisfactory visions: the exile narrative of “betrayal” (the contention that the Revolution’s leadership deceitfully chose to abandon a politically and economically liberal democratic model in favor of a radical socialist paradigm) and the Cuban government’s grand narrative of unflinching popular support.

Rejecting both views, she feels that a much better understanding of the island’s evolving political culture can be obtained by focusing on the impact of the leadership’s policies on such segments of the population as youth, women, and Afro-Cubans, all groups that represented potential beneficiaries and thus potential devotees of the Revolution. Initially, she concedes, support for the Revolution was widespread and extremely enthusiastic among these groups: “Cubans historically marginalized from the political process, especially blacks and mulattoes as well as young people from all classes, felt that they had everything to gain and little to lose from the Revolution’s radical turn” (p. 135). But, according to Guerra’s grand thesis, the cracks that ultimately developed in this faÇade resulted in contending visions of power among some elements in these groups; “the revolutionary leadership’s struggle to make Communism Cuban by making Cubans Communists inevitably generated conflict and contestation among formerly unconditional supporters” (p. 169).

Guerra’s efforts to develop this thesis are carefully constructed, thought-provoking, and persuasively presented, as must be conceded even by those who might not agree with her conclusions. In particular, she often employs, quite effectively, a line of analysis that contends that the government’s efforts to implement policies that could seem reasonable from an ideological and sometimes even a pragmatic perspective led in fact to negative outcomes. For example, she suggests that attempts to broaden popular participation in the revolutionary process generated a culture of intolerance—what she labels a “grassroots dictatorship”—exemplified by the Committees to Defend the Revolution. Such groups transformed initially sympathetic segments in the population into critics and even direct opponents of the government. In short, the government’s attempts to achieve certain goals turned out to be self-defeating and in many cases resulted in outcomes that were detrimental to its interests.

It can, however, be frustrating for the reader when Guerra succumbs to the temptation to stretch this notion too far. One glaring illustration can be found in chapter 9, where she extrapolates widespread feelings of disillusionment regarding the failed campaign to harvest 10 million tons of sugar from the experiences of one individual, a seemingly questionable methodology. Then, based on this extrapolation, she goes on to conclude that this “disillusionment” contributed to weakening “the legitimacy of Communism and by extension, Fidel’s right to rule” (p. 316). Not only do such exercises seem untenable in and of themselves, but they also discount the fact that revolutions are never neat affairs and that expectations often outrun governmental performance, thereby resulting in frustration and dissatisfaction among elements of...