U.S.–Cuba Relations from the Top Down and the Bottom Up

On December 17, 2014, President Obama announced that the United States “will begin to normalize relations” with Cuba.¹ His statement, which accompanied the release of highly politicized prisoners in both countries and a concurrent speech by President Raúl Castro in Havana, signals momentous change in the historical arc of U.S.–Cuban relations. Among the torrent of reactions—from criticism by Cuban American Florida senator Marco Rubio to editorials urging Congress to act further and dismantle the codified embargo—a range of voices weighed in on the status of Assata Shakur. Shakur, a black liberation movement activist convicted for the death of a New Jersey police officer in 1973 who maintains her innocence, has lived in political asylum in Cuba for thirty years. Considered a Most Wanted terrorist to some, who now renew their demands for her extradition, and a symbol of black repression to others, who call for her continued safety on the island, Shakur’s presence in Cuba illuminates longstanding connections between non-state U.S. actors and the Cuban Revolution. At this moment of moving forward, looking to the past to understand both diplomatic and grassroots histories between Cuba and the United States is crucial.

While the implications of the announced changes remain to be seen, one area affected by troubled relations between the two countries in the past has been scholarship on post-1959 Cuba and its encounters with the United States. Cuban scholars have often been denied entry visas to attend and share their work at U.S. conferences, hindering feedback and collaboration. The U.S. embargo of Cuba also complicates travel to the island by American academics. In Havana, many state archival collections remain closed to all but a few foreign researchers, and conducting official interviews with Cuban citizens requires government permission, making the Revolution’s multiplicity of narratives difficult to access. In addition to political research hurdles, the traditional diplomatic approach to international history has resulted in few works on U.S.–Cuban relations that foreground Cuban and U.S. non-state actors during the Revolution. Finally, the outsized personas of Cuban revolutionary leaders and their antagonistic interactions with the U.S. government have proved to be enticing subjects that overshadow the study of everyday life.

The two books under review here approach these challenges in different ways. Fifty Years of Revolution, edited by Castro Mariño and Pruessen, brings American, Cuban, and other international scholars together through a multi-year collaborative project financed by the Ford Foundation. The nineteen resulting essays by historians, political scientists, and international relations experts address the Cuban Revolution’s role on the broader world stage, but diplomatic relations with the United States from Presidents Eisenhower to Obama and the potential for these relations to change in the future remain at the core of the book. The collection’s most important contribution is not necessarily new material, but the dialogue created by including the diverse perspectives of Cuban, American, and other international scholars together in one volume. Guerra’s monograph Visions of Power in Cuba uses cultural and social history to foreground a range of Cuban voices, usually unheard, that provide Americanists with invaluable insights into the Cuban Revolution’s first twelve years. Her masterfully researched book also features a range of U.S. activists, academics, and journalists who encountered the Revolution in Cuba.

By practicing transnational scholarship and illustrating transnational encounters, together these works shed new light on post-1959 U.S.–Cuba relations from the top down and the bottom up. Methodologically, they consider revolutionary Cuba and its relations with the United States through distinct political and cultural lenses. The Cuban Revolution was a major...