Cuban Revolution in America: Havana and the Making of a United States Left, 1968-1992 by Teishan A. Latner (review)

The international reception of the Cuban Revolution, including its intellectual, political, and cultural impact on the global Left, has become the focus of rich new scholarship. Teishan Latner's, Cuban Revolution in America: Havana and the Making of a United States Left, 1968-1992, currently generating a buzz in US History circles for its fascinating account of encounters between the US multiracial left and revolutionary Cuba, is part of a literature that includes Anne Garland Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism and Transnational Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), Dirk Kruijt, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America: An Oral History (London: Zed, 2017), and Renata Keller, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015),

Cuba may hold a "singular place in the U.S. radical imaginary," (6) one powerfully shaped by Cuba's extraordinary revolutionary cultural production, but historical studies of the US Left and Cuba remain uncommon. Exceptions include Van Gosse's, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 1993), but Gosse largely ends his study with the humiliating 1961 defeat of US-backed mercenaries at the Bay of Pigs and the FBI's destruction of Fair Play for Cuba. Latner's focus is broader; he opens the book with 1968, the year that saw the creation of one of the US Left's most important and enduring institutions, the Venceremos Brigades, and concludes with a fascinating chapter on African-American radical exiles and fugitives living in Cuba today. Indeed, Latner extends the chronology indicated by the book's subtitle to consider the unresolved and unfinished issues in the long relationship between Cuba and US radicals.

Broadly, Cuban Revolution in America studies the relationship between the US Left and Cuba through the lens of solidarity travel, hijacking, and political exile. Case studies include the Venceremos Brigade, now nearing its 50th anniversary (Chapter 1); the lesser-known Cuban-American Antonio Maceo Brigade (Chapter 4); the dozens of hijackings to Cuba carried out by US citizens between 1968 and 1973 (Chapter 3); and African-American exiles, fugitives, and ex-pats in Cuba (Chapter 5). The long history of solidarity with Cuba on the part of African-American radicals is one key thread running through the entire narrative, and Latner also explores the openings between left-wing Cuban-Americans and Cuba, a frequently buried story now receiving new research attention. Both of these stories are part of a broader analysis of how race, ethnicity, and nation shaped the encounter between US radicals and Cuba. Also central to Latner's analytic is revealing how "left-wing American encounters with Cuba created a counterpoint to U.S. power while influencing U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations." (20) Diplomacies by non-state actors sometimes facilitated secret talks between the US and Cuba, and hijacking became such an issue that it led to a rare diplomatic opening: the signing of a 1973 hijacking agreement between the two states.

But in the eyes of the US state, "Cuba's relationship with American radicals posed an internal security threat" of serious proportions. (9) As Chapter 2 explores, heavy surveillance aimed to smash links between Cuba and US radicals; the Venceremos Brigade and the Black Panthers, not surprisingly, were key targets. Not for nothing does Latner observe that, "FBI files are undertheorized in their function as historical archives, and the FBI has been underscrutinized in its role as archivist and historical biographer." (79-80) As Latner notes, the FBI archive on the Venceremos Brigade is in fact far larger than the "official" one, and he makes innovative use of declassified cia, FBI, and US State Department files, as well as extensive archival research.

For its part, the Cuban state prioritized relationships with the US Left as one pillar of its resistance to US attempts to...