The Revolution from Within: Cuba, 1959–1980 ed. by Michael J. Bustamante and Jennifer L. Lambe (review)

In the wake of revolt and messianism, under the sway of promises of radical transformation, the Cuban poet Virgilio Piñera called for the "organic" book of the Cuban Revolution. A rather variegated historiographical approach, The Revolution from Within is a response to such a plea, a critical anthology that seeks to move beyond Manichaean, utilitarian, historicist accounts. In the words of its editors, the contributions to this study constitute "an assertion of plurality and antiteleology" (5); they foreground empirical revisionism in the face of ossified master narratives professed in progressive time. No wonder the image that prefaces the book is a satirical representation of official—and counterofficial—discourse, in an effort to debunk hyperpoliticized narrations centered on the barbudos' appropriation of history. In lieu of harmony, linearity, and totalization, this collection of critiques thus charts a Möbius strip both cacophonous and heterogeneous, a multitextured assemblage intended to explore the internal complexities of the island's "revolution." In layman's terms, Lambe and Bustamante's compendium consists of Cuba-centric stories, from the (in)famous divide of 1959 to the Mariel exodus of 1980: it is an inquiry into Cuban "history" launched willfully from within.

But how exactly does this compilation "escape the looping effects" (11) of reductionist canonization? How do these historians deal with the "dearth of primary sources, the vagaries of archival access, and the broader politicization of the field [of Cuban studies]" (4)? Rooted in horizontal and attentive dialogues, the writers of The Revolution from Within embrace a Sisyphean task; that is, they engage in conversational feedback while essaying to exceed the limits of antagonistic viewpoints. The methodology of their editing process speaks to a common desire to transcend essentialist binaries, to historicize the revolution beyond what Fernando Martínez Heredia perceived as "clichés" and "falsities." From centripetal analyses of domestic reform to comparative examinations of transnational cut, the works gathered in this volume venture to elucidate the praxes of consensus and dissent, inclusion and exclusion, characteristic of the Cuban Revolution. Not only do the authors avoid falling prey to overdeterminist or overagencialist claims; in doing so, they actually underscore the diversity of political, ideological, and social actors central to understanding the dynamism and multiperspectivism of Cuban "history." To put it in Rafael Rojas's terms, one of the major contributions of this publication is the well-balanced dialectic between subaltern studies and posthegemonic Marxism, the narration and interpretation of history against the grain of commonplace narratives of dissidence, exile, and leviathanism.

Featuring a cartography of "the stakes" of Cuban studies, part 1 of The Revolution from Within traces historiographical schools from the 1960s. In "The New Text of the Revolution," for instance, Rojas himself maps out the ideological phase that marked most debates up until the 1980s, subsequently covering the revisionist currents of the 1990s and the latest wave of sociopolitical approaches. According to his projections, the promising "scholarship [collected in this volume] already constitutes a significant historiographical corpus" (42), a corpus responsive to the clamor for novel histories voiced by Lambe, Bustamante, and other historians like Oscar Zanetti. However, how is a historiographical school supposed to flourish in the midst of archival closure, "documentary paucity," and legal constraints, concomitant with classified materials "officially" condemned to erasure and oblivion (see Macle Cruz's chapter at pp. 47–49)? Is it truly possible for scholars of Cuban history to defetishize the archive, to escape its logic of stasis, authority, literacy? Are we to solely practice historiography via the synthesis of interviews, memoirs, press statements, personal experiences? Or should we rather embark on a critical fabulation, a sort of imaginative inquiry, in the hope of reconstructing an inaccessible narrative?

Stemming from questions of memory and creative power, The Revolution from Within proceeds to examine particular case studies that range from performing the revolution in the Sierra Maestra to mobilizing violence during the Mariel crusades. Among other topics and modalities, the...