Introduction: The Caribbean Legion Revived

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of transnational revolutionary networks, and lays out the argument of this book: Cuban revolutionaries in the 1950s tapped into a previously existing revolutionary network dubbed by the press “the Caribbean Legion”. With the help of this network, the Cuban conflict became entangled in a larger, region-wide cold war between dictatorial regimes and democratic republics. Prados explains the transnational methodological approach, before making the case for its relevance to the specific region of the Circum-Caribbean and its history and geography. This is followed by an analysis of the existing historiography concerning the Caribbean Legion, the Cuban Revolution, the Cold War in Latin America and the exiles in the region. The chapter closes with a summary of the book’s structure.