Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution.

Abstract

Currently living in Spain, Carlos Montaner is surely one of the leading authorities on Cuba writing today. His volume on the Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution is a documentary analysis of Cuban participation in the world scene and also analyzes the character of social change within Cuba in the past two decades. This is one of the very few books which has attempted to place in a twenty-year perspective the Castro Revolution, without the conventional apologetics, either pro or anti, so characteristic of the writing in this field. Whether describing Cuban adventures in Africa or Castro repression of dis-sent at home, this work is informed by precise information unused by any other writer on the subject. Montaner's book is also more than ethnography or reportage. It is based on a thorough-going appreciation of the Cuban Revolution as a military revolution and of the military as the spine of the entire system, linking Cuban domestic and foreign affairs and giving substance to its claims as a mini world power. At the same time, this raises the possibility of a new formation of dependency--military dependency--that makes Cuba even more closely bound to Soviet af-fairs than the rest of Latin America is to American affairs. The volume is a pro-vocative and significant contribution to the current debates on the nature of the Cuban Revolution--one that will form a central part of these debates in the years ahead.