Castro'S Final Hour


Book Description

Reported from inside Cuba by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Andres Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour chronicles the dramatic events that have crippled the more-than-three-decades-old Marxist regime of Fidel Castro. From the execution of the country's most celebrated Army general in 1989 to the devastating effects of the loss of all Soviet aid, the picture Oppenheimer paints is extraordinarily detailed and engrossing, revealing a country on the brink of disaster. He uncovers Castro's never-before reported efforts to radicalize Noriega's regime in Panama, the failure of his "Zero Option" plan to restore economic stability without outside aid, and tells how, in a last ditch attempt to save the country from its dire slide, Castro's top aides pushed a plan to strip him of some of his powers. Including exclusive interviews with Soviet officials, Latin American leaders - including Daniel Ortega and Manuel Noriega - as well as the top echelon of current Cuban leadership and Fidel's dissident daughter, Alina, Castro's Final Hour is a compelling and intimate portrait of the Cuban leader, and an authoritative evaluation of what the future may hold for his country.




Fidel


Book Description

Fidel exposes the hypocrisy of Castro's liberal fan club, delivering the brutal truth about the tyrant the Fidelistas call the first and greatest hero to appear in the world.




The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, S. 2918


Book Description




Castro's Curveball


Book Description

When an old scrapbook stirs memories, Billy Bryan looks back to the year 1947 when he was playing winter ball in Cuba, enjoying Havana's decadent nightlife, and dreaming of a major-league career.




The Double Life of Fidel Castro


Book Description

A revelatory memoir of the 17 years Juan Sanchez spent as one of Fidel Castro's personal soldiers, in his innermost circle




Revolutionary Monsters


Book Description

Lenin. Mao. Castro. Mugabe. Khomeini. All sparked movements in the name of liberating their people from their oppressors—capitalists, foreign imperialists, or dictators in their own country. These revolutionaries rallied the masses in the name of freedom, only to become more tyrannical than those they replaced. Much has been written about the anatomy of revolution from Edmund Burke to Crane Brinton Crane, Franz Fanon, and contemporary theorists of revolution found in the modern academy. Yet what is missing is a dissection of the revolutionary minds that destroyed the old for the creation of a more harmful new. Revolutionary Monsters presents a collective biography of five modern day revolutionaries who came into power calling for the liberation of the people only to end up killing millions of people in the name of revolution: Lenin (Russia), Mao (China), Castro (Cuba), Mugabe (Zimbabwe), and Khomeini (Iran). Revolutionary Monsters explores basic questions about the revolutionary personality, and examines how these revolutionaries came to envision themselves as prophets of a new age.




Castro's Secrets


Book Description

“A conclusive, ground-breaking portrait, based on firsthand sources, of how the Cuban strongman . . . ran circles around the CIA.” —Daily Beast In Castro’s Secrets, intelligence analyst and Cuba expert Brian Latell offers an unprecedented view of Fidel Castro in his role as Cuba’s supreme spymaster. Based on interviews with high level defectors from Cuba’s intelligence and security services—including some who have never spoken on record before—Latell reveals long-buried secrets of Fidel’s nearly 50-year reign. While the CIA grossly underestimated his capabilities, Castro built one of the best and most aggressive intelligence systems in the world. Their sophisticated network ran moles and double agents who penetrated the highest levels of American Institutions. They also carried out numerous assassinations—some against foreign leaders. Latell also sheds new light on the CIA’s deplorable plots against Cuba—including previously obscure schemes to assassinate Castro—and presents shocking new conclusions about what Fidel actually knew of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.




Operation Pedro Pan


Book Description

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Contesting Castro


Book Description

Today they stand as enemies, but in the 1950s, few countries were as closely intertwined as Cuba and the United States. Thousands of Americans (including Ernest Hemingway and Errol Flynn) lived on the island, and, in the United States, dancehalls swayed to the mambo beat. The strong-arm Batista regime depended on Washington's support, and it invited American gangsters like Meyer Lansky to build fancy casinos for U.S. tourists. Major league scouts searched for Cuban talent: The New York Giants even offered a contract to a young pitcher named Fidel Castro. In 1955, Castro did come to the United States, but not for baseball: He toured the country to raise money for a revolution. Thomas Paterson tells the fascinating story of Castro's insurrection, from that early fund-raising trip to Batista's fall and the flowering of the Cuban Revolution that has bedeviled the United States for more than three decades. With evocative prose and a swift-moving narrative, Paterson recreates the love-hate relationship between the two nations, then traces the intrigue of the insurgency, the unfolding revolution, and the sources of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA assassination plots, and the missile crisis. The drama ranges from the casino blackjack tables to Miami streets; from the Eisenhower and Kennedy White Houses to the crowded deck of the Granma, the frail boat that carried the Fidelistas to Cuba from Mexico; from Batista's fortified palace to mountain hideouts where Rau'l Castro held American hostages. Drawing upon impressive international research, including declassified CIA documents and interviews, Paterson reveals how Washington, fixed on the issue of Communism, failed to grasp the widespread disaffection from Batista. The Eisenhower administration alienated Cubans by supplying arms to a hated regime, by sustaining Cuba's economic dependence, and by conspicuously backing Batista. As Batista self-destructed, U.S. officials launched third-force conspiracies in a vain attempt to block Castro's victory. By the time the defiant revolutionary leader entered Havana in early 1959, the foundation of the long, bitter hostility between Cuba and the United States had been firmly laid. Since the end of the Cold War, the futures of Communist Cuba and Fidel Castro have become clouded. Paterson's gripping and timely account explores the origins of America's troubled relationship with its island neighbor, explains what went wrong and how the United States "let this one get away," and suggests paths to the future as the Clinton administration inches toward less hostile relations with a changing Cuba.




Latin America 2019-2020


Book Description

For Latin America today, this book offers the latest available economic, demographic, political, and cultural information, with solid statistical data expressing freedom, violence, and governmental orientation. Consideration is given to the evolving relationships with the United States and other Latin American nations. Revisions have also addressed new historical interpretations, for example, of the history of Mexico and latest political changes, for example, in Venezuela and Cuba. Maps, charts, and photographs provide extensive visual expressions of the region, its geography, peoples, and cultures, in particular public architecture, agricultural technology, specular geology, and striking diversity. The images offer a narrative of the multiplicity of peoples as demonstrated in their clothing, economic and everyday activities, their physical surroundings. Consequently, the narrative combines global economics, national politics, and daily social life throughout the region. The chapters can be read as individual histories for each of the countries, within the context created by contrasts and similarities with the other nations of Latin America.