Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.1.0079
• Pages: 79311-81
• Published date: 01 April 2013
• Date: 01 April 2013
• Author: Luis Herrán-Ávila

BOOK REVIEWS 79

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to resolve the crisis of the state, proposed by Álvaro García Linera, the Marxist

vice-president of Bolivia. Not surprisingly, Sader is a strong supporter of the radical

continentalism that has emerged in the twenty-f‌irst century in Latin America, not

least for its capacity to enhance left forces within nation-states. In the perilous

process of ‘state transition’, the previous history of Latin America has often been

marked by violent reaction and the physical and political slaughter of the left. In

the twenty-f‌irst century, the left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have defeated

coup attempts, but succumbed in Honduras and Paraguay. Older forms of the

reform versus revolution debate may have lost their relevance, but the dilemmas

they represented are still burrowing up through their own molehills. Sader’s

book is a very serious contribution to such debates today, based on a lifelong

engagement. It carries its scholarship lightly, and anyone with an interest in the

direction of anti-capitalist politics will appreciate this very accessibly-written book.

Those interested in the particular potential of the new politics of Latin America

to underpin a new phase of development in the Cuban Revolution will need to

take into account this magisterial survey and its strategic perspective.

Steve Ludlam, University of Sheff‌ield, UK

Daniel C. Walsh, An Air War With Cuba: The United States Radio Campaign

Against Castro (McFarland & Co., 2012) pb 311pp. ISBN: 9780786465064

Reviewed by Luis Herrán-Ávila

Knowing what we know about the US government’s efforts to destabilise Castro’s

regime in Cuba there would seem to be few stories left to tell. However, Daniel C.

Walsh’s An Air War With Cuba delivers a fresh perspective on the achievements,

limits and shortcomings of the ‘air war’ against Castro and, more broadly, on the

arguable effectiveness of radio propaganda campaigns as instruments of foreign

policy. In comparing the successful political uses of radio broadcasts in Guatemala

with the persistent failure of the propaganda wars against Cuba, Walsh brings

together the histories of communications technology and the post-Bay of Pigs Cold

War, showing the often disjointed efforts by subsequent US administrations to

lay the legal and political groundwork for the creation of Radio Marti, the most

palpable product of these arguably ineffective ‘radio wars’.

Walsh takes the reader into the intricate world of bilateral diplomacy and

international espionage, and f‌leshes out the political dilemmas posed by an

ideologically diverse exile community, the effects of the various waves of Cuban

emigration, and the anxieties within the American political system towards

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