Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.2.0209
• Published date: 01 October 2013
• Date: 01 October 2013
• Pages: 209188-211
• Author: David Grantham

BOOKREVIEWS 209

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roles played by three women in the Cuban revolution than an analysis of how

women’s status was revolutionised.

Joanna Allan, University of Leeds, UK

Par Kumaraswami Ed., Rethinking the Cuban Revolution Nationally and

Regionally: Politics, Culture and Identity (London: Wiley-Blackwell Press,

2012) pb 188pp. ISBN: 9781444361544

Reviewed by David Grantham

The 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution causes us to ref‌lect on arguably the

most polarising affair in twentieth-century Latin American history. Rethinking

the Revolution is one such ref‌lection in which editor Par Kumaraswami brings

together an all-star cast of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to show that

while the revolution boasts an astonishing longevity, in terms of government

authority, its trajectory (and legacy) f‌ive decades later are far less def‌ined. The

edited anthology, Kumaraswami writes, will shed light on ‘neglected areas of

understanding’ that reveal an uneven legacy across culture, politics, and identity

(p. 3). Driving the contributions are questions like: What are the costs of this

longevity? How have pragmatic responses of the twenty-f‌irst century ‘irrevers-

ibility affected’ previous ideological and social coherence? (p. 2) And ultimately,

how does the revolution remain relevant? It is the legacy of the most infamous

revolt of the twentieth century – not the event itself – that occupies the minds of

those concerned.

The publication packs an astonishing amount of information into only

147 pages of text, arranged around three organising principles: to offer new

perspectives that force a rethinking of both the ‘continuities as well as ruptures

caused by the Special period’, to reassess the f‌irst 30 years of revolutionary change

in order to re-evaluate ‘the foundations which were subsequently affected by the

crisis’, and then ultimately to ‘understand and reassess’ Cuba in the context of

wider geopolitical, ideological, and cultural regional contexts (p. 2).

The editor segmented the works into ten chapters intentionally disordering

the essays to encourage new connections between differing areas. In that vein,

this review is equally disordered. Chapter Five offers readers perhaps the best

foundation on how the revolution has remained largely intact. In it, author

Antoni Kapcia explains that the Cuban government has a history of adaptation

explaining the revolution’s longevity. Raúl Castro’s twenty-f‌irst century

revisions to Cuba’s economic model, he argues, were neither unprecedented

nor a ‘death-knell’ for the revolution (p. 58). The policies were merely another

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