Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.1.0081
• Published date: 01 April 2013
• Date: 01 April 2013
• Pages: 81110-82
• Author: Rosa García-Chediak

BOOK REVIEWS 81

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In Walsh’s narrative, this insertion of Radio Marti in national politics was both

a key turning point and the prelude to another defeat of the CANF’s hard-liner

agenda. In the context of Clinton’s ambiguous support for what would become

the Helms-Burton Act, the successful launching of TV Marti landed on very

diff‌icult political terrain, for a new Cuban immigration crisis and Florida’s

increasing electoral relevance changed the stakes of the administration’s policy

towards Cuba, now directed towards securing votes from an increasingly

moderate Cuban-American public. The f‌inal chapters in Walsh’s reconstruction

of Radio Marti’s voyage through the labyrinths of the American political system

provide a portrait of the swinging pendulum that would characterise the more

recent developments of these ‘air wars’: the hijacking of the hard-liner agenda

by Cuban-American representatives in Congress, and the shifts in the CANF’s

position from the emphasis on de-stabilising the Castro regime to imagining

the various scenarios of a post-Castro Cuba. Although Walsh’s conclusions or

projections on the subject matter remain a bit unclear, the reader is left with the

impression that the context that gave birth to Radio Marti is long gone, and that

the ideological and political environment in which the station is now embedded

carries far more implications for local and domestic politics than for the actual

stability of the Cuban government.

At large, Walsh’s book is neither a rigorous historiographical treatise, nor

simply a journalistic exposé. It strives, with relative success, to reconstruct

specif‌ic processes and events with a clear prose, skilfully adorned with interesting

anecdotes and an insistence on the ambivalent – when not outright futile – results

of the lengthy ‘air war’ against Cuba. Thus, while not at the highest level of

scholarly sophistication, An Air War With Cuba stands out as an interdiscipli-

nary contribution to the re-inscription of US–Cuba relations in a transnational

framework that takes into account the role of technology and communications,

while stressing the historical shortcomings and political complications of waging

wars through the airwaves.

Luis Herrán-Ávila, The New School for Social Research, USA

Sergio Guerra Vilaboy and Oscar Loyola Vega, Cuba: A History

(Ocean Press, 2010) pb 110pp, ISBN: 9780980429244

Reviewed by Rosa García-Chediak

When one wishes to know a specif‌ic society, it is vital to take into account its

history. However, discourses about the social processes of a country are frequently

imprecise, overloaded with topics, or often folkloric. In short, they are unable

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