Cuba: An American History

Un saggio storico che si legge come un romanzo. Un fantastico viaggio lungo la storia di cuba trattata con equilibrio, non di parte, in maniera realistica e veritiera. Lo consiglio a tutti in modo particolare a chi vuole approfondire la storia della colonizzazione del continente americano e quindi le cause che hanno generato gli attuali assetti politici.

Wonderfully written, providing a historical perspective that all Americans would do well to understand. Excellent details on each phase of Cuba’s evolution, including Spanish and American colonial conquests, slavery, revolution, Castro, Cold War and Cuba’s political/cultural roots. Well done!

If you like survey histories and don’t know much about Cuba (and you live in the US), I highly recommend this book. Not only does it cover key events and forces inside and outside Cuba that have shaped it, it’s very readable and with on-the-ground anecdotes and quotes, brings to life how events probably felt to the people in or around them.

BUT – to take it a level beyond “interesting & readable history book,” I think this type of book is *important* to read. Personally, Cuban history was not covered in my public k-12 education in the US, except for the Cuban missile crisis. And due to the embargo, my knowledge of the place and its people has been pretty minimal. (And I think that is probably a very common experience.)

Which is unfortunate, because Cuba is one of the US’s few direct neighbors. Our histories, like with Mexico or Canada, are very intertwined. Havana has been a cultural hub for the entire hemisphere for the last 500 years, due to where it sat on the gulf stream trade routes between Europe and the Americas, with as much of a musical influence as NYC and New Orleans. Our relationship with Cuba even shapes presidential elections, or led to a nuclear missile crisis… To ignore it is to miss an important part of our own history, and how you treat your neighbors can cause tragic boomerang impacts.

To that point, Ferrer frames Cuba’s history as an “American” one, that it is hemispheric and intertwined with the US. What she brought to light (for me as a US citizen) was how the US has hungrily viewed Cuba as a place where we can extend our influence & economy. In that self-absorbed mindset, we’ve missed seeing Cuba’s distinct history. We elbowed into their revolution from Spain and claimed them as a de facto vassal via the Platt Amendment. Then an era of progressive and revolutionary Cuban activism during the first half of the 20th century gained political “independence” from the US, at first from the Platt Amendment, then also economically with the nationalization of US-owned holdings under Castro. And thus relations deteriorated completely.

Obama’s effort to reconnect was a step in a new direction, more as partners and neighbors, but that change is doing some zig zags. Ferrer ends on a hopeful note about we all play a part in shaping the future. So as the book wrapped up, I wondered what a voter in the US might do. Even with a rapprochement, the economic imbalance (small poor country adjacent to a juggernaut) yields these high voltage differences that cause shocks when they connect. US investors eagerly bought up land & plantations a century ago when the revolution had suggested opportunity for all Cubans, then there were flash waves of migrants over the last sixty years. In electric systems you need good transformers that step-down the voltage level, and the question is what could those transformers be between the US and Cuba in the coming decades.

No matter what, Cuba is our neighbor. And becoming better neighbors requires getting to know them, empathizing with their perspective, understanding how you’re viewed and what your impacts are on them. A book like this is an important part of that journey, and it was great to read.

Strongly recommend!

“Cuba: An American History” provides quite a detailed history of Cuba from colonial to modern times. The book also focused on its relationship to the US.

While I was familiar with figures from Cuban history like Josie Martie, Antonio Maceo, and Fidel Castro and some aspects of the island’s fight for independence and the start of US control at the end of the nineteenth century, this book highlights much about the country and its notable figures over the past centuries.

Ada Ferrer provided an extensive history of Cuba, over five hundred pages long, with comprehensive notes, references for further reading, and some photographs. Overall, it was a very engaging read for me.

A thorough examination of the history of this great island nation. I visited Cuba in 2013 as part of a cultural and educational group. I would like to visit again.
The book is honest and fair in its presentation of historical events. An informative and engaging book.

If you want to know everything about Cuba, this is your book. It leaves off no detail and is very well written. My complaint is that the print is so tiny that I could barely read the book. First I ordered the paperback and the print was impossibly small that I gave the book away. I then ordered the hard cover and the print was a bit larger but still ridiculously small. Such a shame that print size is the deterrent to reading an accomplished book.