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Joanna Swanger Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934-1974. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2015. xxxiv + 289 pp. (Cloth US$ 100.00)
The mountains of Oriente and Escambray served as important sites of rebellion during the Cuban wars for independence at the end of the nineteenth century and again during the revolutionary insurrection of the 1950s. After 1959, however, the two regions diverged sharply: whereas Oriente was seen as the cradle of the Cuban Revolution, Escambray served as the main locus of armed counterrevolutionary activity on the island in the 1960s. In Rebel Lands of Cuba, Joanna Swanger develops a compelling explanation for the differing responses to revolution of the residents of these two rural areas by examining the changing relationship between campesinos and the State in terms of race, gender, and class relations and land tenure arrangements. She argues that agrarian structures, relative racial diversity, and an established history of collective organizing in Oriente meshed well with-and, in fact, served as inspiration for- the projects of rural transformation undertaken by the Revolution. Dominant traditions of individual land ownership framed through notions of white masculinity in Escambray, on the other hand, led to counterrevolution and...