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Fatal Glory: Narciso Lopez and the First Clandestine US. War against Cuba. By Tom Chaffin. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. xxiv, 282 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8139-1673-9.) In the late 1840s and early 1850s, filibustering expeditions based in the United States against Cuba, Nicaragua, and other parts of Latin America captured the American popular imagination. Their leaders became heroes as they organized and led irregular and illegal armies in the cause of freedom, glory, and personal gain.
None of the filibusterers was more famous than Narciso Lopez. Fatal Glory is an outstanding study of Lopez's efforts to overthrow Spanish rule in Cuba between 1848 and 1851. After fleeing from an unsuccessful revolt in Cuba, Lopez came to the United States and proceeded to organize four separate expeditions. Two were thwarted by United States government intervention before they...