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Stephen Cushion A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas'Victory. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016.272 pp. (Paper US$27.00)
Stephen Cushion's A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, the result of extensive archival and oral history research, is one of the most important books (in any language) on the history of the Batista regime and its opponents during the 1950s to appear in the last three or more decades. It is also an openly revisionist account that challenges much research and writing produced by both Cuban and foreign scholars.
The literature on the history of Cuba in the 1950s is extensive-with a focus on Fidel Castro, urban resistance movements, relations with the United States, tourism, the sugar economy and sugar workers, and of course the guerilla struggle in the eastern and central provinces of the island between late 1956 and the victory of the Revolution in January 1959. Scholars have tended to privilege attention to the armed struggle movements that developed in the Sierra Maestra and later in northern Oriente and Las Villas provinces, a focus that reproduced the dominant narratives generated by the Sierra leadership of the July 26 Movement (MR-26-7) led by the Castro brothers, Che...