State And Revolution in Cuba: Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920-1940

Military Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Edward M. Bonfoey, III

Robert Whitney, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2001, 255 pages, $49.95.

This study of Cuban state formation before the over-analyzed Castro experience in 1959 is worth a closer look. Canadian scholar Robert Whitney delves once again into Cuba's early history and examines it in detail, looking at the workers, trade unions, and state violence carried out by the Bautista regime in an effort to assert state control and gain influence. Whitney states that the purpose of his work is to show how the "transition from oligarchic rule to the modern state came about primarily because of the mass mobilization by the 'clases populares' against oligarchic capitalism." Whitney accomplishes his purpose with vivid examples and well-researched and supported opinion.

Whitney's argument for support of Latin American research follows the lead of other Latin American historians like Peter Winn in Weavers of Revolution (Oxford University Press, New York, 1986). Whitney uses examples at the grassroots level to examine this period in Cuban history from the bottom up as well as including elements from more traditional statist political history approaches. His treatment of the rise of Fulgencio Batista, an unlikely leader of a revolution, is well done. He argues that Batista realized that he had to bring the working and lower classes of Cuban society into the political fold. Batista accomplished this by using a form of populism that resembled that of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, but Batista differed in that he maintained strict control of the revolutionary movement.

In this book, Whitney adds to the existing body of political history literature on Cuba from 1920 to 1940. His book aids those who want to understand the troubled past of Cuba's history before the successful 1959 revolution and Castro's rise.

MAJ Edward M. Bonfoey III, USA, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas