Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (Revised)

Today they stand as enemies, but in the 1950s, few countries were as closely intertwined as Cuba and the United States. Thousands of Americans (including Ernest Hemingway and Errol Flynn) lived on the island, and, in the United States, dancehalls swayed to the mambo beat. The strong-arm Batista regime depended on Washington's support, and it invited American gangsters like Meyer Lansky to build fancy casinos for U.S. tourists. Major league scouts searched for Cuban talent: The New York Giants even offered a contract to a young pitcher named Fidel Castro. In 1955, Castro did come to the United States, but not for baseball: He toured the country to raise money for a revolution. Thomas Paterson tells the fascinating story of Castro's insurrection, from that early fund-raising trip to Batista's fall and the flowering of the Cuban Revolution that has bedeviled the United States for more than three decades. With evocative prose and a swift-moving narrative, Paterson recreates the love-hate relationship between the two nations, then traces the intrigue of the insurgency, the unfolding revolution, and the sources of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA assassination plots, and the missile crisis. The drama ranges from Havana blackjack tables to Miami streets; from the crowded deck of the Granma, the frail boat that carried the Fidelistas to Cuba from Mexico, to the Eisenhower and Kennedy White Houses; from Batista's fortified palace to mountain hideouts where Raul Castro held Americans hostage. Drawing upon impressive international research, including recently declassified documents and interviews, Paterson reveals how Washington, fixed on the issue of Communism, failed to grasp the widespreaddisaffection from Batista. The Eisenhower administration alienated Cubans by supplying arms to a hated regime, by sustaining Cuba's economic dependency, and by publicly backing Batista. As Batista self-destructed, U.S. officials launched third-force conspiracies in a vain attempt to blo