Cuba Libre
A Cuba Syllabus for People Who Want the Real Story
By the time you are reading this, I will likely be en route to Cuba, if not already there. I look forward to sharing some on-the-ground snippets for my readers over the next week.
Similar to my recent trip to Minneapolis, this journey felt necessary to do at this time, and I am honored to have the chance to engage with the current political struggle in person. Cuba is one of the few countries in the modern era that openly challenged U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and backed anti-colonial struggles across Africa and Latin America. You can’t really understand global politics over the last 65 years without grappling with it.
If your understanding of Cuba comes mostly from Cold War talking points from outdated US history books or your friends from South Beach, you’re probably missing a pretty huge chunk of the story. A lot of the world’s most important anti-colonial history gets treated like a footnote in Western textbooks. Haiti gets reduced to chaos and Cuba gets flattened into Cold War propaganda. When a nation refuses to play its assigned role in the global economic order, the consequences tend to arrive quickly in the form of repressive interference from the United States and its allies.
If you zoom out, these places are actually connected by a much bigger story: colonialism and resistance, which the countries pay for when they refuse to stay in their assigned place in the global hierarchy. So here’s a reading/watching/listening list that helped me make sense of Cuba beyond the propaganda wars.
Books
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War — Che Guevara
This book is less theory and more lived experience, but a great look at all the struggle and sacrifice required for a revolution from the inside.
A History of the Cuban Revolution — Aviva Chomsky
Incredibly useful if you want the political and historical context without wading through a thousand pages.
Podcasts
Blowback — Season 2: Cuba
A deeply researched and devastating look at how American foreign policy actually worked and failed to stop a socialist revolution.
Films
Fidel: The Untold Story (2001)
A more sympathetic look at Fidel Castro that fills in context usually missing from Western media portrayals.
Cuba: An African Odyssey (2007)
A documentary about Cuba’s military and political support for African liberation struggles. Instead of Cuba as a Soviet puppet, you see a country deeply invested in anti-colonial solidarity.
Soy Cuba (1964)
A visually insane film about pre- and post-revolution Cuba and a Criterion Classic.
Sankara’s Orphans (2018)
In 1986, children from Burkina Faso were sent to Cuba to learn a trade so they could return and develop their country. But after the assassination of President Thomas Sankara and the end of the Cold War, they had nowhere to return to, and this film goes through an archival remembering of their revolutionary stories.
Thanks for the resources on Cuba. An African American and LatinX History of the United States by Paul Ortiz also addresses Cuba’s role in challenging slavery across the globe and its ties to American abolitionists.
Safe travels to Cuba! So glad the 'Orange Soda' guy is remaining true to the Hero's journey.