Introduction

Rarely does popular opinion in the United States diverge so strikingly from scholarly analysis as in the case of the Cuban Revolution.

It's one of the few events in Latin American history that U.S. students have heard of. When I ask my students to come up with names of important figures in Latin American history, the only one that reliably emerges is that of Fidel Castro. And students are fairly unanimous in their opinions of Castro: "Dangerous," "evil," "bad," and "dictator" are the words they most commonly come up with to describe him. Survey results show that my students' positions are widely shared among the U.S. population: 98 percent of those surveyed in the United States had heard of Fidel Castro, and 82 percent had a negative opinion of him.1

Fidel Castro has certainly inspired his share of scholarly attention, including numerous biographies. Some are by historians. Some are by journalists. One is by a doctor. There is even a graphic novel recounting Fidel's life. In a "spoken autobiography" the Cuban revolutionary recounted his own story of his life.2

Most serious studies of the Cuban Revolution, though, focus less on the figure of Fidel Castro and more on the process, the politics, and the people of the Cuban Revolution. Here we find a giant gap between what scholars, including historians, have to say, and what U.S. political leaders and the general public seem to believe. Most historians frame the story of the Cuban Revolution with the long history of U.S. involvement in the island and in the rest of the Caribbean. But politicians and the general public have tended to see the USSR, rather than the United States, as the main factor explaining the nature of the Cuban Revolution. In this respect, U.S. scholars today have more in common with their Cuban counterparts than they do with the U.S. public.

Talking about Freedom

Both in Cuba and in the United States, the word "freedom" comes up frequently in describing Cuba's history and current realities. It's a word that incorporates many different meanings. U.S. policymakers tend to use it to refer to freedom for private enterprise, while for Cuban policymakers it generally means freedom from U.S. interference. This dichotomy is nothing new. "The Cuban people want to be free as much from the foreigners who abuse the flag as from the citizens who violate it and will end up burying it," wrote a Cuban nationalist organization in the 1920s, referring to the U.S. political and economic domination of the island, and to the Cubans who collaborated with the foreigners.3 Around the same time, Cuban Communist Party founder Julio Antonio Mella published his pamphlet entitled Cuba, A Nation That Has Never Been Free.

And today, a billboard in Santa Clara proclaims "O libres para siempre o batallando siempre para ser libres," over a painting of two giant hands, one black and one white, breaking free of a shackle (Figure I.1). "Either free forever, or forever fighting to be free." The contemporary use of the image, and the quote by Cuban independence leader José Martí, clearly draws a parallel between Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain, its struggle for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality, and its struggle for national independence in the current era in the face of U.S. threats. "Freedom," a Cuban high school student at the "Martyrs of Kent" high school told U.S. educator Jonathan Kozol in 1976, "means when you are free of international capitalistic exploitation!"4

Figure I.1 Billboard quoting José Martí: "Either Free Forever, or Forever Fighting to be Free."

Source: Photo by Jackie McCabe.

"Castro has taken no interest in international situation or in threat of international Communism," the U.S. Ambassador complained shortly after the Revolution. "I tried to explain significance of support of all peoples of free world in great struggle between freedom and slavery but do not believe he was particularly impressed."5 The "freedom" that U.S. policymakers worried about incessantly in the first months of the Revolution was what the new revolutionary regime would mean for private enterprise. Real U.S. goals in Cuba, Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom reiterated, included "receptivity to U.S. and free world capital and increasing trade" and "access by the United States to essential Cuban resources."6

In late 2007, President Bush echoed the importance of private enterprise, the association of what he called "economic freedom" with political freedoms - and Cuba's failures on both counts. "One of the great success stories of the past century is the advance of economic and political freedom across Latin America," Bush explained in a major policy speech. "In this room are officials representing nations that are embracing the blessings of democratic government and free enterprise." However, "one country in our region still isolates its people from the hope that freedom brings, and traps them in a system that has failed them."7 The one country, obviously, was Cuba.

In Barack Obama's first major speech on Cuba, before an audience of Cuban Americans in Miami in May 2008, he used the words "free" or "freedom" 33 times. "Never in my lifetime," he announced, "have the people of Cuba known freedom . My policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: Libertad." He even quoted José Martí, saying "every moment is critical in the defense of freedom." While explicitly distancing himself from Republican policies, Obama nevertheless vowed to maintain the U.S. embargo against Cuba.8

Scholars Weigh In

Scholars of Latin America are less likely to share the U.S. administrations' infatuation with free markets. While economists are still divided on the issue, with the Chicago School holding fast to its free market principles, historians tend to be a bit more leery of automatically equating free markets with political freedom. Economic liberalism, they remind us, was implemented in much of Latin America in the late nineteenth century through "liberal dictatorships" like that of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico, who maintained repressive, undemocratic governments while warmly welcoming U.S. investors. Since World War II, dictatorships in the Southern Cone and authoritarian democracies like Mexico have followed neoliberal economic advisers from the United States. And free market "economic miracles" in Latin America have often had disastrous effects on the poor.9

Latin Americanists have frequently found themselves at odds with U.S. policymakers regarding the region. The interdisciplinary field of Latin American Studies came about in part as a result of the Cuban Revolution, as the State Department sought to create cadres of experts who could guide and implement U.S. policy by funding new Latin American Studies programs at major U.S. universities. Historian Thomas Skidmore, in what Rolena Adorno called a "memorable and oft-repeated announcement," suggested in 1961 that "we are all sons and daughters of Fidel."10 That is, the Cuban Revolution gave rise to an upsurge of government interest in Latin America, and funding for Latin American Studies programs in major U.S. universities. (Jan Knippers Black later revised this to suggest that U.S. Latin Americanists are Fidel Castro's "illegitimate offspring."11) In 1995 Stanford political scientist Richard Fagen echoed Skidmore's sentiment when, upon receiving the Latin American Studies Association's top scholarship award, he suggested "with my tongue only half-way into my cheek" that the Cuban revolutionary leader would be the most appropriate recipient because "at least in the United States, no one did more than Fidel Castro to stimulate the study of Latin America in the 60s and 70s."12 "Many members of my generation," political scientist and former Latin American Studies Association (LASA) President Peter Smith reiterated in 2006, "went through graduate school with thanks to Fidel Castro."13

"U.S. officials," Smith continued, "expected the academic community to promote U.S. policy goals. The National Defense Education Act (note that name!) offered generous scholarships for the study of Latin America - on the mistaken assumption, of course, that newly trained area experts would figure out ways to prevent or defeat revolutionary movements."14

As Smith and the others have suggested, the attempt largely backfired. Instead, LASA took a strong stand early on: "Scholarship must never become a clandestine arm of U.S. policy."15 New scholars trained in Latin American Studies who spent time working in Latin America as often as not turned into opponents of U.S. policy towards the region. LASA has been particularly critical of U.S. policy towards Cuba, passing resolution after resolution condemning the trade and travel embargo and calling for free academic exchange with the island. LASA has been especially rankled that the State Department has...