The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman

The Real Fidel Castro



Download The Real Fidel Castro




The Real Fidel Castro Leycester Coltman ebook
Language: English
Page: 348
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0300107609, 9780300107609
Publisher: Yale University Press

Amazon.com Review

Who is the real Fidel Castro? Some would characterize the longtime Cuban ruler as a ruthless dictator, crushing all opposition and starving his own people to feed his own hunger for power. Others point to a revolutionary leader who has adhered to Marxist-Leninist principles while being popular enough at home to outlast nine American presidents. Former British Ambassador to Cuba Leycester Coltman provides an exhaustively researched history of Castro and reveals a man constantly driven by passion, usually able to lead by force of personality, and possessed of a subtle ability to shift his politics in order to maintain an advantage. The Real Fidel Castro traces his middle-class upbringing and career as a student agitator who swiftly gained notice both positive and negative for taking part in revolutionary politics throughout Latin America. Later, Castro, having failed in initial attempts to overthrow General Fulgencio Batista, takes to the jungle along with Che Guevara to prepare for what would eventually be a successful coup. Once in power, however, the revolutionary must learn to be a diplomat and a political strategist as he navigates a messy victory in the Bay of Pigs conflict and suffers an embarrassing defeat in the Cuban missile crisis. While he is often characterized as having been a mere puppet of the old Soviet Union, Coltman's portrayal indicates the relationship was much more complicated; Castro recognized the need for a strong ally who also opposed the United States but questioned the ideology of the Soviets and worried over what the proposed reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev would bring to the world's largest Communist nation. Although Coltman came to know Castro while serving in Havana, he doesn't gloss over the swift executions given to those who defied "the revolution" or Castro's penchant for imprisoning those thought to be politically dangerous. In the end, Coltman, who died shortly before this book's publication, is nonjudgmental and shows Fidel Castro to be a man as complex as the world he lived in. --John Moe
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From

In a remarkably evenhanded and illuminating biography, Coltman (former British ambassador to Cuba) reveals how Fidel Castro repeatedly has frustrated his foes: surviving defeat, exile, and imprisonment to bring down Batista in the early 1950s; misleading American politicians long enough to secure absolute power over his island nation; forging an advantageous alliance with the Kremlin; and preserving his regime in a post-Cold War world dominated by Cuba's powerful capitalist neighbor. Long personal conversations enable Coltman to penetrate a psyche still opaque to most scholars. It will chafe Castro's detractors that Coltman discerns in that psyche rare courage and resourcefulness. But it will vex Castro's admirers that Colman exposes deep political inconsistencies (an early opponent to Soviet imperialism, Castro metamorphosed into a slavish Soviet supporter) and personal callousness (marriage never restrained the revolutionary libido). Detractors and devotees alike will marvel at how the young prisoner who resorted to invisible ink to inscribe History Will Absolve Me has aged into an old man in a historical riptide that he can already feel pulling him into oblivion. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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