Book Review: Voice Of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba by Ivor L. Miller

Voice Of the Leopard:

African Secret Societies and Cuba

by Ivor L. Miller

     The general public is familiar with African diaspora religions in the Caribbean and South America via popular culture. Most of what people think of in association with Voudou (voodoo) or Lukumi (Santeria) involves skulls, drums, zombies, and black magic. It isn’t hard to see how film makers, artists, writers, and musicians have appropriated elements from these religions since mystical and sometimes dark imagery can easily capture the imagination. But not so many people realize that African diaspora religions are complex social systems that exist within broader historical, socio-political, and economic systems and thereby have function and meaning as groups within those larger systems. One of the lesser acknowledged African diaspora religions is Abakua, a secret society that began in Cuba in the 19^th century and continues to thrive today. Voice Of the Leopard, by the American anthropologist Ivor L. Miller, gives a broad overview of this group and the role they played in Cuban history.

When West African people were brought to Cuba as slaves, their religious practices accompanied them. While these religions were mostly forbidden in the United States, slave owners in places like Brazil, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Cuba allowed them to flourish, mostly because they relieved some psychological pressure that built up under the living conditions of slavery. This may have worked to some degree, but the number of slaves who escaped to live in isolated communities in the Sierra Maestra mountains, called “cimmanrones” or “maroons”, proves their situation was not one to envy. Nonetheless, Cuba was unique in that the colonialists allowed slaves to earn and save money which they could use to buy their way to freedom. That is one reason for Cuba having a small population of free African criollos who survived by working as craftsmen. According to members of Abakua societies, there was even a smaller number of West African immigrants who voluntarily came to Cuba to give slaves guidance on how to safeguard their religion in the new land. The accuracy of that belief is of no importance in this book because that is what the Abakua believe and it influences how they see the world.

Using linguistics and cross-cultural comparisons along with historical records, Miller has traced the origins of Abakua back to the Cross Rivers region along the border of Nigeria and Cameroon. In that part of Africa, fraternal societies called Ekpe have existed since times long before colonialism. The language, rituals, and mythologies of Abakua and Ekpe bear too many similarities to be coincidental. This is especially true because Abakua initiates have their own language that is only spoken with Abakua members and, although time and distance have caused morphological changes, it is essentially the same language spoken by Ekpe initiates. A similar linguistic analysis has been used to trace the origins of Roma (Gypsy) people to Rajastan in northern India, a significant discovery since that ethnic group existed for centuries without knowing precisely where they originated. The mapping of the human genome has recently justified these ancestral histories.

Miller gives some brief explanations about what Abakua members do. He starts by analyzing what kind of a group they are. He prefers the term “initiate society” over “secret society” since membership in the group is not kept secret, only their beliefs and practices are. Readers hoping for a detailed explanation of those beliefs and practices will inevitably be disappointed since such information is only transmitted to initiates who have risen through s series of degrees and offices to widen their scope of Abakua. Some basic information is shared with the public though, for example various motifs from the Ekpe/Abakua mythology, their transmission of historical narratives through call and response chanting done to the accompaniment of drumming and dancing, and the presence of the fundamento in every juego (lodge). The fundamento is the ceremonial centerpiece, or omphalos, of each juego. The original is said to have been brought over from Africa by the aforementioned voluntary immigrants from the Cross Rivers region who taught the slaves how to practice Abakua in Cuba. The Abakua juegos are open to men only. There is no discussion as to whether Abakua is actually a religion or not. From my limited knowledge of the society, I prefer to think it doesn’t fit easily into any category, containing elements of religion, magic, political secret societies, social clubs, and mutual aid fraternities.

Abakua juegos serve various functions. One is that of a mutual aid society. Dues collected by each juego can be used as health or life insurance for each member. Money is also collected for charity or educational funding. During the 19^th century, illiterate slaves who joined Abakua could receive some education they wouldn’t get elsewhere. At a local level, lodges provided a means for upward social mobility in a colony where such mobility was limited for free Afro-Cubans and usually unobtainable for slaves. Membership in a lodge required the mastery of knowledge, commitment, and responsibility. Money could also be raised in an Abakua society to help a slave buy their own freedom. Plus, the hierarchical nature of the juegos gave motivated individuals a means for moving up a social ladder thereby growing and maturing as people.

Abakua was also important for historical reasons. Since juego activities were secret and only accessible to initiates, they served as near-perfect places for clandestine political activity. Afro-Cubans who sought for an end to slavery were deeply committed to the two Cuban Wars of Independence and used their gathering places for planning military and political strategies. The Independence leader and national hero Antonio Maceo was a member of Abakua for this reason. Freemasonry also had a strong presence in 19^th century Cuba and pro-Independence Masons collaborated with Abakua to fight against the Spanish crown. The Wars of Independence also led to the establishment of Abakua juegos for both white and Chinese members who were dedicated to the Cuban nationhood cause.

Other topics covered by Miller include the reasons why Abakua has not spread further geographically than it already has and the influence Abakua has had on Cuban music and art. In the latter case, Abakua drum rhythms have a strong presence in the syncretistic styles of mambo and son. The chapter covering music is not highly detailed so deeper insights into the subject should be looked for elsewhere. In the former topic, the explanation is that strict and complicated protocols for establishing new lodges has made it nearly impossible for Abakua to spread much farther than the regions surrounding Havana and and the nearby city of Matanzas. If you want to join, your only option would be to move to Cuba. Miller also writes about recent contact and collaboration between Ekpe initiates in Nigeria and Abakua members in Cuba who have traveled to Nigeria recently with assistance from the author who is an Ekpe initiate himself aside from being an anthropologist.

Since the practice of Abakua is kept secret and only accessible to members, this book is mostly historical in nature. However, some of their ceremonies, including dances, drumming, and call and response chanting, are publicly accessible since some ceremonies are done in the yards of juegos were neighbors can observe them or hear them from a distance. I speculate that this is done as a means of proselytizing and arousing the curiosity of potential recruits. Despite not providing much information about the inner workings of this society, its influence on Cuban history is a fascinating story to learn about, especially because mainstream historians have given so little space to Abakua’s role in achieving independence and building national identity. Unfortunately, there is nothing said about Abakua in their relation to the Cuban Revolution of 1958 and Fidel Castro’s subsequent dictatorship. Abakua survived throughout all of that so there must be something to be said about them during those times.

Voice Of the Leopard gives a good overview of Abakua and its history. It serves the purpose of demonstrating how such a secret society can maintain social stability and mental health in the midst of a chaotic and ever-changing world. By giving members a sense of participation in history and having roots in an antiquarian culture, a direct line between past and present is maintained which contributes stability to the community. In this way, Abakua has acted as a positive force in Cuban society. Up until recent times, America had societies based around common interests in much the same way that the Cubans have Abakua. In 2025, fraternal orders like the Masons or the Elks, hobbyist groups, bowling leagues, labor unions, social clubs, and other societies in which people create social bonds and a sense of belonging are mostly on life support if they still exist at all. As a result of the internet, people spend more time looking at screens on laptops and cell phones then they do in the presence of others. As a result, the rates of loneliness, depression, mental illness, and suicide have spiked, especially among young people. It would be interesting to research what the rate of these ailments are in African diaspora religions. My educated guess is that they would be far less frequent than in American society. Maybe a few more groups like the Abakua could save us from ourselves.

 

Book Review & Analysis: Cities Of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs

Cities Of the Red Night

by William S. Burroughs

      The performance of violent sexuality as spectacle is a persistent theme running throughout Cities Of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs. It isn’t the only theme, but it is one among many. When you’re being hit in the face with a firehose of surrealistic imagery, some of which is quite disgusting, it’s a good idea to grasp a hold of whatever you can to avoid being completely overwhelmed, subjugated, and absorbed into the wildly colorful filth washing over you.

This novel begins with a chapter about a man in a South American jungle who contracts a virus and has sex with his local guide on the shore of a river. A link between sexuality and viruses is established early on even though these characters never re-emerge in the story afterwards. Next a Chinese military unit enters a mountain village in Tibet where a death-virus is spreading outwards from a temple overlooking it from the peak. Then we are in a hospital where a heroin addicted doctor is called in to manage a giant influx of patients with a virus that causes them to have seizures and orgasms simultaneously. In a board meeting at the hospital, a scientist shares a crackpot theory that a spaceship crashed in the Gobi desert and unleashed a virus that ran rampant in seven lost cities, spreading radiation over them causing the night time sky to turn red. Viruses spread from these cities and these viruses are closely linked with both language and opiate based addictive drugs. This is coherent writing considering it came from the mind of William S. Burroughs.

Then we’ve got the pirates. The young Noah Blake, an expert in building and repairing firearms, gets hired to work on a ship with a bunch of his friends. While sailing to Veracruz, they encounter a pirate ship, led by Captain Strobe, and form an alliance that goes on to Port Roger on the eastern coast of Panama. These lost boys form a utopian society that plots to free Latin America from Spanish colonial rule. Part of their plan is to hook the Spaniards on opiates to weaken them. Another is to have Noah Blake invent superior weaponry; while having sex with another man his ejaculations inspire him to invent cannons and guns with exploding shells. The power of phallo-centric violence is ever-present in this novel and most of Burroughs’ other novels too. His writing really takes on life when the reader is able to make the proper connections between semiotic elements like sex, guns, and magic.

The commune is also a place where gay sex is freely explored among members of all races and ethnic groups. Noah Blake rises to prominence as he lays out a plan for a constitution as law for a free, equitable, and just society based on leftist libertarian principles. These boys eventually launch an attack on Panama City. Some biographers of Burroughs have pointed out that this commune was inspired by the Lost Boys in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

The sex and violence spectacle is present in this commune when a ritual theatrical performance is staged. These gay men are paired up with women, or sometimes groups of women, and they dress up in costumes of their choice representing animals or Pagan gods. Then they have sex for the purpose of procreation while all the others watch. Since these gay men have no interest in women, the act of private lovemaking has to be put on public display as a ritual to ensure that their society is able to reproduce. This is the worst part of the novel. It is hastily written, without much description, and pretentious, kind of like an eccentric camp porno movie filmed in a tiki bar by tacky people with really bad taste. And I don’t mean to suggest that there are any pornographers with good taste either. It’s just that there is bad taste and then there is really bad taste. But a John Waters disciple will be quick to point out that bad taste is entertaining and sometimes even makes a statement.

Otherwise there are the ubiquitous hangings resulting in orgasm. Captain Strobe tells a story about how he got sentenced to hang for some criminal offense. After the noose pulled taught around his neck and he ejaculated, someone climbed onto the gallows and cut him down, helping him to escape before he died. Since Strobe cheated death in this way, he is considered to have magical powers. These hangings happen frequently in most of Burroughs’ writings going all the way back to Naked Lunch. They are always on display to an audience and the man’s pants are always pulled down so they can see the ejaculation. Burroughs fetishizes this image and treats it as through the spectacle of it makes magic possible.

The story line of the 17^th century pirates alternates every two chapters with the 20^th century story line of Clem Snide. This character reoccurs after having first appeared in The Soft Machine. Clem Snide refers to himself as a “private asshole”; no doubt this is a play on the noir term “private dick” meaning “detective”. And that is what Clem Snide is. He gets hired to track down a missing boy named Jerry Green, a seemingly ordinary kid who disappeared in Greece. Snide indulges in a sex magic ritual with his assistant Jim for guidance in the case. He ends up traveling to Athens and working with a detective named Dmitri who is also an expert on the occult. Sex and witchcraft are also closely linked in Burroughs’ novels. But anyhow, Snide learns that Jerry Green secretly had a gay lover and the two of them had been kidnapped, taken to Mexico City, and involved in the science of transplanting one human head onto the body of another. Experimentation with this technique began in Panama in the 17^th century at the time of the pirate escapades written out in the alternate story line of this novel.

The two threads merge when Snide meets the Iguana Twins, a Mexican brother and sister pair, also portrayed in The Burroughs File as a hermaphroditic spirit that changes sex during intercourse, that liaised with Noah Blake in earlier times. Snide goes to Lima in search of a dead body being shipped by sea and some Mayan manuscripts the Iguana Twins want him to locate and buy. Things take a bizarre turn in one of those unpredictable about-faces you find in Burroughs’ later works when something so unexpected happens so that you become completely disoriented and remain that way until you reach the end. Clem Snide gets blackmailed into writing a movie script for a Nazi commune of genetically engineered white boys run by a CIA agent. Here Burroughs exposes the homo-erotic nature of white supremacy. Some of the men on this commune are pirates from the other narrative thread and they appear, disappear, and reappear throughout several chapters near the end of the book.

The narrative then moves erratically and abrasively, skipping from one unrelated scene to another. Some nude men parachute into a desert crater, probably the site of the previously mentioned ancient spaceship crash. The crater figures into the final passages of The Place of Dead Roads and also appeared first in The Soft Machine. In Burroughs’ mythology, the space ship unleashed a virus that infected the throats of primates living in the crater and this caused them to develop language. This viral infection, and how it caused language to develop, is graphically described in The Soft Machine.

These boys wander off into one of the seven cities where the sky turns red at night. They end up in a nightclub where hangings of men are done, complete with ejaculations, for the entertainment of the patrons. In this same city, a riot happens when the lower classes rebel against the controlling authorities. The bar tender recounts the history of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, forcing you to question whether or not the city is an alternative version of New York. Is it the same city in a different time or a different dimension? A parallel universe or a reoccurrence in a different form? A theme of the transmigration of souls runs throughout the entire novel. But the author offers no clear explanations while holding the whole novel together like a lump of gelatin which is why he is a great writer.

Clem Snide shows up in another one of the seven red night cities, one that is divided by a river. On pne side is a casbah inhabited by the lower classes where all manner of vice and illicit activities take place. On the other is the upper class neighborhoods who have declared war on the casbah with the intention of exterminating the lower classes. The casbah dwellers, being those most sympathetic to Burroughs, are described as a bunch of men whose faces bear traces of all ethnic groups and races; the faces’ features begin to alter and swirl, making all the ethnicities blend together to the point where it is impossible to tell them apart. This is the culmination of the 17^th century pirates’ vision of utopia which complicates the narrative since the pirates reemerge in the story as members of the white supremacist commune although they do show up to fight in the final war along with Clem Snide on the side of the casbah classes. That war is described like an epic Hollywood movie, overblown as if Cecil B. DeMille had filmed a version of a Hieronymous Bosch painting. Just as importantly, when Clem Snide gets taken to the upper class neighborhood, he finds the evil and controlling Contessa de Gulpa who is running the human head transplant operation that erry Green fell into.

One extraneous passage explains a lot of what might be going on in this book. Burroughs describes a warehouse with theaters, stages, and audiences. Dressing rooms have people changing character by changing costumes. Many of these performances are of sex and the voyeurism of the hanging and orgasm ritual in which souls escaping from bodies can be harnessed and directed for magical purposes. Or else the escaping soul can also be permitted to transmigrate into other bodies. This comparison of souls changing bodies the way actors change costumes to play different roles might be part of what Burroughs is attempting to say about the passage of time and the nature of human existence. It could also be emblematic of a man with an unstable identity, the kind of man who might imagine himself as a secret agent, a magician, a doctor an outlaw, an imaginary animal, or any of the other literary personas created by Burroughs. It could also be emblematic, self-consciously or not, of the writing process as an author is someone who enters the minds of literary personas, seeing the world through their eyes, and doing what they do in the imagination so that they can be written as characters into a story. This is why I say you don’t need to believe any of Burroughs’ far out theories to harmonize with what he has to say. Besides, if you take critique, satire, or symbolism at literal face value then it doesn’t function as critique, satire, or symbolism. Multiple meanings of signs are necessary to make these things work.

Cities Of the Red Night is probably the most linear novel Burroughs has written since Junky. That’s not to say it is linear in a conventional sense in any way. The two threads that course through the first half of the book follow time lines, but they don’t tell a story in the way that traditional story telling is done. Actually the plot lines are weak and even generic. Half way through everything goes haywire and Burroughs hits you with a grenade full of sentences reminiscent of the proto-Surrealist writer Lautreamont. The plot is still there but the wheels have flown off the narrative train and the reader proceeds by attempting, sometimes in vain, to connect all the shards and shrapnel into a picture forming a coherent whole. I think this is too much of a task for most readers, but I also say that Burroughs is like Thomas Pynchon of the field of modern art; you need to commit over a long period of time to get the most out of it. By looking for interconnections and overlapping themes, you will reach a point where some things snap into place and the incomprehensible becomes somewhat comprehensible. But then again, confusion is part of what Burroughs is expressing. Notice the formula of viruses-guns-sex-magic-time. It is like a semiotic chain whose links recombine in varying pairings and orders like DNA to build wordscapes reflecting the inner world of the author’s mind.

So what can be made of the public spectacle of hanging with orgasm in front of an audience? Burroughs draws links early on between guns and ejaculation as well as between magic and ejaculation. He also draws a connection between public hangings and the release of the soul for transmigration and habitation of another body. In all these cases, the idea of a powerful energy being released towards a specific goal is present. In an early chapter, the pirates watch a ritual performance of sex for the purpose of procreation. In later chapters, audiences in town squares, night clubs, films, and other social gatherings watch hangings that end with ejaculation in a ritualized form of death and voyeurism. By linking the actions of sex, death, and transmigration we get a continual cycle of eternal return, hence the references to ancient Egyptian mythology. Since this is the writing of Burroughs, the parts of that eternal cycle are never presented in any specific order. Burroughs might say that time for heroin addicts follows no definite pattern the way it would for everybody else. Junkies live on junk time as he says in Naked Lunch and the sun rises and sets the way a junky gets high and comes down, repeating over and over the same ritual shooting up since he is an addict.

The audience might be there to receive the spiritual energy being released during the death/orgasm ritual of a public hanging. In any case, I recently read something by the anthropologist Ivor Miller who claims that magic only works if it has an audience. He defines “magic” as ceremonial actions that are designed to persuade people to change their behavior in specified ways. In other words, witnessing somebody casting a love spell may influence them to feel love whereas the same ceremony performed in solitude might be nothing more than pissing into the wind. Therefore a hanging without an audience might result in the loss or disappearance of a soul since its magic power is dissipated without being directed towards a specific goal. This goes back to viruses and language since both replicate by moving from host to host. Both survive by circulating throughout communities. Both are discharged from one body to another like semen discharging during an ejaculation or bullets fired from a gun. Without any intended target, semen, bullets, and language serve no function. Burrughs would also say that since a virus resulted in language that makes language a foreign entity in the body. Just like a bullet. Maybe this is nothing but poetry. Maybe not. But at least it’s interesting and gets you thinking hard.

These days, people on the internet have an annoying habit of calling any work of art that is weird or difficult to understand a “fever dream”. Personally I find this term to be so cliché now that I wish people would just stop using it. But then again, a character named Audrey at the end of Cities Of the Red Night wakes up in a hospital bed in Greece. He is probably an altar ego of Clem Snide and, possibly, one persona among many representing the same person throughout the story. The entire narrative was made up of dreams Audrey had while sick in bed with a fever caused by a virus. This book literally is a fever dream. So I have to shut up about that pet peeve for now. Aside from that, this is one of William S. Burroughs’ more accessible books if you are looking for a good start to get into his wilder writings. It is also a rewarding read for veteran Burroughs readers. If you enjoy reading novels that drive you crazy then go for it. You might come out psychologically intact if you are lucky.

 

Book Review & Analysis: Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas

Cuba:

The Pursuit of Freedom

by Hugh Thomas

           It’s amazing how little Americans know about neighboring countries. Actually it’s amazing how little Americans know about America, but that’s another matter. Miami is closer to Havana than it is to Orlando or Atlanta and yet a lot of people couldn’t name the capital of Cuba if you asked them. What some people do know abut Cuba doesn’t extend much farther beyond cigars, salsa, and communism. Obviously there is so much more and a lot of Cuban history has been directly influenced by American politics and business. Hugh Thomas’s Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom gives an epic rundown of Cuban history that is far from complete. Yet with about 1.500 pages, you can’t fault the author for leaving a few things out.

This history book, which weighs weighs about as much as an iron dumbbell, doesn’t start with the Taino or Arawak Indians. It doesn’t even start with the arrival of Columbus. It starts with the British invasion of Havana led by Lord Albemarle. This might be a strange starting point considering how minor an event it is in Cuban history and all that came after, but as stated before, a book of this length wouldn’t benefit from any extra information. In any case, the 18^th century was when Cuba became an island of central importance to colonial businessmen in the Caribbean. The tropical jungle island had a perfect climate for sugarcane and tobacco farming and its location made it ideal as a hub for distribution and transport of cargo. This led to an influx of Spanish criollos and, regrettably, a thriving trade of slaves brought over from West Africa and indentured servants from China.

The most interesting parts of these early chapters include descriptions of the social lives of Cuba’s inhabitants. It’s especially interesting to learn about how the plantation and factory owners allowed the slave laborers to practice their traditional religions, something that helped them to cope with slavery and later catalyzed the thriving of African diaspora religions in the Caribbean. It’s also interesting that slaves were allowed to buy their own freedom and a class of African craftsmen grew in Havana as a result.

Yet as agriculture and industry in Cuba grew, more Africans were brought in from Jamaica and Haiti, making them the dominant demographic of the colony. The Spanish criollos grew uneasy because small slave rebellions broke out, setting off a long string of political violence and rebellions that culminated in the Cuban Revolution of 1958. On the other side of that was a small group of Spanish businessmen who wanted Cuba to be annexed by the United States. At this time, Cuba was owned and politically dominated by the Spanish crown who paid little attention to the distant island. Simultaneously, the economy and industry were largely influenced, if not outright controlled, by the U.S.

The annexation movement may have been obscure and ineffective, but it did inspire a nationalist movement and an eventual War of Independence. During this time in the 19^th century, the journalist and poet Jose Marti emerged as the voice of Cuban independence. Rebellions were led from the eastern province of Oriente by the mulatto captain Antonio Maceo as well. Both of these men are considered to be Cuba’s first national heroes. Adding to the turbulence of the 1800s were also the boom and bust cycles of sugar production and their reliance on the fickle international market. Sugarcane was the dominant crop of Cuba’s agriculture and the island’s economy relied heavily on the sugar market, something that could be easily offset by the farming of sugar beets in Europe and the United States where transport costs were lower and import tariffs non-existent if grown locally.

By the end of the 19^th century, the Spanish-American War had broken out. As the Spanish Empire grew weaker and they began to lose control over their overseas territories, the U.S. used the explosion of the battleship Maine, anchored off the coast of the Florida Keys, as an excuse to “liberate” the remaining colonies of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. For the Cubans, this meant the much desired nationhood they craved, but it also meant a subservient position to the United States. The Platt Amendment was attached to the first Constitution of Cuba, giving the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs under certain circumstances. This remained a sore point in the minds of nationalists who wanted complete independence. But Thomas argues that some guidance was necessary for the fledgling nation. Early Cuban politicians lacked political will and expertise, and the economy was largely dependent on businesses owned by Americans. The American government was paternalistic and patronizing to Cuban politicos and this caused friction with the Cuban populace, something that Americans were too blind and arrogant to see.

Eventually, a democracy emerged on the island nation, but it was fraught with difficulties and instability from the beginning. The term “gangsterismo” was coined to describe the Cuban political style. After the election of Fulgencio Batista to his first term of office, corruption and violence took hold of the government. The lines between politics, organized crime, and guerilla warfare became blurred as different factions emerged out of the underground to fight for power. These political gangs had less to do with ideology than they did with violence, graft, and loyalty, a factor that made Havana volatile and sporadically dangerous until the middle of the 20^th century. After a string of corrupt and ineffective presidents who were constantly under threat of assassination, Batista returned to power as a dictator; at first he was welcomed as a savior, but the Cubans quickly turned against him when they saw he was all about business as usual.

Enter Fidel Castro.

The future Cuban dictator was raised by a wealthy family of sugarcane farmers. After passing the bar exam, the young intellectual worked for a law firm of no importance before assembling a small army and launching a raid against the Moncada military barracks. After a stint in prison, Castro went to Mexico and met up with his right hand man Che Guevara. The two of them trained a small band of guerillas, sailed a decrepit boat through a storm to Oriente province in Cuba, and launched a revolution that caught on in the rural areas and mountains of the island nation. It is important to note that Fidel Castro was never an ideologue. He was an adventurer and a natural born leader with outsize charisma. This goes a long way in understanding what the Cuban Revolution of 1958 was all about. To the surprise of many, the revolution quickly gained momentum and soon the CIA and American media were lending some reluctant support to his cause. The CIA, seeing Batista as a weak leader, convinced him to step down and allow Castro to take over the country. Castro’s success did not come solely from his charisma; his revolutionary message about Cuban independence was sufficiently vague enough to appeal to varied groups of people, many of which had opposing points of view. One thing they all had in common was the weariness of political instability and economic backwardness, something they ironically coped with by nurturing a strong and passionate culture.

After the rise of Castro, Hugh Thomas revisits the state of Cuban society around the time of the Revolution. It’s an interesting contrast with the section at the beginning of the book that addresses the same issues as they stood in at the turn of the 19^th century. The book ends with America’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also ends with an analysis of Cuban politics and society after the Revolution. Thomas is certainly biased against Castro although he does a fair job of presenting nuanced views of the country in the 1960s. Living standards rose for some while going down for others. Massive amounts of refugees left to settle in the United States. Castro, with no political experience or ideology, grasped on to communism and made everything up as he went along. He appointed Che Guevara to manage Cuba’s industry and economy, but Guevara made a mess out of that due to his similar lack of experience in the real world. Thomas accuses Guevara of being a quasi-fascist due to his enthusiasm for political violence and warfare over the less exciting nuts and bolts of economic policy. Fidel Castro essentially turned Cuba into a personality cult.

Due to its length, this book is not for readers looking for a quick and easy understanding of Cuban history. It starts out strong with its sociological history of the colony in the 1700s. The author clearly identifies and outlines the key events, rebellions, wars, and political movements of the subsequent century. His analysis of the sugar and tobacco industries is top notch in its detail even if it is a bit dry. But some of the politics get bogged down in excessive detail. There are a lot of obscure arguments made by obscure men with obscure intentions over obscure issues. There are times when the reader has to keep a stiff upper lip while plowing through all the muck. The same can be said for some passages of the democratic and gangsterismo era of the 20^th century that led up to the Revolution. The peaks of early and mid Cuban history are fascinating enough to keep the narrative going though. And Fidel Castro’s Revolution is one of the most exciting political adventure stories I know of. As a reader, Thomas makes it easy to see how people could get caught up in all the intrigue. I have read better accounts of the Cuban Revolution though.

The worst part of this book is the way Thomas insists on listing the names of every single person who contributed to the Revolution so that you get long lists of people like Jose Garcia Ecehvarria Gonzales y Fuentes de las Casas. I’m not saying this to make fun of Spanish names. I’m just saying that these lists can be off-putting to even the most dedicated of readers especially because most of these people never reappear in the narrative after being mentioned once. It’s like reading the genealogies in the Old Testament. It’s the kind of information that should be included in an appendix.

The chapters on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis are hasty and brief; there are far better accounts written in more recently authored books. The chapters on post-Revolutionary Cuba are interesting, but since this book was published in 1972, it is obvious that the author did not have the sufficient historical distance to give a well-rounded perspective. It would be interesting to read accounts of life inside Cuba from the time of the Revolution up to the present.

By the end a pattern emerges. From early slave rebellions to independence movements and liberation from the domination of the United States, Cuban history is marked by a desire for freedom. Ironically, the price they paid for national independence was a dictatorship that restricted civil liberties and political opposition while being somewhat under the wing of the Soviet Union and still economically tied to the turbulent international sugar market. The subtitle of this book is appropriate as it gives form to the chaos of Cuban history. Fortunately, Thomas does not over-emphasize this thesis since doing so would have contained the narrative in an unnecessarily narrow theory of interpretation. Perhaps Cuba’s shortcomings in the pursuit of freedom are overridden in the cultural expressions of their music, dance, and easy going lifestyle as well as the thriving of the African diaspora religious societies known as Abakua, Palo Monte, and Santeria or Lukumi. When political oppression is all-pervasive, passions for freedom can be expressed in other creative ways.

After finishing Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas, it is clear that the author is anal retentive in attention to detail, yet it is written without losing sight of the bigger issues guiding the study of Cuban history. At times, the writing is dense, but when you break through to the more interesting parts, it becomes clear that this is a monumental achievement both for the author and the reader who has enough patience to see it through to the end.