Cuba in Flux
Goodsell, James Neison
Cuba in Flux The Youngest Revolution: A Personal Report on Cuba, by Elizabeth Sutherland. The Dial Press. 277 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by James Neison Goodsell Cuba under Fidel Castro remains an...
...Yet even the present generation of youth is in many important ways a different breed from its predecessor...
...Too little is known or understood about Castro's revolution and the impact, both good and bad, that it is having on Cuba...
...Much of the reporting on Cuba comes out of Miami and other places where Cuban exiles, who are for the most part unfriendly toward Castro, steadily beat the anti-Castro propaganda drums...
...She can see how much Cuba has changed and how far it still has to go in some ways if it is to reach its goals...
...She obviously sees the point as the most significant theme in the revolution...
...The Youngest Revolution is an important book...
...One suspects that the outcome will be determined in large measure by the kind of people Elizabeth Sutherland interviewed...
...JAMES NELSON GOOD-SELL is Latin American correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor...
...It is not the whole story, but is an important aspect of it, and Miss Sutherland writes with an enthusiasm and charm which help convey her message...
...economic problems place limits on what can be done, and work still has a compulsory aspect...
...Many other observers would agree...
...She dwells at length on this theme, and she writes that countless young people she interviewed in her travels around the island showed this sense of purpose...
...It is good to have Miss Sutherland's accounting of their views, attitudes, and activities...
...Mass education began only a few years ago...
...While Miss Sutherland obviously finds much to appreciate in Castro's revolution, she writes with perception which notes mistakes as well as successes'and questions whether the revolution will actually succeed in all its various undertakings...
...On them depends the future of the revolution...
...Formerly he was associated with the National Educational Television network and was a political reporter for The Milwaukee Journal...
...THE REVIEWERS ARNOLD A. ROGOW is graduate professor of political science at the City University of New York and author of a biography of James Forrestal...
...Finally, too few people in this country know much of what went on in Cuba during the years of corrupt and dictatorial rule before Castro came to power ten years ago...
...That point is a key to an understanding of Cuba today...
...PAUL HOLLANDER is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts and an associate of the Russian Research Center at Harvard...
...It is unlikely that any single book would by itself dispel this cloud, but Elizabeth Sutherland's The Youngest Revolution is a helpful start...
...Part of the problem lies in the difficulty facing U.S...
...EDWIN R. BAYLEY is dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California in Berkeley...
...While it is far from a unanimous acceptance, Cuba's youth has taken to the idea of work and study as goals...
...Reviewed by James Neison Goodsell Cuba under Fidel Castro remains an enigma to most North Americans...
...PHILIP G. ALTBACH is associate professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin...
...CATHARINE HUGHES is a free lance writer and critic...
...She displays an ability to ask the sort of question which evokes penetrating answers, some of which are not necessarily complimentary to the Castro revolution...
...Actually, there is a good deal of this sort of criticism in Cuba, as any visitor is quick to learn...
...Like In the Fist of the Revolution by Jose Yglesias, the American novelist, this book penetrates behind the propaganda for and against the Cuban revolution and looks at re%'olution largely through the eyes of those living through it— in city and countryside, in various walks of life, and among the young and old, the educated and not so educated...
...Castro's revolution has placed special emphasis on the training of young people, and it is from Cuba's youth that Castro draws some of his most important support...
...Take, for example, Miss Sutherland's comments on the effort by the revolution to create "a New Man...
...But some of the criticism is of the type that Castro himself uses to comment on the new society being formed in Cuba...
...In addition, many North Americans find it hard to accept the presence in Cuba of a government that is so obviously at variance with the pattern of governments acceptable in the West...
...Miss Sutherland is at her best in her interviews with Cubans around the island...
...readers who seek information on Cuba...
...Miss Sutherland is probably correct when she writes that the young people of Cuba have "a sense of common purpose that amazed the most skeptical visitor to the island...
...She observes that "no one can yet say whether the revolution will succeed in making something that can be called a New Man...
...He is co-editor with S. M. Lipset of "Students in Revolt," just published by Houghton Mifflin...
...Much of the book is based on her trip to Cuba in 1967, but she had been there before and therefore writes with a useful perspective...
...His anthology, "American and Soviet Society—A Reader in Comparative Sociology and Perception," was published last year by Prentice-Hall...
Vol. 34 • January 1970 • No. 1
