The Cuban Scene
Goodsell, James Nelson
The Cuban Scene A Rebel in Cuba: An American's Memoir, by Neill Macaulay. Quadrangle Books. 199 pp. $5.95. Black Man in Red Cuba, by John Clytus with Jane Rieker. University of Miami Press. 158...
...To this reviewer, it is disappointing that he does not go into greater detail on his decision to leave...
...The third book in this trio is written for teenagers...
...relations with Cuba and with the then new Castro government...
...The three books under review here are, however, above average and worthy of mention...
...His experiences add insight into the events of late 1958 and early 1959 as he writes of the rebel activities in Pinar del Rio, a province which has generally been overlooked in the overall story of Castro's successful overthrow of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista...
...Thorn in Our Flesh: Castro's Cuba, by Jules Archer, Cowles Book Company...
...It is this aspect of A Rebel in Cuba that will prove the most useful...
...His book does not give all the answers, but it is written for the teenager whose awareness of the vast economic and social forces at work in Latin America is not as broad as it will become in the years ahead...
...Neill Macaulay's A Rebel in Cuba is easily the most important of the three books...
...However, one has to bear in mind in reading his account that Clytus went to Cuba without proper documentation and that he created a number of the problems he encountered, or at least that he did not always abide by Cuban regulations...
...And that led him to leave the island and the revolution in which he had taken part...
...Material considerations were unlikely to lead to mutiny in the Fidelista army because the great majority of officers were not propertied men...
...He seems to have a chip on his shoulder in many of his dealings with Cubans...
...Probably no subject in Latin America has generated so much written material—and yet for the most part the material is less than exciting and much of it is downright worthless...
...An American who teamed up with Cuban rebel supporters of Castro in 1958, Macaulay spent months with the rebels in western Pinar del Rio province and then sought a new career in Cuba as a tomato grower in the months after Castro's victory in 1959...
...It will not please the ardently pro-Castro reader, nor will it receive plaudits from the staunchly anti-Castro reader...
...Whether his conclusions on racism and his feeling that the black man does not have Utopia in Cuba are valid or not, the worth of his book lies less in its account of one black man's experience in Cuba and more in the fact that it raises the questions of racism and opportunity for the blacks in Cuba...
...Writing of this sort can often become bitter and maudlin...
...A byproduct of his book is his story of the running struggle he had with the U.S...
...In what is nothing short of dispassionate treatment, Jules Archer's Thorn in Our Flesh looks at Cuba and the appeal that it has to American youth—and suggests some of the reasons why...
...But in its personal way, Black Man in Red Cuba suggests that the question needs to be looked at, particularly by American blacks who are often enchanted with Castro's Cuba because it claims to have no racism...
...John Clytus' Black Man in Red Cuba is at first glance an expose of one man's experience in Cuba and his bitterness over the way he, as a black, was treated by the Cuban government...
...One point stands out in Archer's description of U.S.-Cuban relations...
...It was a far less important front than Castro's Sierra Maestra campaign or the struggle in Camagiiey and Las Villas provinces, but it was nonetheless a region of significant rebel activity...
...On the other hand, Clytus as a black man had a number of encounters with Cubans which lend some support to his argument...
...4.95...
...I was beginning to realize that the Cuban revolution was held together more by personal ties than by ideology," Macaulay writes...
...His testament is too personal to be the final word on this subject or even to serve as an honest appraisal of the question...
...158 pp...
...After his first crop was in, "it became obvious that private export agriculture—and practically all individual enterprise—was doomed in Cuba...
...Much of his account is the sort of intimate detail about the men alongside whom he fought that adds to our understanding of why Castro was so successful...
...Archer believes that "new chances to correct old mistakes may be ahead...
...193 pp...
...4.95...
...Archer's theme is that "if we understand why the Cuban revolution happened, we may be able in the future to avoid repeating the tragic mistakes that have proved so costly to us in Cuba and Vietnam...
...Some of this is patently not true...
...This part of his story is of less value than the details of his rebel experiences in Pinar del Rio, but it nevertheless adds dimension to the whole sorry tale of U.S...
...The men were personally loyal to each other and to their chieftains—and beyond that, to Castro himself...
...This is not the case with these two books, however...
...Fidel was free to discard principles, for there was no abstraction that would cause commanders like Escalona to betray Fidel or captains like Cesar to betray Escalona...
...He, his wife, and young son tried to succeed at tomato farming on land that the new Castro government allowed him to use, but not own...
...One hopes his judgment is correct...
...no matter what course the revolution might take when it achieved power, they stood to gain...
...It suggests that the Castro government has racist leanings and is not honest in its claim of support for equality of opportunity and experience for the black man...
...Macaulay's role at first was that of a guerrilla fighter in the Pinar del Rio hills and later as a commander of a heavy weapons platoon...
...Embassy and State Department to retain his American citizenship because he had served for a time in the rebel army, particularly after the fall of Batista...
...Reviewed by James Nelson Goodsell The plethora of books on Castro's Cuba continues...
...But for Macaulay, in the end it was the specific course the revolution took that led to his disaffection...
...But that in itself lends merit to the book...
...The Embassy in Havana and the Department in Washington do not appear in a good light as Macaulay tells of his encounters with officialdom...
...Castro himself finds it ironic," he writes, "that a country born in rebellion against injustice should have been so insensitive to Cuban suffering and rebellion...
...Two of the books—A Rebel in Cuba by Neill Macaulay and Black Man in Red Cuba by John Clytus—are personal memoirs of men who went to Cuba enchanted with Fidel Castro's revolution but left feeling disappointment and disenchantment...
...On the other hand, the book is essentially an account of his role as a rebel in the revolution and of the men with whom he came into contact...
...He even had charge of an execution squad that carried out the deaths of Batista henchmen in Pinar del Rio...
Vol. 35 • January 1971 • No. 1
