8-24-09, 9:53 am

Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know by Julia E Sweig New York, Oxford University Press.

Original source: Morning Star

This remarkable book sets 128 questions, ranging from 'What were the main features of Cuban life during Spanish colonial rule?' to 'How extensive is Cuba's cultural projection – music, art, film, literature – on the global stage?'

Julia Sweig is director of Latin American studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations, so her answers are detailed and authoritative, reinforced with a longish index and a short but useful bibliography.

Divided into sections covering Cuba's early colonial history, the 1959 revolution, the cold war, Cuba's place in the world and US-Cuba relations, Sweig's answers range from a single paragraph to several pages in length. Detailed coverage is given to the 1962 missile crisis, the young Cuban Elian Gonzalez who was held hostage in the US, the Mariel mass exodus and subsequent refugee crises.

The 'special period' is covered sympathetically and the case of the heroic Cuban Five is covered in almost sufficient detail, given the overall plan of the book.

The remarkable nature of this book consists in the deft combination of the didactic with the dialectical. Myriad facts show that Cuba-US relations are the result of US imperialist ambitions that pre-date its own foundation, rather than some ephemeral 'Cuban communism.'

Is it too much to hope that the current US administration will build on such conclusions?