How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolution
How Things Fall Apart: What Happened to the Cuban Revolution
by Elizabeth Dore
Duke University Press, 2023 Paper: 978-1-4780-2496-5 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-2033-2 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-2730-0 Library of Congress Classification F1788.D5925 2023
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In How Things Fall Apart Elizabeth Dore reveals the decay of the Cuban political system through the lives of seven ordinary Cuban citizens. Born in the 1970s and 1980s, they recount how their lives changed over a tumultuous stretch of thirty-five years: first when Fidel Castro opened the country to tourism following the fall of the Soviet bloc; then when Raúl Castro allowed market forces to operate; and finally when President Trump’s tightening of the US embargo combined with the COVID-19 pandemic caused economic collapse. With warmth and humanity, they describe learning to survive in an environment where a tiny minority has grown rich, the great majority has been left behind, and inequality has destroyed the very things that used to give meaning to Cubans’ lives. In this book, everyday Cubans illuminate their own stories and the slow and agonizing decline of the Cuban Revolution.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Dore (1946–2022) was Professor Emeritus of Latin American History at the University of Southampton, author of Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, and coeditor of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, both also published by Duke University Press.
REVIEWS
“Masterful. Dore uses oral history to tell a history of Cuba from the bottom up, accompanied by her own astute commentary. How Things Fall Apart reads like a set of vivid short stories.”
-- Linda Gordon, author of The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
“An elegant account of the evolution of a revolution. Writing on a topic which still has the power to provoke the most visceral responses across the political spectrum, Dore has done a rare thing: she has let the Cuban people speak for themselves. Dore handles their stories of triumph and hardship with honesty, compassion, and respect, and in the process has held up a mirror to the state of the Cuban Revolution in the twenty-first century. How Things Fall Apart is a vital addition to Cuba’s rich oral tradition.”
-- Will Grant, BBC Mexico, Central America, and Cuba Correspondent
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue 1 1. The Narrators 5 2. Backstory 8 3. Fidel’s Fall, An Omen 13 Part 1: The 1980s 4. Mario Sánchex Cortéz 21 5. Alina Rodríguez Abreu 32 6. Juan Guillard Matus 37 7. Racism 55 8. Esteban Cabrera Montes 58 9. Barbara Vegas 70 10. Fidel Castro 75 11. Pavel García Rojas 80 Part 2: Fidel and the Collapse, 1990–2006 97 12. Mario Sánchez Cortéz 103 13. Alina Rodríguez Abreu 128 14. Juan Guillard Matus 134 15. Esteban Cabrera Montes 148 16. Barbara Vegas 173 17. Pavel García Rojas 176 18. Alejandro Espada Betancourt 187 Part 3: Inequality, 2006–20 205 19. Mario Sánchez Cortéz 211 20. Alina Rodríguez Abreu 238 21. Juan Guillard Matus 253 22. Raúl Castro: The General 267 23. Esteban Cabrera Montes 270 24. Barbara Vegas 286 25. Pavel García Rojas 288 26. Alejandro Espada Betancourt 306 Conclusion 320 My Thanks 322 Endnotes 323 Index 333
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