Cuba and Africa

Abstract

Cuba's revolution is one of the genuine revolutions of our century. By the scope, depth, and irreversibility of the changes wrought, it has ushered in a new era in the history of the Americas and is as epochal an event as the American declaration of independence. Two outstanding works, the first by two British academics and two Latin Americans,1 the other by a distinguished French agronomist, Africanist, and adviser to the Cuban Government,2 have done much to illuminate the past, immediate, and future problems of the first American nation to embark on the lines of socialist development. These authors have for the first time assembled and synthesised dispassionately a prodigious amount of data concerning the economic life of this controversial nation; and they have managed to avoid the passions of the cold war. The two works are harmoniously dovetailed; the first treats its subject historically and analytically since the turn of the century, the second deals with the institutional strengths and weaknesses that have emerged since the revolution, and takes the story up to the end of 1963 and the appearance of ‘socialist monoculture’.