Notes 1 A New Political Dawn: The Cuban Revolution in the 1960s 1. For an outline of the events surrounding the Padilla Affair, see chapter two. 2. Kenner and Petras limited themselves to mentioning the enormous importance of a Cuban Revolution with which a great number of the North American New Left identified. They also dedicated their book to the Cuban and Vietnamese people for “giving North Americans the possibility of making a revolution” (1972: 5). 3. For an explanation of the term gauchiste and of its relevance to the New Left, see chapter six. 4. However, this consideration has been rather critical in the case of Minogue (1970). 5. The general consensus seems to be that, as the Revolution entered a period of rapid Sovietization following the failure of the ten million ton sugar harvest of 1970, Western intellectuals, who until then had showed support, sought to distance themselves from the Revolution. The single incident that seemingly sparked this reaction, in particular from some French intellectuals, was the Padilla Affair. 6. Here a clear distinction must be made mainly between the Communist Party of the pre-Revolutionary period, the Partido Socialista Popular (Popular Socialist Party) and the 26 July Movement (MR26). The former had a legacy of Popular Frontism, collaboration with Batista in the post- War period and a general distrust of “middle class adventurers” as it referred to the leadership of MR26 until 1958 (Karol, 1971: 150). The latter, led by Castro, had a radical though incoherently articulated ideo- logical basis. The process of unification of revolutionary organizations carried out between 1961 and 1965 did not completely obliterate the individuality of these competing discourses and it was in their struggle for supremacy that the New Left’s contribution was made. 7. This was notably the case in Venezuela, where revolutionary leader Douglas Bravo voiced his disappointment over Cuba’s abandonment of the revolutionary effort on a continental scale in 1970 (Karol, 1971). 190 Notes 8. The assumption is that all socialist societies in the twentieth century were ideologically identical and that these could be equated to their individual leaders (i.e., Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba). Hollander (1981) uses a single label for all of them as police states (Hollander, 1981). 9. According to Jennings (1993), Bourdieu’s biggest success lies not in having bequeathed the ultimate definition of intellectual but in the contribution that the range of concepts and methodologies he developed can make to the study of the intellectual (Jennings, 1993). 10. These partial visions tend to dominate the current academic literature, given that many of the former participants are the current agents of reproduction. 11. According to Debray (1981), journals, in particular, constitute the main means of organization of the “intellectual army” on a territorial scale and their analysis can often yield important results in the study of the politi- cal and ideological directions of collective groups. 12. Speaking about L’Observateur and Les Temps Modernes, Boschetti has observed that the evolution of the latter from philosophy toward journalism is evidenced by the participation of many of Les Temps Modernes’ writers in the founding of Le Nouvel Observateur in 1964, leading to a situation in which the readership of both largely overlapped (Boschetti, 1985). 2 Cuba: The Myth and the Reality of an Original Revolution 1. According to this argument, the logic of the Cold War had already forced a definition on the Cuban Revolution, before Castro’s famous declaration of his Marxist-Leninism in December 1961. And yet, this declaration met with a cold response from the Soviet Union until April 1962. See Hall and Fructer (1961). 2. For an analysis of the initial industrialization drive, see Draper (1965). Guevara often is portrayed as the greatest critic of the Soviets due to his Algiers speech in February 1965. Yet, others have argued that by 1962, it was already clear that Guevara had a great disillusionment with the USSR partly as a result of Cuba’s failed industrialization experience (Karol, 1971). See also, Guevara (1962, 1963b). 3. I am grateful to Arnaldo Silva, former director of the Schools of Revolutionary Instruction, for discussing these issues with me. 4. Lieberman’s economics gave weight to a degree of decentralization and the market, albeit as part of the socialist system, whereas the Guevarist position was in favor of using moral incentives and the centralization of planning in the economy. 5. The USSR typically described itself as the most advanced of socialist nations in the process of constructing communism. Cuba repeatedly chal- lenged this dogma in the late 1960s, arguing that it was constructing both socialism and communism at the same time through a process of raising Notes 191 consciousness and creation of the New Man. By 1971, however, there was official acceptance of Soviet society’s superiority and therefore an implicit critique of the “excessive idealism” of previous years (Mesa-Lago, 1974). 6. Little doubt exists that the predominant use of moral incentives was a logical extension of the ideological importance placed on the subjective aspects of the construction of socialism. Furthermore, Castro has been reportedly argued that there would be little point in providing more economic incentives given that the shortage of consumer goods was so widespread in the 1966–1968 period, suggesting that beyond the purely ideological, pragmatic reasoning always has been at the forefront of Cuba’s policy directions (González, 1974). 7. For an overall picture of the development of health services in the first decade of the Revolution, see Delgado García (1989) and Santana (1987). 8. For a uniquely interesting account of the pre-revolutionary medical profession’s political role and participation in Cuban society, see Danielson (1979). 9. Different interpretations have been given to the idea of the New Man. Marshall links it to the humanist writings of Marx and Cuban tradi- tions reflected in the publication of the journal Hombre Nuevo in the 1920s (1987: 144). Castro, on the other hand, used the idea of the “New Man,” especially during the Revolutionary Offensive, to refer to Cubans prepared to sacrifice themselves for others, reflecting perhaps the religious influence in his own Jesuit education and subverting the Leninist vanguard idea in vogue at the time. For further reading on the issue of the New Man, see Lowy (1970). For an introduction to Castro’s own intellectual background, see Betto (1985), Miná (1987), and Szulc (1986). 10. For an earlier version of some of the ideas that would later be expressed in Man and Socialism, see On revolutionary medicine—written by Guevara as early as 1960—in Gerassi (1968: 112–120). 11. For a thorough study of Cuban cinema inaugurated with the Revolution, see Chanan (1985). 12. An enormous increase in the number of Cuban publications also took effect after the Revolution, in a country where, according to Cuban com- mentators, national culture had been sidelined by colonial society. 13. I am grateful to Brian Pollitt for describing those days so vividly for me. 14. Both after the Moncada attack in 1953 and the Gramma landing, the PSP issued statements denouncing the “putchist” methods of “petit bour- geois” young men while calling for the unity of opposition forces to the dictatorship (Goldenberg, 1970). 15. MR26 was the name of the movement led by Fidel Castro in com- memoration of the attack to the Moncada Barracks that took place on July 26, 1953. During the last stages of the revolutionary war in 1958, the ideological distinction between the PSP and the MR26 192 Notes was not clear-cut. Raul Castro, for example, had belonged to the Communist Youth during his time at the University of Havana (Szulc, 1986). 16. Shortly after, on July 26, 1961, the Revolución disclosed news about the imminent creation of ORI with the headline “Unity, unity of all the revolutionary organizations against imperialism” (Editorial, 1961b: 1). 17. The published list of former PSP leaders who were heading ORI included Blas Roca, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, the Escalante brothers, Severo Aguirre, Francisco Bravo, Luis Peña, and Manuel Luzardo. The purge of Aníbal Escalante and of numerous regional and local representatives of the new party who belonged to the former PSP met no opposition. Roca, from his post in Hoy, declared his total agreement with Castro, and other legendary Party members like Luis Peña had already lost their access to the media and the right to comment publicly. In April 1962, the Soviet Union also favored Castro’s move (Goldenberg, 1965). 18. The Marquitos Affair refers to the 1964 trial of former PSP member Marcos Rodríguez for his implication in the deaths of various DRE mem- bers in 1957. At the time, this process was interpreted as a serious setback to revolutionary unity as the event marked the political downfall of various former PSP members accused of “collective responsibility,” notably Edith García Buchaca. For more on this event, see Habel (1964). In 1968, the Microfacción trial resulted in further purges against former PSP members. 19. For further elaboration on a number of these organizations, see Fagen (1969). 20. Prior to 1959, an entire generation of intellectuals and educated Cubans had left the country for the United States, Mexico, or France partly due to the underdeveloped nature of higher education and partly because of political repression and censorship. This led to the paradox of a country that, being home to the likes of Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, or José Lezama Lima, had barely any literary production. In 1959, Humberto Arenal, Pablo Armando Fernández, Antón Arrufat, Mirian Acevedo, Edmundo Desnoes, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Ambrosio Fornet, Heberto Padilla, and others who lived abroad, decided to return to Cuba.