On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture

Revelatory and engrossing, P rez's epic of U.S.-Cuban relations and their impact on the development of the Cuban character focuses not on international diplomacy or saber rattling, but on symbiotic personal contact. The study, which concentrates on the century leading up to the revolution of 1959, quickly makes clear that the Cuban presence in the U.S. is not an invention of the late 20th century. In fact, migration began in the 1850s; North Americans were conspicuous in Cuba as well, with industrialists and tradesmen settling there. Well-to-do islanders had their children educated stateside, while Cuban workers were trained on U.S.-built machinery. Thus, the U.S. became the undoing of Spanish colonialism, for Cuba had access to up-to-date technology well before its mother country. Later, during Prohibition, U.S. tourism transformed Cuba into a prime destination for indulgence and excess, while Cuban influences in American sports and music became ubiquitous. A professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, P rez argues that this familiarity with and dependence on the United States led, in part, to Castro's revolution, which he portrays as the logical extension of the bourgeois-democratic ideal that had initially attracted Cubans to the U.S. Refreshingly, P rez (The War of 1898) does not take sides. The clarity of his writing and his extensive research make this an important addition to Latin American studies. 70 illus., 70 maps. (Nov.)