Paulo Drinot (ed.), Che's Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 306, £66.00, £16.99 pb.
sketchiness. Here, it seems, the author’s historiographical training pays off in a capacity to summarise skilfully but astutely. The overview of the troubled US–Cuban relationship is also treated critically and comprehensively, with the eye of someone who clearly feels the subject perhaps more than a European might. Also, the decision to treat three decades of political evolution as one single theme works surprisingly well, even though it does gloss over some of the inner tensions, ideological arguments and external pressures which forced what Chomsky describes, perhaps a little misleadingly, as ‘experiments with socialism’. Indeed, the Cuban–Soviet relationship, which did so much to shape those years, is as a result somewhat downplayed in comparison to the US–Cuban relationship. Both, it is clear, were fundamental in affecting both internal and external patterns of behaviour and thinking, but this comes out less explicitly in this approach. The final chapters are perhaps less well written. While the Special Period is approached with commendable honesty, detail and balance, the discussion of ‘Cuba into the st Century’ seems unnecessarily reliant on external perspectives, often provided by specialists who lack contact with the complex internal dynamics of the rethinking, tensions and debates which have characterised the post- years. As a result, the ‘Battle of Ideas’ is largely ignored, in keeping with the judgments of some of those external perspectives, but to the neglect of a close appreciation of the tensions and challenges that made the patterns of a Raúl-led Cuba more necessary and perhaps even inevitable. Instead, the major challenges highlighted are human rights and internal dissent, whose raised profile after  had as much to do with US strategy as with ‘organic’ structural development, and the elusive and highly contentious notion of ‘civil society’. That focus seems a curious one, given everything else going on in Cuba in the last decade or so: economic pressures, internal party debate, changing generations, and so on. However, those weaknesses should not detract from what is a welcome, worthy and highly perceptive summary of the evolution of a process that is often baffling to outsiders, as well as to many Cubans on the island itself. It not only avoids many familiar pitfalls but shows a perceptive eye alongside the clear sympathy.