Fighting over Fidel

Rafael Rojas is professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City. He is one of Cuba's most distinguished cultural critics and a renowned scholar of Latin American history.

• Introduction 1 1 Hipsters and Apparatchiks 29 2 Naming the Hurricane 62 3 Socialists in Manhattan 87 4 The Cultural Apparatus of the Empire 115 5 Moons of the Revolution 142 6 Negroes with Guns 165 7 The League of Militant Poets 195 8 The Skin of Socialism 220 Epilogue 245 Notes 251 References 279 Index 293

"Rojas has written an oddly captivating account of the Cuban revolution as a moment when ... two worlds clashed, when a political revolt in one nation upended intellectual forces in another. Rather than focus on Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, John F. Kennedy or the other usual suspects of this Cold War era, Rojas tells the story of the left-wing academics, beat poets, Black Panthers and radical journalists in the United States ... who initially embraced Cuba's transformations only to splinter over Castro's repression of individual freedoms and the island's move toward the Soviet orbit."--Carlos Lozada, Washington Post "Rojas uses Fighting Over Fidel to examine the wild crew of radical writers and left-wing thinkers in the United States as they struggled to understand Castro... Fighting Over Fidel is an important book, a vital book, in tracing the paths by which we arrived at our situation."--Joseph Bottum, Washington Free Beacon "Considered together, the portraits of Fighting Over Fidel are rich and erudite, and the book arrives at an important moment."--Patrick Iber, Los Angeles Review of Books "Rojas's discussion of the American left-wing intellectual support for the Cuban Revolution is a stimulating invitation to revisit a seminal period in the development of the US left."--Samuel Farber, Jacobin