Where the Boys are: Cuba,
Cold War America and the
Making of a New Left by Van Gosse, Verso, 1994, 270 pp., $18.95 (cloth).
Cutting through the haze cast by the
three-decade-long U.S.-Cuba stand-
off, Van Gosse escavates the lost
history of U.S. solidarity with the
Cuban revolution from 1957 to
1961. Culling material from
sources as varied as radical jour-
nals, popular novels and movies,
Beatnik poetry, and personal inter-
views, Gosse shows how many of
the incipient currents of 1960s rad-
icalism-the so-called “New
Left”-came together around the
defense of Cuba.
Many have forgotten how the
Cuban guerrillas were cheered on
at first by the U.S. anti-Communist
liberal establishment who consid-
ered Castro “a true liberator of a
‘humanist’ revolution.” As Gosse
points out, parallels were drawn at
the time between Hungary’s popu-
lar uprising against the Soviets in
1956 and the struggle in the Sierra
Maestra.
New York Times reporter Herbert
Matthews’ exclusive 1957 inter-
view with Castro followed by CBS
news correspondent Robert Taber’s
prime-time special report on the
rebels crystallized this romanti-
cized image of Cuba in the popular
imagination. Castro attracted a
cult-like following among alienat-
ed U.S. youth. Gosse argues that
for many young fidelistas, Castro
was a symbol of virility and male
agency, and the Cuban revolution,
an adventure in a good cause.
With the revolution’s victory and
its quick dispatch of counterrevolu-
tionary opponents, Cuba became,
according to Gosse, “a wedge of
radicalization” that ruptured the
liberal consensus. While most Cold
War liberals beat a hasty retreat, an
assortment of African Americans,
students, pacifists, disenchanted
intellectuals, and Old Leftists stood
fast in defense of the revolution.
The movement’s main organiza-
48 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
tional vehicle, the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee (FPCC), got off
to a rousing start. It faded, howev-
er, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in
1961 as a result of government
harassment, personal infighting,
and the embargo that cut off all per-
sonal contacts with the island. Lee
Harvey Oswald’s purported associ-
ation with FPCC nailed the door
shut on that chapter of history.
In this absorbing book, Gosse
pries open that door. He makes a
compelling case that the social
explosion of the 1960s was not sui
generis. Rather, he argues, the
seeds of that ferment were planted
in the brief flowering of Cuba soli-
darity.
Rebel Radio: The Story of El
Salvador’s Radio Venceremos by Jose Ignacio L6pez Vigil, Curb- stone Press, 1994, 240 pp., $19.95 (cloth).
Radio journalist Jos6 Ignacio L6pez
Vigil cobbles together the first-per-
son testimonies of the men and
women who ran the FMLN’s under-
ground Radio Venceremos from
1979 to 1991. The interwoven nar-
ratives, translated with great flair by
Mark Fried, convey the pluck and
raw energy of the guerrillas who
lugged the bulky, much-loved radio
transmitter through the rebel-con-
trolled zone of Morazin during the
war. A reader cannot help being
drawn in by the tale of the mishaps
the rebels encountered in getting
the radio off the ground, their inge-
nious capers to elude the army’s
dragnet, and their triumphant news
bulletins blared in San Salvador’s
biggest shopping mall during the
1989 final offensive.
In the end, Rebel Radio does for
El Salvador’s FMLN what Omar
Cabezas’ Fire from the Mountain
accomplished for Nicaragua’s San-
dinistas. One puts down the book
with genuine insight into what life
was like for those Salvadoran men
and women who audaciously took
to the mountains in the face of a
government’s tyranny.
