|
|
Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with B
|
The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile (Vintage Departures) |
Author: Patrick Symmes
Published: 2008-05-06 |
List price: $15.95
Our price: $11.96
|
Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: August 30th, 2008 12:06:19 PM
|
|
|
Customer comments on this selection.
 Recent Cuba
The book began with somewhat of an attitude. One of the exiles "wallowed in history like a boy in a mud bog", another "cackles gleefully", and others "unashamedly shook hands" (why be ashamed to shake hands?). I almost put it down, but I'm glad I didn't. A lot of meat, and some very good writing follows.
The book is one part travelog, one part recent Cuban history and one part the story of Castro's classmates at the exclusive Jesuit school. Some of "the boys" supported Castro and his revolution before they fought against him. History is intertwined with descriptions of rations, baseball games and streetscapes.
The stories of the "boys" are the stories of the upheaval. Some smelled to coffee right away and left. Others were jolted out as they saw their liberties and property falling away. Some, like Kiki de Jongh remain for reasons that are very unclear.
I wonder how this author has slipped in and out of Cuba, as he says, for 11 years. He clearly knows the turf, and can write of the changing moods and landscapes. He has fereted out some oral histories inside of and outside of Cuba that add to the literature available to be sifted by future historians. It seems that Symmes knows some of the interviewees quite well. Presumably he has more extensive tapes and notes that I hope will someday be donated to a research institution.
In the final pages Symmes gives some ideas about what could happen after Castro's death.
I think a good editor could make this a 5 star book. The first 50 pages or so need some work. Throughout, some phrases could be metaphors or statements, it's hard to tell and some ideas are introduced in a way that you might not catch that the topic is changing (and go back to find what you missed). Pictures, even blow ups from the cover photo, would be a good addition and for the general reader, a map is needed.
The title is deceiving. I don't think this book was originally intended to be about the "boys". For instance, the author is given 2 addresses for one alumni, and dutifully mails the envelopes. If this were actually about alums, he would have pursued him and other leads.
Cuba/Castro/America
Recommended for one searching for insights and background to the Cuba of the past fifty years. This is not a straight history, or a policy article, or a personal travel memoir but a combination of all these and more, woven around one Cuban private school and the lives of some of its students, one of whom being Fidel Castro. Patrick Symmes is a talented writer.
I am not an expert on the history of the revolution or of the Bay of Pigs, but having been once to Havana the parts of this story pertaining to present day Cuba ring true to me.
This book is most relevant as this review is posted. The New York Times reports that Raul Castro has taken over as president of Cuba from his ill brother, Fidel Castro, this very day.
 The only "dolor" here is the pain from reading it
One of the unsolved mysteries in this book concerns its undetectable plot. Another mystery is how the book got a NY Times review. Besides the absence of an identifiable theme, an important criticism is that the author fails to benefit from recent scholarly work on the illegitimacy of Castro (such as Serge Raffy's book, for example). The lasting psychological effects of Castro's childhood (his illegitimacy, his being raised in various foster homes, his unresolved conflicts with his parents), would seem fruitful areas of inquiry, especially since the author spoke with people who knew Castro as a child. On the other hand, one also wonders about the book's reliance on interviews with elderly individuals, since much research suggests that childhood memories can be quite unreliable.
There are also many erroneous assertions, misstatements, and exaggerations. For example, at p. 10, the book states that "Belen had always been a sister school to Dolores, and the student bodies were intimately tied together." Belen's rival school was La Salle, in Havana. Very few Belen students ever even heard of Dolores and I suspect most Dolores students, especially those in the elementary and junior grades similarly had never heard of Belen. In the 1950s, Belen and Dolores, just as Havana and Santiago, were separated by much more than 750 miles of really bad roads; they were separated by an entire world.
In typical hyperbole, the book also contradicts itself. At p. 5, it refers to Dolores as the "richest gathering of the richest part of Cuba, a school of the chosen few." When did Santiago become so rich and powerful? In spite of this, at p. 298, the author then concludes: "Not everyone at the Colegio de Dolores came from wealth, or even the middle class. ('The Jesuits,' Roca said, 'if someone qualifies, they wanted him. So there were the sons of Bacardis, of industrialists, but also of barbers, and of tailors')" So, which is it? Besides, the sons (and daughters) of the Bacardi's lived largely in Havana.
The author also gets the Spanish lisp wrong. At p. 59, he writes about a "lisped 'Que patha?'..." In fact, the "s" is pronounced the same way in Madrid and in Havana, as an "s." It is to the "z" (hard) and the "c" (softer) where the Spaniard's "lisp" applies, and not to the "s," as in Que pasa...
Cuban history gets equally confusing, and just plain wrong, treatment. The history section is all of two pages. Various attempts at clever writing turn out to be obnoxiously awkward ("At 746 miles long, Cuba was unmeasurable. The landmass, a long and recumbent crocodile of 47,000 square miles, was less a nation and more an approximation.") How did that get past an editor?
The "tiny, plutocratic elite in Havana" is contrasted to "millions" of poor people. One wonders what source the author uses in arriving at these "millions," particularly since the author schizophrenically refers to the middle class in the previous paragraph. In fact, the middle class is described as both "small" and as "bigger than was found in most of the rest of Latin America." The data the author presents about telephones and automobiles is wrong: Cuba in 1958, according to readily verifiable information from the UN and other sources, had more televisions per capita that any other nation in Latin America (and in Europe) and it had the largest number of automobiles per 1,000 people (24) except for Venezuela (27). Per capita food consumption was 2730 calories per day, higher than anywhere else except for Argentina (3100). In fact, Cuba had the largest middle class in Latin America relative to the population of 6 million in 1958.
Breathless comments about malnutrition and platitudes about Che Guevara's concern about the children left "to starve for several months each year, with nothing but guarapo, the weak juice from crushed cane, to survive on," seem straight out of a Castro nomenklatura manual. For one thing, Guevara had never been to Cuba and had never seen Cuban children except for whichever ones he happened to run across while hiding out in the Cuban mountains during 1957 and 1958. Is this journalism or orthodoxy?
Still, there are interesting passages that illuminate how repressed and dismal life is in Cuba under Castro. The most interesting segment deals with Cuba's "apartheid" tourism. The author relates a poignant moment while he waits in the Hilton lobby in Havana. The hotel guards "turn away one Cuban after another. They split apart one couple, turning away the Cuban man while admitting the foreign woman. The pair had been holding hands as they walked through the door, but they were physically separated amid objections. She continued in, and the man waited outside."
Nonetheless, the best part of this book will come when I sell it on Amazon at, alas, a huge discount.
 Superb journalism!
As a graduate from Belen Jesuit Prep in Miami and a Cuban American, I really appreciated this book- specifically the very last paragraph as I lived it for many years. I have to say that this writer has impeccable writing skills and flawless journalism. His interviews are thorough and true to the facts. His descriptions of the street life in Cuba is well thought out. The information in this book on Castro's former classmates is priceless! A must read for anyone wanting to learn about the making of Fidel Castro and what actually went wrong and why we lost Cuba to this evil tyrant. This writers efforts are stunning!
Necessary reading
This is a wonderful book that explores the historical and social background of the success of a communist regime on a island ninety miles from the U.S. The author reports extensively on the school that Castro attended, and interviews several of his classmates, but this is only a microcosm of Cuban society at large. He has done a lot of homework to capture the Cuban mentality and society, from the 1930's right on up to the present. After 48 years, I finally understand, thanks to this book, what the social and political factors were which resulted in this oppressive regime being so wildly successful in capturing the support of the majority of its citizens, us exiles notwithstanding.
This is a must read for any Cuban expats, their offspring, and also anyone having any notion of setting up a business or any roots in Cuba after democracy creeps in.
|
|
Our Motorcycle book picks:
|
|
Search the Motorcycle Products Store
LCS Amazon Store 2.5 © 2008
|
|
