Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58, a Participant's Account

By Armando Hart Dávalos

In this firsthand account by a historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, we meet men and women who led the urban underground in the fight against the brutal U.S.-backed tyranny in the 1950s. Together... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873489683
• ISBN13: 9780873489683
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Pathfinder
• Length: 412 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A riveting book on Cuba's revolutionary urban underground

Armando Hart's Aldabonazo is a first-hand, concrete-and riveting-account of how Cuba's deep-going popular revolution developed in the urban underground by a long time central leader of the revolution and one of Latin America's most respected and honored writers. This story, enriched by documents, letters, and news releases, shows how U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista's 1952 election-canceling coup provoked widespread outrage among a layer of young people. Aldabonazo (Spanish for a sharp, warning knock on the door-and a rallying cry in the early days of the revolution) documents the debates that opened up among these youth as to what strategy and tactics, as well as what social forces should be looked to for the leadership of the struggle to liberate their country. It recounts the courageous actions they took to reach that goal and the central place in this of the armed attack on the Moncada barracks led by Fidel Castro on July 26, 1953. It explains how this action earned Fidel the leadership among these revolutionary forces. But it also highlights Castro's ability to unite in action with all those who really wanted to fight the dictatorship. For the Fidelistas, Hart explains, the means used to overthrow the dictator were equally important as the change of regime in and of itself. This was a movement that saw the road to political democracy unalterably meshed with a mass popular struggle for social and economic justice. A movement that came to see the struggle for socialism as the only way to continue the historic fight for Cuban independence and the abolition of slavery and racial oppression as led by such heroes as Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and Jose Marti. Many of those seeking to learn the lessons of the Cuban revolution that this book makes available so richly will be struck by the difference in strategy and tactics used by the Fidelistas in contrast to those of what the media calls the "resistance" currently attacking U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. Wishfully thinking there can be a shortcut to the difficult process of uniting a revolutionary and anti-imperialist vanguard as was done in Cuba, a process not yet evident in Iraq today, many opponents of the brutal U.S. invasion put an equal sign between the Iraqi "resistance" and that of genuine popular movements against imperialism. A careful examination of the way Cuba's revolutionary forces oriented towards winning the masses-as opposed to seeking to terrorize, divide, and keep them out of revolutionary politics, as do the elements of the defeated Baathist regime and other bourgeois nationalist reactionary forces in the region-provides a useful reality check for those who want to effectively fight imperialist war today. Pathfinder Press' new English language edition-as well as a new edition making the work available to Spanish-speaking readers after half a decade-makes this book available to many for the first time in an updated version prepared in collaboration with the author.