Preface and Introduction

We are grateful to present this special issue of Monthly Review, carrying forward a tradition established six decades ago. The stance of the magazine reflects Castro’s assertion that criticism should be from within the revolution, mirroring the view of C. Wright Mills. In his Listen, Yankee, Mills wrote that we don’t worry about the Cuban Revolution, we worry with it. This volume is put together in that spirit.

The Blockade as a Double-Edged Sword

Not a day has gone by that the United States has not tried to overturn the Cuban Revolution, through the assassination of its leaders, invasions by proxy forces, preventing it from normal commercial and diplomatic relations, and encouraging social distress in the island to become a counterrevolutionary force.

We Must Return to the Future

The Cuban Revolution cannot disintegrate because it was never made of meringue. Not because it has not been sweet, but because the revolution has also tasted bitter fruits that, to date, we have known how to turn into strengths.

Notes from the Editors, January 2022

buy this issue This number of Monthly Review is a special issue guest edited by Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad on The Cuban Revolution Today: Experiments in the Grip of Challenges. Although it covers the major internal struggles of the ongoing Cuban Revolution, along with the external attacks on it by Washington, one unaddressed area of critical importance, which deserves mention, is Cuba’s world leadership in sustainable human development.

From Utopia to Dystopia: The Demise of the Revolutionary Dream in Futuristic Cuban Cinema

The armed insurrection that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959 was one of the most influential events of the 20th century. Like the Russian and Mexican revolutions before it, the Cuban revolution set out to bring social justice and prosperity to a country that had suffered the evils of corrupt regimes. A small country thus became the center of world debates about equality, culture, and class struggle, attracting the attention of political leaders not only from Latin America but also from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Its intent to forge a model society has often been described in utopian terms. Writers, artists, and filmmakers turned to utopia as a metaphor to trace the evolution of the arts in the island from the enthusiasm and optimism of the first moments to the dystopian hopelessness and despair of the last decades. Indeed, the Cuban revolution, like so many other social revolutions of the 20th century, became the victim of a whole series of internal and external forces that ended up turning the promised dream into a nightmare tainted by autocratic leadership, repression, and political and economic isolation. Although Cuban literature has extensively addressed these issues since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it is only recently that we can find similar trends in a cinematic output that portrays Cuba as a utopia gone sour. This article examines recent films such as Alejandro Brugués’ Juan de los Muertos (2011), Tomás Piard’s Los desastres de la Guerra (2012), Eduardo del Llano’s Omega 3 (2014), Rafael Ramírez’s Diario de la niebla (2016), Yimit Ramírez’s Gloria eterna (2017), Alejandro Alonso’s El Proyecto (2017), and Miguel Coyula’s Corazón Azul (2021). These films use futuristic imageries to offer a poignant (and often apocalyptic) depiction of the harsh paradoxes of contemporary life in Cuba while reflecting upon the downfall of utopia.

Cubans Mobilize Due to the Blockade and the Pandemic

The article analyzes the protests in Cuba in the context of the economic blockade and the health crisis as a consequence of the covid 19 pandemic. The current policy of the United States with President Joe Biden and the distances with the diplomacy of Barack Obama and the events after the more than two hundred measures adopted by Donald Trump, who adopted more than 240 additional measures to deepen the blockade. Additionally, the policy of the United States is detailed historically with Cuba and the milestones of the influence of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America are detailed.