The Cuban Revolutionary War, 1953–1958: A Bibliography

Study of the Cuban revolutionary war has advanced in recent years under severe historiographical handicaps. With the exception, perhaps, of the several surveys of the insurrection cited most commonly in standard bibliographic aids, the preponderance of the literature remains beyond the immediate access of the researcher. This has been due, in large part, to the sheer volume published in the last two decades. An almost impossible situation is compounded by the appearance on both sides of the Florida Straits of relevant documents, first-person narratives, and general accounts of various aspects of the insurgency in a wide variety of national and local publications; in almost every case, these publications lack indices and guides. This bibliography, conceived first in 1969-1970, responds to the difficulties attending research under these circumstances. A bibliographic labor of considerable proportions has characteristically been preliminary to any inquiry into the revolutionary war. Put another way, immediate information on any given aspect of the insurrection has been virtually impossible to obtain because of the absence of a guide to this extraordinarily rich if not readily visible corpus of literature. Important Cuban sources, as well as materials published in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, as a result, have remained vastly under-used. This bibliography is an effort to bring together sources for the study of the major aspects of the Cuban revolutionary struggle. The gathering together of available written material into one reference guide is at once vital to scholarly research and preliminary to any increased interest in and understanding of the Cuban revolutionary processes. This collection concentrates on materials published during the years between 1953 and 1975.