Review of Mexico in Transition by Byron Crites

Book Reviews
In his preface to the English edition, Skierka laments the heavy US dominance of
material on Cuba. Several Key US works have been omitted, however, as has much
that has been written in Latin America and elsewhere in Europe, including countries
of the former Soviet Union. Nonetheless, after a somewhat slow start, a third of the
way into the book Skierka comes into his own, drawing on the Political Archive of the
German Foreign Offi ce in Berlin, Stiftung Archiv und Massenorganisationen der DDR
at the German Federal Archives, and papers of the former East German State Security.
Used primarily for anecdotal evidence of positions taken by GDR ambassadors, offi -
cials, and the like, they provide new insights. Skierka ’ s passing reference (pp. 177 – 178)
to Tamara (Tania) Bunke is tantalising: a romantic, legendary fi gure in Cuba, she is,
in Skierka ’ s account, a Stasi agent assigned to Ernesto Guevara. Skierka ’ s position on
Che is that of Jorge Castañeda: Che ’ s demise was due to falling out of favour with
Castro – an interpretation disputed by many.
Skierka ’ s inclusion of East German documents, together with his perceptive analysis
of developments in the 1990s, not least the repositioning of the military on civilian
ground, make his a welcome, up-to-date addition to the growing body of studies on
Castro. His book is now available in Spanish (2002) and French (2004), as well as
German and English. It is one I certainly recommend.
As a historian of Cuban tobacco, I am moved to make a fi nal comment on the cover
photo of a cigar-smoking younger Fidel Castro. It is, of course, iconic. He gave up
smoking in the early 1980s, for his own and the nation ’ s health. The Havana cigar,
however, was to become a key player, alongside tourism, in Cuba ’ s strategies for economic
survival in the 1990s. Skierka ’ s only reference to cigars (pp. 239 – 240) is as a
pleasure forgone: a deprivation in the Sierra Maestra in 1958 and a loss after giving
it up, as told in a famous interview to the magazine Cigar Afi cionado, in a 1994 issue
whose sale was banned in Miami. But that is another story.
Jean Stubbs
London Metropolitan University
Chávez, Lydia and Chakarova, Mimi (eds.) (2005) Capitalism, God, and a Good
Cigar: Cuba Enters the Twenty-First Century , Duke University Press (Durham and
London), x + 253 pp. £14.95 pbk.
The publisher ’ s fl ier for this book features an unhelpful claim that ‘ this is the most
revealing book available on Cuba today ’ . This is, of course, hyperbole. Anyone
expecting a 21st century version of American writer José Yglesias ’ s 1968 classic,
In the Fist of the Revolution: Life in Castro ’ s Cuba , will be disappointed. This collection
is more fl eeting in its encounters. It offers some 75 fi ne black and white photographs
and they indicate the general level of engagement of the book: apart from some
studies of ballet dancers rehearsing, the subjects of most of the others are the street
scenes and the obligingly photogenic Cubans routinely captured by visitors. It is not
that the chapters are superfi cial. They are, on the contrary, often revealing and
compelling journalism. But this is overwhelmingly a work of journalism by media
© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Society for Latin American Studies
126 Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 26, No. 1