Where the Boys are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left by Van Gosse, Verso, 1994, 270 pp., $18.95 (cloth). Cutting through the haze cast by the three-decade-long U.S.-Cuba stand- off, Van Gosse escavates the lost history of U.S. solidarity with the Cuban revolution from 1957 to 1961. Culling material from sources as varied as radical jour- nals, popular novels and movies, Beatnik poetry, and personal inter- views, Gosse shows how many of the incipient currents of 1960s rad- icalism-the so-called "New Left"-came together around the defense of Cuba. Many have forgotten how the Cuban guerrillas were cheered on at first by the U.S. anti-Communist liberal establishment who consid- ered Castro "a true liberator of a 'humanist' revolution." As Gosse points out, parallels were drawn at the time between Hungary's popu- lar uprising against the Soviets in 1956 and the struggle in the Sierra Maestra. New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews' exclusive 1957 inter- view with Castro followed by CBS news correspondent Robert Taber's prime-time special report on the rebels crystallized this romanti- cized image of Cuba in the popular imagination. Castro attracted a cult-like following among alienat- ed U.S. youth. Gosse argues that for many young fidelistas, Castro was a symbol of virility and male agency, and the Cuban revolution, an adventure in a good cause. With the revolution's victory and its quick dispatch of counterrevolu- tionary opponents, Cuba became, according to Gosse, "a wedge of radicalization" that ruptured the liberal consensus. While most Cold War liberals beat a hasty retreat, an assortment of African Americans, students, pacifists, disenchanted intellectuals, and Old Leftists stood fast in defense of the revolution. The movement's main organiza- 48 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS tional vehicle, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), got off to a rousing start. It faded, howev- er, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 as a result of government harassment, personal infighting, and the embargo that cut off all per- sonal contacts with the island. Lee Harvey Oswald's purported associ- ation with FPCC nailed the door shut on that chapter of history. In this absorbing book, Gosse pries open that door. He makes a compelling case that the social explosion of the 1960s was not sui generis. Rather, he argues, the seeds of that ferment were planted in the brief flowering of Cuba soli- darity. Rebel Radio: The Story of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos by Jose Ignacio L6pez Vigil, Curb- stone Press, 1994, 240 pp., $19.95 (cloth). Radio journalist Jos6 Ignacio L6pez Vigil cobbles together the first-per- son testimonies of the men and women who ran the FMLN's under- ground Radio Venceremos from 1979 to 1991. The interwoven nar- ratives, translated with great flair by Mark Fried, convey the pluck and raw energy of the guerrillas who lugged the bulky, much-loved radio transmitter through the rebel-con- trolled zone of Morazin during the war. A reader cannot help being drawn in by the tale of the mishaps the rebels encountered in getting the radio off the ground, their inge- nious capers to elude the army's dragnet, and their triumphant news bulletins blared in San Salvador's biggest shopping mall during the 1989 final offensive. In the end, Rebel Radio does for El Salvador's FMLN what Omar Cabezas' Fire from the Mountain accomplished for Nicaragua's San- dinistas. One puts down the book with genuine insight into what life was like for those Salvadoran men and women who audaciously took to the mountains in the face of a government's tyranny.
