The Hidden Pearl of the Caribbean: Trotskyism in Cuba

It has been over 40 years since Fulgencio Batista's corrupt government in Cuba was overthrown and replaced by a regime under Fidel Castro which soon claimed - and still claims - to be socialist. Over these four decades, the resilience of Cuba in the face of the long-running vendetta of succesive US governments has inspired admiration from radicals around the world. Yet the Revolution of 1959 was not fought under the banner of socialism, nor did the Cuban working class act as a class in Batista's overthrow. Castro's brand of socialism has been typically Stalinist. Nevertheless, there has been a revolutionary Marxist current in Cuba since the 1920s, and this issue of Revolutionary History presents for the first time a detailed account of Trotskyism in Cuba.

Gary Tennant describes the origin of Cuban Trotskyism within the Cuban Communist Party in the late 1920s, its role in the Revolution of the 1930s, the Second World War and the Revolution of 1959, and its troubled existence under Castro's regime. He shows the strong support it enjoyed within the working class during the 1930s, and the constant contradiction between its commitment to the concept of Permanent Revolution and its adaptation to bourgeois nationalist currents.

- From back cover