The Cuba Project: Castro, Kennedy, and the FBI's Tamale Squad
By Peter Pavia Reviewed by Rob Woodgate
n 1959 Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba after helping to overthrow his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista. And in 1961, President Kennedy ruined the best chance the US had of removing him from power after he bottled it at the Bay of Pigs by failing to help the Cuban exiles that the CIA had helped train and equip for an attempt at a coup.
In between these two events, the CIA plotted to overthrow Castro using a variety of methods, including the hiring of a Mafia hood to assassinate him. This book is an attempt to tell us the story of those two years.
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In concept this is a great idea because it has a lot of those important factors that make for great historical story telling - a golden age of culture, an exotic location, an ending that has not yet come to pass, and the |
opportunity to gain a greater understanding about the world we now live in. But in practise, the great idea has become a terrible book.
Either Pavia needs a new editor or at least he should have hired one in the first place because The Cuba Project resonates with the muffled frustrations of a vague narrative structure and a rambling, incoherent phraseology.
If this book had been three times the length and Pavia had been herded by a good editor into following a coherent pathway through what should be a fascinating read, then this book could have been wonderful.
The matter at hand is certainly compelling – mobsters, mojitos, and the dark contrivances of the American security services. However, the story telling is sloppy and lazy. Characters flit in and out of the story with no context or explanation - in one sentence you are reading about Castro and in the next a completely new and unexplained character is the subject. Such transitions are made without a hint as to why the focus has suddenly been switched.
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On several occasions, I had to re-read passages of text in an attempt to follow the narrative. Twice I actually gave up because I just did not understand how one sentence was connected to the next. It is as if the book had to be a certain length, and when it went over that length, somebody decided to pull random sentences out of it until the word count was under the limit.
If you are a hardcore Cuban history buff then you might glean something new from this book, but I do not envy the challenge you face in reading it.
For those of you who are not hardcore Cuban history buffs, stay away. There are much better written books to spend your time reading.
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