Reddit mentions of Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (Envisioning Cuba)

I'd definitely recommend Aviva Chomsky's A History of the Cuban Revolution for a good, brief introduction to and analysis of the history of the revolution. It's a quick, easy read and very good.

I recently read Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance 1959-1971 by Lillian Guerra, and I would very highly recommend it. It's not a communist take on things, but still incredibly interesting and great analysis of the first decade after the revolution.

I actually just spent the summer in Cuba, so I can give you some first hand experience with talking to people about immigration.

First, the people who fled Cuba in the 60s were largely upper class whites who were truly enemies of the revolution. These were the original "gusanos", or worms. Most Cubans living on the island don't seem to have much sympathy with them.

But after that it gets a bit more complicated. Beginning in the 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union/socialist bloc (and thus of Cuba's most important partner -- they lost something like 80% of their exports essentially overnight) and the advent of the so called "Special Period", things got really, really fucking hard in Cuba. There was nothing to eat, no money, no oil, no hope. As is well known in the US, lots of Cubans did everything they could to get to Miami, especially on rafts. It is hard for me, even as a communist and a supporter (to an extent) of the Cuban government, to blame them at all for their decision. Hearing people's stories about their struggle in the 90s is... harrowing. Check out the documentary Balseros for a take on the rafters.

Nowadays, things are much better than in the 90s, largely thanks to Chavez/Venezuela. But plenty of Cubans still want to go to the US. It's hard when you're living in a relatively poor country next door to Empire to not dream of living inside it.

Of course, there have also been people over the years who have fled Cuba for "political" reasons, including many artists and intellectuals. I sympathize with them to some extent -- the political, artistic, cultural, etc repression, while understandable and perhaps necessary to some extent (though that's debatable), must have been (and to a lesser extent still is) very difficult to live under.

I think that the biggest thing I learned in Cuba was to just try to be more nuanced in my understanding of the situation. I still fully support the revolution, and think that overall the revolutionary government has done an admirable job that we have much to learn from. But they messed up in a big way on a lot of things, and it certainly isn't a cakewalk to live in Cuba right now. More than anything else I think Cuba needs a resurgence of the Left worldwide -- that's the only way for the country to recover enough economically to make some necessary political changes without sacrificing socialism.