Review by Booklist Review
For years, Cuba was dominated by colonial powers and home-grown dictators. Independence movements led by Jose Marti and Felix Valera and a constitution cowritten by Gustavo Guttieriez, which was heavily influenced by the U.S. Constitution, held out a hope of self-determination, but Fulgencio Bautista reneged on his promises of independence and free elections, paving the way for the Castro-led revolution and another authoritarian regime. Hoffman profiles a lesser-known but fascinating figure from the Castro era, Oswaldo Payá, who grew up under Castro's rule but devoted his life to working within Cuba for freedom and human rights. Founder of the Varela Project, Payá united Cuba's secular and religious pro-freedom movements, coordinating a petition drive calling for a fair nationwide vote on the country's leadership. His leadership and outspokenness put Payá squarely in the crosshairs of Castro's secret police. Hoffman (Billion Dollar Spy, 2015), illuminates the politics of our near neighbor, a small country that has had an outsize influence on America's foreign policy. This blend of biography and history has the intrigue and surprise of a well-written spy novel.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pulitzer winner Hoffman (The Billion Dollar Spy) delivers an engrossing history of modern Cuba focused on democratic activist Oswaldo Payá. Sketching the island's tumultuous history following the overthrow of Spanish rule in 1898, Hoffman notes that Cuba's best hope for democracy came in 1940, with the adoption of a new constitution that included a provision stipulating that citizens could propose new laws if they gathered at least 10,000 signatures. After Fidel Castro's 1959 victory in the Cuban revolution, however, the constitution was gutted, along with "the promise of elections" and free press. Born in 1952 and raised Catholic, Payá refused to join the Communist Youth League, which would have required renouncing his faith. He went on to found the movimiento democracy movement and, in 1996, launched the Varela Project, a door-to-door campaign to collect signatures for "a citizen initiative demanding free speech, a free press, freedom of association," and other reforms. Despite constant surveillance and harassment, Payá gathered more than 11,000 signatures, but Castro dismissed the campaign as a U.S.-backed conspiracy to overthrow his government. In 2012, Payá died in a car accident that his relatives believe was engineered by the government. Though slow-moving at times, this is an intriguing and often inspiring look at the courage of one man's convictions. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Not all resistance to the Castro regime has been offshored to Miami, as this finely detailed study of one of its leading figures demonstrates. "Oswaldo Payá was born ten days before Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba on March 10, 1952, establishing a brutish autocracy," writes Hoffman, a Pulitzer Prize--winning Washington Post reporter. When Fidel Castro came to power, Payá's family, like so many middle-class people of the day, cheered Castro on only to see their freedoms whittled away. The author offers a well-structured overview of predecessor generations who resisted Spanish colonial rule and then American occupation, committed to a democratic country governed on its own terms. "To change masters is not to be free," instructed Cuban intellectual José Martí, whom those earlier rebels rediscovered. In American eyes, Cuba became an outlaw nation after Castro's revolution, when it aligned itself with the Soviet Union. Enter Payá again, who courted trouble as a teenager protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. "Oswaldo Payá was no hippie," writes Hoffman, "but in his own mind he was a rebellious outsider." In time, he blossomed as both an engineer responsible for important technological advances in medical equipment and as a dissident, the author of a popular petition that issued demands for civil liberties to the Castro regime. Dogged by the secret police, Payá nonetheless struggled to build a united front of democratic resistance only to watch it splinter into factions, partly owing to his own stubborn insistence on strategic matters. "Oswaldo saw value in everyone working in the same direction," writes the author, "but not in compromising his vision. He was strong-willed, and so were they." Payá died in a mysterious car wreck soon after, in 2012. However, as Hoffman notes, his legacy lives on in the form of a new generation of homegrown opponents to Cuba's totalitarian regime. A welcome study of political resistance by figures unknown to most readers outside Cuba. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
