To Change the World: My Years in Cuba

Her account of those years was published in by Rutgers Press under the title: To Change the World: My Years in Cuba. Havana Times.
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This conclusion is inescapable as Gangsterismo brilliantly unravels the bizarre tale of the Mafia army the Kennedy brothers recruited in their manic determination to rid Cuba of Castro, that vexing, seemingly indomitable Communist. Books about Cuba abound, but this one lays bare an often forgotten pre-revolutionary history of U.

Much of what we know has reached us by way of popular culture, principally through film and fiction, to which the subject of the underworld in the tropics so aptly lends itself.

Colhoun represents a breakthrough: He casts light upon one of the darkest recesses of a dark history, calling attention to the convergence of interests between the underworld of criminal activity and nether world of covert operations — and reveals in the process that film and fiction have actually only scratched the surface of a sordid story. Colhoun has written widely on U. Colhoun was a longtime Washington bureau chief of the storied radical newsweekly The Guardian until it closed in His dream of turning Havana into a tropical paradise for North American tourists had come true.

In the s, Havana had a reputation for the best gambling and wildest nightlife in the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban revolution brought down the curtain on the era of gangsterismo in Cuba. Ever since, he had been shuttling between cities in the Americas to confer with other anti-Castro Cubans in a bid for leadership of the Cuban counterrevolution. Varona himself had been connected with smuggling and kidnapping, and he kept pistoleros political gunmen on his payroll. And so, in a remarkable act of political surrealism, the American Mafia, notorious for gangland murders and corruption of politicians, cleaned up the image of its Cuban partners in crime.

The circle of gangsterismo was squared. And an unnerving collaboration revealed. Why would the CIA turn to gangsters? With all its flaws, the Cuban Revolution taught me that another world is possible. Have any of your views on Cuba and the Cuban government changed from the time you finished writing To Change the World to date? Of course my ideas change constantly. I still deeply love and admire the Cuban Revolution, especially the vision its first generations put forward.

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At the same time, as I become wiser I see history in a more nuanced way. When did you come back for the first time to Cuba? How did that happen?

How do you feel about this re-connection to Cuba? I noticed that many people were tired, and some were bitter. Each time I noticed changes.

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And the renewal of relations between Cuba and the United States, that took place in December of , has also made a difference. Who knows what will happen with our current administration, though nothing it promises feels good. The worldwide economic depression, opening of markets, and uptick in tourism have all had an impact on life in Cuba. So yes, each visit shows me a changed country.

Margaret Randall Presents “To Change the World” in Cuba

But I always come away with confidence that the Cuban people will find ways to deal with change in ways that will ultimately benefit them. Little has changed in the official discourse about gender and racial equality in Cuba since those years you describe in your book i. Based on what you have seen has happened in Cuba and the US in the last few decades in terms of policies and public debates , what could both countries learn from each other to deal with these unresolved issues? It may seem on the surface that little has changed in Cuba regarding issues of gender and racial equality.

Perhaps it is my age I turned eighty in December , but I take a longer view at this point. I think a lot has changed and a lot remains to be done. Our countries are so different in these respects. Here in the U. And look at the United States right now: Raised in Scarsdale and Albuquerque, Randall moved to New York City as a young woman in to become a writer, and gravitated to radical literary and artistic circles.

The Cuban Revolution captured her imagination; she tried to deliver a home-cooked paella to Fidel Castro on his visit to New York. She visited Cuba for the first time in , moved there in , and lived in Havana until Randall went to Cuba from Mexico, where she was coeditor of the radical literary journal El Corno Emplumado. The Mexico City repression after the student revolt of drove her underground.

Trapped in Mexico without a passport, running from the police, she was forced to send her four children—the youngest only three months old—to Cuba alone.

To Change the World: My Years in Cuba

The Cuban government made sure that the children were cared for, but it was months before she saw them again. After the family was reunited, Randall sent her school-age children to becas semi-boarding schools where they spent the week at school, coming home for the weekend , a decision she now regrets. Her mixed feelings about some of her parenting choices will resonate with many activist parents: It was a choice I shared with many parents of that time and place.

As critical as I am today, the decision seemed right back then. To Change the World is far more than a memoir. Randall uses the memoir form to probe the strengths and weaknesses of the Cuban Revolution in that period through her own eyes as a participant in the Cuban cultural community, developing feminist, and maturing writer, poet, and photographer. While still in Mexico, Randall read and was excited by the developing feminist theories in the United States and Europe.


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One of her first editorial projects in Cuba was collecting and translating an anthology of articles— Las Mujeres —representing the new feminism, which was printed in Cuba for distribution throughout Latin America. Then she wondered how the Cuban Revolution had specifically affected the lives of women. I decided I wanted to find out what life for Cuban women was like.

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What their participation in the revolutionary process had been. How their lives had been changed or not by the victory of Socialism promised radical change. Was this change freeing, using, overlooking, or abusing women? Or perhaps some uniquely Cuban combination? Those interviews became her first oral history, Cuban Women Now.