Daniel P. Erikson, author of The Cuba Wars will be appearing at Books and Books in Coral Gables tomorrow, at 6:30pm. The event is co-sponsored by Florida International University's Latin American and Caribbean Center and the Cuban Research Institute.The book has been well-received by academic experts on Cuba, and I myself found it very informative. Erikson's book is intelligent and prescient. Go see Erikson tomorrow at Books and Books if you can.
Here's excerpts from a book review [PDF]:
"Daniel Erikson opens his book by acknowledging that the U.S.‐Cuban conflict has become so deeply ingrained in the psyches of both nations that making any significant changes in the future will be equivalent to making a train jump off its tracks."
"The 'Next Revolution', as Erikson calls it, will be an organic one in which Cubans will be the central actors and U.S. politicians and lobbyists may be forced to watch from the sidelines. Though this may be a difficult pill for stateside groups to swallow, Erikson implies that they have only themselves to blame, having failed for fifty years to conceive of an effective strategy for dealing with Castro’s Cuba."
Among the many people that Erikson interviewed for his book Marifeli Perez-Stable provided one commentary that I totally agree with. (Other insightful essays from Marifeli Perez-Stable can be found on her website.) Here's an excerpt (pages 134-135):
"Perez-Stable did not foresee immediate change on the horizon, although she predicted that change would come eventually: 'Sooner or later, things in Cuba will start changing, and once that happens, the hard-liners on both sides will just have to run and see how they can keep the polarization going.' But she envisioned a fierce battle to preserve the status quo breaking out in Miami and Havana... 'Miami is moving, and Cuba is as well, except we don't know fully about it yet.' She added,'I think the hard-liners who retain the hard line may find the ground shifting from under them.'"
From what I've been hearing on Radio Mambi, this is already happening. And in Washington, the shift has begun.
