The year 2021 is very young, and in the middle of these holidays we still have time to dedicate to reading, what better texts for the first days of January than those that take us into the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution?

Cubaliteraria then continues its monthly series and focuses this second installment on the book Historia de la Revolución Cubana, by leading researchers Sergio Guerra and Alejo Maldonado .

The volume covers the stage from 1959 to 2004 on the island, and for this purpose its authors divided it into several chapters: Background and causes. Beginning of the Revolution: the insurrectional phase (1953-1958); The second stage of the Revolution: the transition from capitalism to socialism (1959-1961); Third stage of the Revolution: the bases of the socialist State (1962-1970); Fourth stage of the Revolution: institutionalization (1971-1989); Fifth stage of the Revolution: the «special period» (1990-2004); and Historiographic Commentary.

Guerra and Maldonado affirm in one of the pages of their book:

In a period of less than four decades, Cuba had to reorient its economy at once, and radically, twice. First, as a consequence of the transformations generated after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when it was necessary to modify the entire economic-social structure of the country, and in the face of the blockade imposed by the United States, to channel foreign trade in the direction of the socialist community. European (…) Now when the environment where Cuba had been inserted since the 1960s abruptly disappeared, the island, in the midst of the unprecedented economic crisis, had to change all its external links and, to a great extent, its economic system , faced with the dramatic dilemma of preserving the social conquests achieved by the Revolution or surrendering to the North American siege.

In a synopsis that appears on the Casa del Libro website , it is stated that «taking advantage of this very important anniversary *, a work was needed that would bring us closer, through a brief history of the Revolution and its current dilemmas, to this spectacular event. The result is this synthesis, a little jewel that the Revolution puts at our fingertips ».

*En aquel entonces se cumplían 50 años del Triunfo de la Revolución.