Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana

Rating:
Summary: Best book on Cuba/Miami
Review: I think this is the most insightful and compelling book I have ever read on Castro's Cuba and Miami's exiles. It is the best portrait I have read of the Miami community. I recommend it to anyone interested in what lies at the root of
this 40 year war.

Rating:
Summary: Next to People Mag and the Supermarket tabloids
Review: I would put this book in the BATHROOM , next to People magazine and the supermarket tabloids.... I would also use it's pages in my emergency wipe ass kit, should I be lost in the woods.
What a horrific account of a culture. Shame on you for your distorted views and obvious agenda!

Rating:
Summary: Next to People Mag and the Supermarket tabloids
Review: I would put this book in the BATHROOM , next to People magazine and the supermarket tabloids.... I would also use it's pages in my emergency wipe butt kit, should I be lost in the woods.
What a horrific account of a culture. Shame on you for your distorted views and obvious agenda!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting read, slightly biased
Review: I'm having trouble finding a book about Cuba that isn't pro-Castro or fanatically anti-Castro, as many of the Miami-based reviewers of this book seem to be. Although I agree, basically, with Bardach's viewpoint in this book, her writing is tainted with a definite bias that makes it hard to determine how much of the book is accurate. For instance, she states in one chapter that during the raid on Elian Gonzalez's house, "despite the ferocious show of force, no one was hurt." This is an outright lie. Bardach glosses over the more unappetizing aspects of the case, namely the ones that portray the Clinton and Castro regimes in a negative light. However, I think you have to understand where she's coming from when she writes this book; it's extremely hard to get a journalist visa to Cuba, so if she manages to actually get an interview with Fidel and other Cubans, she'd better write it up in a certain way or she's not going to get another visa. I don't think this book was nearly as bad as many of the reviewers seem to think. The reviews either gave 5 stars or 1 star. The 1 star reviews all seemed to be from fanatical Cuban exiles, judging from their Miami addresses. I'm sorry, but you can't blame someone else for writing a biased book without acknowledging that you are biased in exactly the opposite direction. Their emotional, angry bashing of this mostly decent book was a huge turnoff to me and validated a lot of Bardach's claims about the Mafia nature of the exile community. I found a lot of truth in this book. There were lies, too, but a lot of truth. Bardach's book is about a very polarizing issue, and I salute her courage in writing it. I don't want to know how much hate mail and bomb threats she's received as a result of it.

Rating:
Summary: I guess anything gets published these days
Review: If you are sitting comfortably in your apartment or house on your PC or laptop enjoying theluxuries this capitalist society has afforded you, then please skip this book. However, for those of you who feel cheated by the fact that you've never had to deal with a totalitarian communist regime, then by all means you will enjoy the waste of precious trees that went into publishing Ms.Bardach's book. Even if you consider yourself a liberal, you'll be insulted by the author's take on Miami's Cuban anti-comunist population.

Rating:
Summary: Author with agenda and bad sources
Review: Many of Ms. Bardach's sources and persons acknowledged in this book are open sympathizers of the Cuban regime who travel frequently to the island and have expressed publicly and privately their absolute disdain for the Cuban community in Miami, always criticizing the exile and always praising the Cuban revolution. Some are heavily involved in representing the Cuban government's interests in the USA and in procuring an end to the embargo, so that Castro can finally get all the funds he needs to sustain his regime. The book is also full of terrible mistakes about Cuba's history, demographics and culture, and specially oblivious to the disrespect for human rights and basic freedoms in Cuba at the present time. It's obvious for somebody well informed on the Cuban situation that Ms. Bardach had a political agenda even before she began "researching" for this book; so she went to get information from people who told her exactly what she wanted to hear. It's terrible that Castro and his accomplices are oppressing their own people, but I find it's even worse when a foreigner who enjoys the spiritual and material advantages of living in a democracy, just to make money distorts history and helps to perpetuate the penury of millions of people who live under a terrible dictatorship. Shame on you, lady!

Rating:
Summary: a refreshing view
Review: Most written materials on either Cuba or the Cuban exiles are biased toward relentless criticisms or else justifications and praise.Not this one. Living in the Miami area, I find that the book has an uncanny portrait of this group impact on anyone who dwells here, whether one cares about Cuba or not. The influence that the Cuban exiles, and their political and local media have in this County is evident for anyone that followed the Elian story, let alone the national electoral events in 2000. This is well described in this book, with immediate character impressions in interviews that make it irresistibly suspenseful, especially in the first few chapters. The juxtaposition of persons of the Elian Gonzalez family in both sides of the exile divide, is presented with candid portraits and fresh information .The personal saga of the Castro family , and of the relatives which are at opposite poles of passion, often hatred, is particularly illuminating, and brings surprising data. The views of the persons left in Cuba give a human dimension that no doubt is a common experience to the over one hundred thousand Cubans that come and go every year, but unavailable to the rest of the US citizens who cannot travel to the Island. This is not a political or socio-economical treatise, and it has a minimum of quantitative information. Political events, especially those at the beginning of the Revolution, are incomplete and critical figures are glossed over. It indirectly describes- I believe impartially- the hardships of life in a one-Party state with few political and economical options, and suggests the adaptations that allow everyday endurance . Overall, it has the freshness and attraction of superb reporting. It cannot be ignored by those who need to understand a community with at times disproportionate influence in American life .

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing! But a Great Read!!!
Review: My Dad was a balsero, who eventually made it to Phila. where I was born, he went back to fight against Castro and we have never seen or heard from him again!I never got an opportunity to talk with him about all the politics involved in this Castro-Cuba thing but this answered so many questions. YOu're reading history but its not dull or stilted at all. Thank you Ms Bardach for a great book and although I know you lost many contacts, for writing this way. I applaud you, for your honesty and courage!!!

Rating:
Summary: She has an axe to grind
Review: One of my old professors used to say that he would always check references and basic facts and spelling of names in his students' term papers. If he found errors in these simple things, he wondered what else was wrong. Bardach's book is full of mistakes in these easily verifiable things, and one wonders what else is wrong.
Then I happened to see Bardach's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times (they must be hard up for guest writers), where she asserts that Castro's murder of three innocent people and imprisonment of dozens of journalists was done to keep the embargo in place. In fact, Castro's most recent rampage followed the same pattern as have all his many previous purges: he eliminates anyone who gets too popular and who threatens his stranglehold on power. This is why he sent Guevara off, and why he assasinated Cienfuegos, and why he shot Ochoa.
Make no mistake: Castro wants the embargo gone, but on his own terms. His own terms mean that tourism will be "apartheid" and that the dollars Americans will drop off will go to the further strengthening of his military, which runs the tourism enterprise and is the only thing that can really knock him off. Cuba will never be free while Castro lives (or is mentally coherent) and Bardach grinds her axe too hard and with obvious bias against this "ungrindable" fact.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable
Review: One star because I couldn't post zero stars. This book certainly was a waste of time. I considered reading it because perhaps there would be some remote possibility of truth and unbiased refection of a community who has suffered tremendously in the past. Although this community of Cuban exiles now enjoy freedom, they still feel pain and resentment after having to leave every bit of their life and belongings, every thing they gained through hard work, to a communist dictator who has suffocated people's human rights for over 40 years. Yes, they have bitter feelings, they still feel fear, and the majority are above the age of 50. In case anybody wants to look the other way, Elian's father had no say. The reality is he couldn't speak out and say "I want my son to stay in the U.S., I want him to be free and grow up educated and healthy". He could not express himself because in Cuba there is NO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION! Most in the community here know this and as we speak, Elian is a pawn in Cuba. Yes he is fed, perhaps enjoys more than the average child in Cuba, nonetheless, he is still a pawn, a puppet for Castro. Is this the life any child should live?? I wouldn't respect anyone who believes this or sympathizes in any way, shape or form with Castro or his regime. Therefore, I have no respect for the author or her book.