During two meetings with President John F. Kennedy in 1961, Argentine President Arturo Frondizi beseeched the U.S. leader to cease his campaign to remove Cuba from the Organization of American States (oas). Though Frondizi was viewed as the young American president’s best friend among Latin American leaders, Kennedy pursued his obsession by pressuring a two-thirds majority to suspend Cuba’s oas membership in January 1962. Shortly afterward, Argentine generals deposed Frondizi in a coup.
Brown engagingly recounts this story, and others like it, to develop the central theme of Cuba’s Revolutionary World. He argues that the Cuban Revolution played an outsized role in shaping the politics of the region during the Cold War. From 1959 to 1965, he asserts, Cuba served as both an example and provocateur; its impact on Latin America was akin to the French Revolution’s impact on European politics.
A careful and thorough scholar, Brown’s...