CUBA: A Journey by Jacobo Timerman,...

CUBA: A Journey by Jacobo Timerman, translated by Toby Talbot (Vintage: $9). Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman casts an unflinching eye at the self-proclaimed “workers’ paradise” of Castro’s Cuba in this vivid journal. Instead of a Marxist Elysium, he finds a depressingly typical dictatorship, whose ruler, “El Commandante,” insists on being referred to by a string of titles as long any Holy Roman Emperor’s. A former prisoner of conscience, Timerman has first-hand knowledge of the ruses despots employ, and he immediately notes the glaring discrepancy between Castro’s image as the caring, all-knowing savior of his country and his alleged ignorance of the mismanagement and corruption that have reduced the inhabitants of this once prosperous island to poverty. “El Commandante’s megalomania and this collective hypocrisy is the dominant feature I encountered in Cuba: it defines society, the power structure, cultural life, work, family relations.” Timerman is equally unsparing in his criticism of the fawning leftists, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who serve as apologists for this repressive regime. He reaches the unhappy conclusion that meaningful change will be possible in Cuba only after Castro’s death, but denounces the expatriates and American interventionists who wish to impose their version of liberation on the already oppressed Cuban people.