Latin America

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba & Then Lost it to the Revolution  by T.J. English, William Morrow, 2008.

The Collapse of Dignity The Story of a Mining Tragedy and the Fight Against Greed and Corruption in Mexico  by Napoleon Gomez, BenBella Books (Perseus), 2013.  Miners Union The author, Napoleon Gómez Urrutia, was the leader of a miners union for many years, the National Union of Mine, Metal, and Steel Workers of the Mexican Republic. This book describes how he lead his labor union against corrupt businessmen in league with corrupt politicians who colluded against the workers.

The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times  by Anthony DePalma, PublicAffairs, 2007.  Was Fidel Castro Killed in Oriente Province? On December 2, 1956, rebel forces, lead by Fidel Castro, landed on Las Coloradas Beach in Oriente Province. Planes of the Cuban air force bombed and strafed Castro’s forces on the beach. A United Press reporter talked with a Cuban pilot, who told him that Fidel Castro had been killed. Cuban Dictator Ful

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914  by David McCullough, Simon & Schuster, 1978.  The Railroad and the French This book describes the building of the Panama Canal. Before anyone started building a canal, the Americans built a railroad across the isthmus. Then came the aborted French efforts of the 1870s to build a canal. The French removed a great deal of mountain earth, but ran out of money before they could complete the earth removal, muc

Th e Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs  by Jim Rasenberger, Scribner, 2012.  Summary During the transition from the hawkish Eisenhower administration to the dovish Kennedy administration there was carried over a plan to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. What emerged was a hybrid plan that attempted to be both effective and deniable, but which ended up being neither.  The man running Cuba prior to Fidel Castro, General F

Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro,  3rd revised edition by Georgie Anne Geyer, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001.  Favoring the Underdog Castro wanted to be remembered by history as a revolutionary hero and champion of the oppressed. Castro did not believe in any particular political ideology, such as Marxist-Leninism, but, in general terms, favored poor people against rich people, and poor nations against rich nations. In particular, Castro hated the United St

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him  by Humberto Fontova, Sentinel, 2007.  Summary The author debunks the myth of Che Guevara as a revolutionary hero who liberated the poor. Fontova proves that Guevara was instead a cowardly psychopath, who had nothing going for himself except being handsome and photogenic.  Che the Symbol Che is famous because Fidel was happy to make Che out to be a hero, after Che was dead and no longer a threat to Fidel’s p

Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag  by Armando Valladares, Encounter Books, 2001. Arrest and Imprisonment Armando Valladares was arrested 28 December 1960. The Political Police presented no evidence of a genuine crime committed by Armando Valladares. His political crime was refusing to praise Communism when asked to do so. He was held in La Cabaña in Havana and the Isla de Pinos. He spent 22 years, 1960-1982, as a political prisoner in Cuba. He was released

In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press  by Katherine Corcoran, Bloomsbury Publishing (2022)  Assassinated Journalist Exposing government corruption has gotten a number of Mexican journalists into trouble. Regina Martínez was a correspondent for Proceso  magazine. On 28 April 2012 Regina Martínez was found strangled to death in her home in Veracruz. There is no smoking gun to prove who assassinated her, but since her reporting