ABSTRACT
The publication—after the usual thirty-year delay—of the US diplomatic documents relating to the collapse of the Batista regime in Cuba and the emergence of Fidel Castro comes at a particularly propitious moment. The main lines of the story related in the documents—the agony and collapse of the Batista regime, the accession of Fidel Castro, the growing confrontation with the United States, and, finally, the break in diplomatic relations and the imposition of economic sanctions—is already well known. The Batista government tried to represent Castro and his movement as Communist to the embassy and the State Department. These charges were viewed with considerable skepticism, but, as 1958 wore on, Washington demanded increasing amounts of information about the rising revolutionary leader. For the United States, the Cuban revolution was both unexpected and incomprehensible. The Castro regime bore little or no resemblance to anything it had yet seen in Latin America.
