ABSTRACT
When the dust of controversy settles, as it inevitably must, the most salient point to note about American perceptions and policies toward Cuba is the consensus that has developed over the past nearly forty years of the Castro Revolution, as to the nature and goals of the regime. Historical events are quite another. We have witnessed Cuban military incursions on the sovereignty of other nations on an almost routine basis: starting with adventures in the 1960s in Guatemala, Venezuela, and El Salvador. Whether in Angola in the dim past or Mexico in the grim present, the answer to strife, to inequities, to legitimate differences, the Castro government offers was and remains always the same: armed insurrection. Cuba's military incursions by an armed, Praetorian Guard increasingly functioning as a Prussian-styled elite, rather than a peasant movement of the oppressed, has met increasing hemispheric resistance.
