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   Vol.65/No.24            June 18, 2001 
 
 
New magazine on Spanish titles reviews two new Pathfinder books
 
BY HILDA CUZCO  
Críticas, a new magazine about Spanish-language books, carried two reviews of Pathfinder titles in its Summer 2001 issue. The magazine is oriented to book sellers and is a joint publication of the Library Journal, the School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

Reviews were run on Che Guevara habla a la juventud (Che Guevara Talks to Young People), and Haciendo historia (Making History: Interviews With Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces). Giving a brief description of the books, the magazine notes its recommendation to individual readers or libraries.

In his review of Che Guevara habla a la juventud, Eduardo Tinoco, from Lehman Brothers Library in Los Angeles, recommends the book "for academic libraries with a Latin American studies program and any large public library that serves a large Latino population. This book will be of particular interest to the Cuban American community."

The Pathfinder title contains eight speeches Che Guevara gave to young audiences in Cuba between 1959 and 1964. The Argentine-born revolutionary became one of the central leaders of the Cuban Revolution and led a guerrilla campaign in Bolivia until he was captured and killed in October 1967 by Bolivian government forces. Che Guevara habla a la juventud was published with the cooperation of Casa Editora Abril, the publishing house of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba, and features a preface by Armando Hart, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Pathfinder president Mary-Alice Waters points out in the introduction to Che Guevara habla a la juventud that the revolutionary leader "speaks as an equal with the youth of Cuba and the world" and "urges them to aspire to be revolutionary combatants, knowing that a different kind of society can be born only out of struggles by men and women ready to put their lives and their lifetimes on the line for it."

Haciendo historia was published by Pathfinder in 1998 in collaboration with Editora Política in Havana. The interviews in the book with Cuban generals Néstor López Cuba, Enrique Carreras, José Ramón Fernández, and Harry Villegas provide a wealth of information on the Cuban Revolution, the internationalist missions the generals led and participated in, and world-historic events such as the Cuban victory over the U.S.-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the October "missile" crisis a year later.

José Díaz, of the Ohio State University Library in Columbus, says in his review published in Críticas that Washington’s military defeat has "acquired mythical proportions." Díaz explains that in the book the "generals present their views on issues ranging from the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions to the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, and Cuba’s involvement in Angola. It is interesting to hear the voices of career soldiers in an army we know so little about." Díaz views the book as offering "little more than Socialist rhetoric sprinkled with the usual condemnation of U.S. politics and economics," and recommends the title "only for academic libraries with strong Cuban collections."  
 
 
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