Patriots & Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961-1981

Lillian Guerra's Patriots & Traitors examines how Cuba's Communist Party, state institutions, and security apparatus created a binary social order that compelled citizens to perform loyalty or be labeled traitors.

Drawing on extensive oral histories, letters, archival material, and interviews conducted over decades, Guerra traces programs from the Literacy Campaign to El Mariel to show how pedagogy, surveillance, rehabilitation, and culture produced complicity.

The book highlights everyday spaces of negotiation where Cubans both complied with and resisted state demands, revealing the emotional and social mechanisms of authoritarian durability.

Guerra situates Cuban policies within Soviet influence and explores shifts in the 1970s that intensified ideological control over education and culture.

By recovering marginalized voices, the study deepens understanding of how revolutionary projects shaped personal identities and produced mass exile, culminating in the 1980 Mariel crisis.