New Books Network Lillian Guerra, "Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961-1981" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)
Feb 22, 2026
Lillian Guerra, historian of Cuban history and author of Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961–1981, digs into how postrevolutionary Cuba forced a patriot-or-traitor binary. She explores literacy campaigns, surveillance networks like the CDRs, prisons and reeducation, cultural control in the 1970s, and the buildup to the Mariel crisis. The book centers on everyday complicity and the ambiguous spaces between support and dissent.
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Citizen Complicity Explains Regime Durability
- Citizen complicity explains how a one-party Cuban state endured despite policy whiplash and repression.
- Lillian Guerra shows complicity formed when citizens adopted apolitical survival tactics (CDR participation, guard duty) that nonetheless tied them to the state.
Literacy Volunteers Were Taught To Love The Revolution
- The 1961 Literacy Campaign fused political education with emotional mobilization by framing devotion as love for the revolution.
- Guerra uses Ernesto Chávez's letters showing volunteers addressed parents by first names and prioritized revolutionary devotion over family ties.
Fear Was Built With Surveillance And Blackmail
- Cuba's security relied more on psychological surveillance and social recruitment than mass torture.
- Guerra documents CDR pressure, blackmail, volunteer informants, and a small cadre of professional Ministry of Interior agents trained by the USSR.
