Treviño - C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution

C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution

ENVISIONING CUBA

Louis A. Prez Jr., editor

Envisioning Cuba publishes outstanding, innovative works in Cuban studies, drawn from diverse subjects and disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, from the colonial period through the postCold War era. Featuring innovative scholarship engaged with theoretical approaches and interpretive frameworks informed by social, cultural, and intellectual perspectives, the series highlights the exploration of historical and cultural circumstances and conditions related to the development of Cuban self-definition and national identity.

C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution

An Exercise in the Art of Sociological Imagination

A. Javier Trevio

The University of North Carolina Press CHAPEL HILL

2017 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Set in Espinosa Nova by Westchester Publishing Services

Manufactured in the United States of America

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Trevio, A. Javier, 1958 author.

Title: C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution : an exercise in the art of sociological imagination / A. Javier Trevio.

Other titles: Envisioning Cuba.

Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2017] | Series: Envisioning Cuba | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016047327 | ISBN 9781469633091 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469633107 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469633114 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright), 19161962. Listen, Yankee. | Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright), 19161962. | CubaHistoryRevolution, 1959Interviews. | SociologistsUnited StatesHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC HN203.5 .T74 2017 | DDC 306.097291dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047327

Cover illustrations: Photographs by C. Wright Mills. 2017 Nikolas Mills. All rights reserved.

Contents

Chronology of Events

1948

Publication of The New Men of Power: Americas Labor Leaders

1950

Publication of Puerto Rican Journey: New Yorks Newest Migrants by Mills, Clarence Senior, and Rose Kohn Goldsen

September 1951

Publication of White Collar: The American Middle Classes

March 9, 1952

Fulgencio Batista seizes power in Cuba

July 26, 1953

Students led by Fidel Castro attack the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to spark a revolt against the Batista dictatorship

September 1953

Publication of Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions by Gerth and Mills

October 16, 1953

Fidel Castro makes History Will Absolve Me defense speech. Castro and thirty-one Moncadistas are sentenced to the Presidio Modelo prison on the Isle of Pines.

April 1956

Publication of The Power Elite

December 2, 1956

Fidel Castro, Ernesto Ch Guevara, and eighty other guerrilla fighters disembark from the yacht Granma in Oriente province.

May 19, 1957

Robert Tabers documentary Rebels of the Sierra Maestra: The Story of Cubas Jungle Fighters airs on CBS

1958

Publication of The Causes of World War Three

1959

Publication of The Sociological Imagination

January 1, 1959

Batista flees Cuba, and the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, assumes power

May 17, 1959

The Revolutionary government implements the Agrarian Reform Law limiting the size of farms to 3,333 acres and real estate to 1,000 acres

January 1960

Robert Taber and Alan Sager found the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

JanuaryFebruary 1960

Planes from Florida engage in bombing and sabotage missions to Cuba

JanuaryMarch 1960

Mills teaches a seminar on Marxism at the National University of Mexico

February 413, 1960

Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan visits Cuba to negotiate economic and trade agreements with Castro

February 22March 20, 1960

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visit Cuba

March 4, 1960

French munitions freighter La Coubre explodes while being unloaded in Havana harbor

March 17, 1960

Eisenhower approves plan for the invasion of Cuba by exiles

April 20May 20, 1960

Mills travels to the Soviet Union for the first time

July 9, 1960

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces that the Soviet Union will provide Cuba with military aid in case of U.S. attack

Summer 1960

Mills meets with Ian Ballantine about publishing Listen, Yankee

August 824, 1960

Mills visits Cuba and interviews Cuban revolutionaries

September 9, 1960

Confidential informant T1 tells the FBI that Mills had been to Cuba and conducted interviews with Cuban officials

September 1960

Castro addresses the UN General Assembly. Stays at Theresa Hotel in Harlem and meets with Mills and others at a reception at the hotel.

October 19, 1960

The United States imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba (except for food and medicine)

October 26, 1960

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reviews manuscript of Listen, Yankee

November 1960

Publication of Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba . John F. Kennedy is elected president. Mills delivers talk, How to Improve Relations with Cuba and South America, to an audience of Americans for Democratic Action in New York City.

December 1960

Excerpts from Listen, Yankee appear in Harpers magazine. Mills suffers a major heart attack. The New York FBI office begins a discreet preliminary investigation of Mills.

January 1961

Lawsuit against Mills and Ballantine Books, publisher of Listen, Yankee , is filed. The Eisenhower administration severs all diplomatic relations with Cuba and bans travel to the island. Cuban government launches Literacy Campaign.

April 17, 1961

Invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs

April 24, 1961

Mills and family leave for Europe and the Soviet Union

April 27, 1961

First and second editions of the Spanish translation of Listen, Yankee Escucha, yanqui are issued in Mexico by the publishing house Fondo de Cultura Econmica

June 1961

Mills meets with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Paris

July 1961

Publication of the third edition of Escucha, yanqui with the update, Escucha otra vez, yanqui

December 2, 1961

Castro declares, I am a Marxist-Leninist

Late March / early April 1962

Publication of The Marxists

January 27, 1962

Mills and family return to the United States

March 20, 1962

Mills dies of heart failure

April 16, 1962

The New York FBI office submits its closing report on Mills

December 17, 2014

President Barack Obama announces the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba, after fifty-five years of antagonism

C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution

Introduction

The North American sociologist C. Wright Mills traveled to Cuba, once, to experience firsthand that islands transition to a new sovereign state, some eighteen months after the triumph of its Revolution. Upon returning to the United States, Mills wrote a small paperback on much of what he had heard and seen, which he titled Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba . As he explains in the opening sentence, This book reflects the mood as well as the contents of discussions and interviews with rebel soldiers and intellectuals, officials, journalists and professors in Cuba, during August, 1960.