In C. Wright Mills’ “Listen Yankee”, it is stated that “It was a thorough and complete racket,
controlled, directly or indirectly, by the big men of the tyranny” (33). This seems to regard the
revolution as both structuralist and voluntarist. However, just a few lines later, “whatever Cubas has
been in all these respects, you helped make it that: by your support of “our” government, by your
gangsters who were in on it, and by the patronage and the whims of your rich tourists” (Mills 33). From
this line, it seems to me that the Cubans thought of their country as a structuralist environment, and thus
revolution was needed.
Che Guevara attest to as such in "The Cuban Economy" stating "The Cubans were only observers;
they had no part in the negotiations" as well as "the slave system of exploitation kept the cultivation [of
sugar cane] on a subsistence level" (589). The United States impressed its monopolistic power on Cuba,
creating an economic factory for sugar and industrial output.
In the newspaper article about an interview of Fidel Castro in 1957, the author writes"[Havana]
does not and cannot know that thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro... it
does not know that hundreds of highly respected citizens are helping Senor Castro... that a fierce
government counter-terrorism has aroused the populace even more against President Batista"
(Matthews 2). By this recollection of events in Cuba, it seems that much of the populace is rising up
against the system and the president/dictator, Fulgencio Batista. I would argue this is central to the
voluntarist perspective: the idea of free will and pursuing goals.
Works Cited
Guevara, E. C. (1964). The Cuban Economy; its past, and its present importance. London: Blackwell.
Matthews, H. L. (1957, February 24). Cuban Rebel is Visited in Hideout. The New York Times, pp. 1-2.
Mills, C. W. (1961). Listen, Yankee: The Cuban Case Against the United States. New York: Ballantine Books.
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