Covering Castro: Rise and Decline of Cuba's Communist Dictator

When Fidel Castro and his rebel expeditionary force landed on the southeast coast of Cuba in 1956, Jay Mallin was in Cuba reporting on the landing. As a correspondent for Time magazine, The Washington Times and other publications, Mallin has covered Castro and his rise to power ever since. Covering Castro contains the texts of many of the most important articles and book chapters written by Mallin since he began to write about the Cuban revolutionary.
Castro's victory march across Cuba to Havana in 1959 and the subsequent communist takeover are reported. There are also profiles of Castro's younger brother Raul and the legendary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. During the Bay of Pigs invasion Mallin eluded Castro's police who were hunting down American correspondents and sought sanctuary in the Swiss embassy. In this book, Mallin reveals a vital reason for the failure of the U.S.-supported invasion.
Castro's foreign adventures extended into Africa where in Angola Cuba maintained its largest overseas military force. As news director of Radio Marti, Mallin made two trips to Angola. On one occasion, he flew in a small, darkened plane over Cuban-controlled territory. Mallin also provides details about Castro's extensive subversive campaign to extend his power and influence throughout Latin America. As the dictator's long arm reached into the southern Caribbean, the author marks the beginning of Castro's decline with the American liberation of Grenada. Thus, Castro's empire had begun to crumble.
Covering Castro includes four new chapters written especially for this book. Here Mallin describes the long and turbulent relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union that spanned three Cold War decades. He takes a look at present U.S.-Cuban and Russian-Cuban relations and discusses possible future scenarios for Castro and Cuba. Covering Castro is an enlightening eyewitness account of the tumultuous Castro years and will be of specific interest to historians, journalists, political scientists, students and Cuba area specialists.