Casto's Cuba ― An American Journalist's Inside Look at Cuba, 1959-1969

“Holds many surprises for the reader who has seen the Cuban reality up to now only through the distorting prism of propaganda . . . A first-rate psychological document.”—The New York Times Book Review, 1967

On December 31, 1958, Lee Lockwood, then a young photojournalist, went to Cuba to cover what looked to be the end of Batista’s regime. He arrived the day before Fidel Castro took power and spent a week canvassing the island before finally coming into contact with the victorious leader. Castro immediately took a liking to Lockwood and over the next decade invited him back to Cuba many times, granting him special access to his inner circle and free reign to explore the island without the usual restrictions imposed upon American journalists.

Castro granted Lockwood a rare, in-depth interview in 1965, but then proceeded to miss appointment after appointment. Days turned into weeks turned into three interminable months, as Lockwood, like many journalists before and since, waited for Castro. But it was worth the anticipation, climaxing in a marathon seven-day interview that covered everything from racial issues in America to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and remains to this day one of themost penetrating portraits of the Cuban leader.

Originally published in 1967, this volume includes Lockwood's interviews and his own observations about a country trying to live up to its promise, alongside hundreds of photographs—most of them never seen before—covering both the weeks Lockwood spent travelling with Castro, and ambient shots of Cuba in the ‘60s. From military encampments in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to Havana street life and political rallies, many of these color images have never been published before. A foreword and afterword by Latin America expert Saul Landau contextualize Lockwood’s work at a moment in histo