A year ago, on Radio WhoWhatWhy, I spoke with Tom Hayden about his passion and excitement at the opening up of Cuba. This was the last time we spoke, after many years of conversations.
It has been sixty-two years since the Cuban Revolution began. Fifty-four years since the Bay of Pigs invasion. Fifty-three years since the Cuban missile crisis. Twenty-six years since the end of the Cold War, and fifteen years since the Elian Gonzalez incident. And it is just now that we are beginning a new relationships with our neighbor 90 miles away.
A significant part of our population has come of age with absolutely no knowledge of the history of the US / Cuba relationship, what the revolution was about, or what all the hostility has been about. And yet the history of that relationship with Cuba has been a kind of Rosetta Stone for understating the bias, the mistakes and domestic politics behind so much of American foreign policy from the mid 20th century until today.
Few have had the access to Cuba to provide the kind of clear and present perspective that Tom Hayden has he writes about that in Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters
My conversation with Tom Hayden:
