Vida Clandestina: My Life in the Cuban Revolution Hardcover - 2002

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Excitement, danger, and suspense shatter the bourgeois tranquility of the young Enrique Oltuski, a middle-class Cuban Jew and University of Miami educated engineer for the Shell Oil Company, when he joins Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to become a leader in the secret struggle and ultimate triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

In this compelling personal memoir, Enrique Oltuski recounts the experiences of his revolutionary life: organizing the urban guerilla movement in Havana and Santa Clara, launching the official underground newspaper, raising money for arms and medical supplies, initiating urban military operations--including retaliative bombings of army headquarters and assassinations of notorious police terrorists--and working with Che Guevara in the battles against the heinous dictator Fulgencio Batista and his overwhelmingly superior armed forces.

Never before have we had such an opportunity to experience and understand the real story of this ragtag band of workers, farmers, and students who--with a lot of naive idealism, profound personal sacrifice, courage, intelligence, and exceptional good luck--were ultimately able to win the revolution and build a new Cuban society in the face of grave internal and external obstacles.

Vida Clandestina is above all, a very warm, often humorous personal story: of a brash and handsome young Jewish kid who falls in love and marries his Catholic high school sweetheart; reconciles his liberal democratic idealism with the hard-boiled brutality of violent revolution; loses many friends, while barely escaping with his life; enjoys the eventual triumph of the revolution; learns to run a major branch of the government about which he initially knew nothing; becomes a more experienced and sophisticated player in the world of international politics; and continues his dedication to the struggle for freedom and social justice in his beloved country to this day.

Offering a rare, behind-the-scenes portrait of the early days of the Cuban revolution, the book is filled with anecdotes about the legendary Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, who is still Oltuski's boss after forty-three years of active service. "Vida Clandestina" is one man's story that provides a very human background and perspective to today's headlines.