Néstor KohanReseñas

Hagiography. Really bad hagiography. I had read it and discarded it. I finally remembered to review it.½

As other reviewers have noted, this isn't really a graphic novel; it's a heavily illustrated biography, with many of those illustrations appearing as cartoons (speech balloons and all). Also as other reviewers have noted, it's more a hagiography than an objective biography, and the USA comes off pretty poorly. Given those parameters, the book accomplishes what it wants to fairly directly. Those seeking a balanced portrait of Castro should look elsewhere; this one's for True Believers only.

I was looking forward to a graphic novel on Cuba, offered through the Early Reviewer program. I had never read anything on Cuba before and the graphic form just sounded…easy, a quick way to partially fill a gap. Should I have expected a book of blatant propaganda?

I can’t emphasize the blatant part enough. This was a pure Fidel love fest. America is the evil empire. Fidel is the brilliant visionary leader who lead his island out of Capitalist domination, who never tortured and was completely open to alternative view points (er, as long as they were communist). And Che Guevera is the beautiful purist who sounds so idealistic, but was in the end, of course, perfectly correct in everything. Argentinean author Néstor Kohan has found a comfortable way to deal with any complex view points about Fidel Castor, Che Geuvera and Cuba, he simply ignores them.

There is some truth in all of this, there is some truth is what Fox’s greater loons say too. I found the lack of balance, the sense of propaganda, odd, archaic feeling, and very entertaining. It’s easy to read, easy to put down (including when you’re annoyed), and easy to pick back up again. It’s great to read with the kids while they watch Scooby Doo. And this is all new information for me, so just taking in the names and general stories was actually quite interesting. And Che does come across as beautiful and I was actually depressed to learn how suddenly he was executed. I guess it was a somewhat successful brainwashing.

2010
http://www.librarything.com/topic/90167#2276090

Please Note: This is only a review of preliminary reactions. The reviewer must do more research into the subject matter before making a solid judgments.

Fidel is a small, book that tries to fit far too much within it. Kohan attempts to make it both a biography of Fidel Castro, a history of Cuba and its revolutions, and a polemic defense of Cuba against the United States. Hopefully, his writing lost something in translation, as the prose is succinct to the point of curtness and lacking in style. It is a misnomer to label it as a 'graphic biography', as the illustrations are much more like cartoons reminiscent of Totem Books's excellent INTRODUCING series. Unfortunately, they don't do terribly much for book except put some faces to names and give an icon of the revolution's hatred of the United States (which has several forms, the most common being that of a demonic, skeletal Micky Mouse).

As for the quality of the information, as stated above, this reviewer feels the need to do further research. Cuba is a very contentious issue in the United States, and personally I have little doubt that the population has been fed misinformation about the island over the decades. That being said, Kohan presents Castro as if he could do no wrong, and only at a few points mentions abuses by his government, which are glossed over as unwise actions of out-of-control bureaucrats. It reads too much like propaganda to take at face value; however, it has planted a seed to dig deeper into Cuba and try to find a seed of truth, if such a thing is possible.½

As other reviewers here have noted, it is hard to get past the clumsy, old-school Marxist propaganda that forms the basis of this illustrated history.

There IS a lot of useful information, if one can glean it from the heavy-handed point-of-view. Since the book is presented in one-page chapters that focus on a specific topic, it might be possible to find some nuggets of actual historical fact, mixed in with the propaganda. The author, Nestor Kohan has obviously spent a lot of energy researching the events of the Cuban Revolution, and the struggle to gain human rights in Latin America that both predated and followed that revolution. And there is actually more value in the presentation of Cuba's position in the world in the 1970's and 1980's.

If only those facts could have been presented dispassionately, the book might have gained in value. But that is, obviously, not the purpose of the author.

This book is no biography; it is a propaganda- laden account of Cuban history that focuses on Fidel Castro's revolution and the dictatorship that has ruled the island for the past half century. As such, it presents a highly distorted, revisionist account interpreted in accord with leftist dogma.

There are elements of truth to Kohan's book, as in its accounts of how the US has dominated the western hemisphere for the past century through military intervention, assassination, and economic policies. The text outlines aspects of Cuban history likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and draws useful distinctions between Cuban style Marxism and that of the Soviet Union. Further, the book offers a useful counter narrative for US readers who may have not previously questioned their nation's demonization of Castro and foreign policy towards Cuba.

However, in this book's simplistic framework, revolutionaries are glorious heroes; capitalists are evil fascists; and the revolution is a perpetual struggle against nefarious forces that seek to subjugate the masses. A few examples illustrate the book's reliability. The reader is informed that the CIA manipulated the 2000 US election to install George Bush (!); that the CIA has sponsored more than 600 assassination attempts against Castro (>600? not, say, just 527?); and that "in 1950, the Korean War breaks out, which due to Yankee intervention, divides the country in two". Can the authors truly be that ignorant of how Korea came to be divided after World War Two, or is the distortion purposeful? All this is presented in a mind-numbing polemic framed in 60s - era Marxist rhetoric, with terms like "bourgeoisie," "rebellion," "revolutionary," "counter-revolutionary," "peasants", "the people", and "struggle" (used as many as four times in a single sentence).

As bad as the text is, the illustrations are worse; they are comic book caricatures, amateurish in both concept and presentation. For example, in Batista - era Cuba, a smeary ghoul is shown at the casino table saying in delight "Capitalism is wonderful! Who's interested in culture? The fun things are drugs, gambling and buying young girls to have good sex with." A skeleton (representing the USA) sitting on a toilet labeled "Latin America" says "Cuba and its riches belong to us! The blacks and mulattos are inferior and must serve us; the Cuban women are whores!" Yes, this book is truly that bad.

Fidel Castro undeniably is a fascinating historical figure who helped liberate his island from the corrupt Batista regime, and who managed to survive for 50 years against its powerful neighbor to the north despite invasion, assassination plots, and economic embargo. However, although Kohan's book declines to mention it, Castro's dictatorial regime has no regard for human rights; refuses to allow free elections; imprisons its own citizens by the thousands for daring to speak and write; and has even dumped its prisoners and mentally ill as refugees onto the US. Although the Cuban revolution of the 1950s included many who sought to meld socialism with freedom, they were imprisoned and executed by the Castro regime as it consolidated its power. Further, had it been up to Castro, the Soviet Union would have used nuclear weapons against the US during the crisis of 1961, and only in a recent interview has Castro acknowledged his colossal error in judgment.

Kohan's Fidel functions mainly as a work of propaganda, and is unlikely to be convincing to any but the most ill- informed. Readers interested in learning about Castro and Cuban history will find plenty of other works that are more reliable.

As noted by another reviewer, this is a work of undisguised propaganda. Hail the glorious revolution against the evil fascist oppressors of the north! The book would be funny if it wasn't meant so seriously. I've not read such a clumsy, heavy-handed political diatribe outside of a right-wing internet blog.

Fidel: An Illustrated Biography by Néstor Kohan and illustrated by Nahuel Scherma, two Argentinians, was originally published in Spanish under the title Fidel para Principiantes (roughly translated as "Fidel for Beginners") in 2006. Seven Stories Press, a publisher based in the United States, published a translation by Elise Buchman in 2010 with additional illustrations by Miracle Jones. (Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you for certain which illustrations belong to which artist.) I learned about Fidel through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program and was lucky enough to snag a copy of the book for review. I was excited to be selected because I actually know very Little about Cuba or Fidel Castro and was interested in learning more, especially in graphic novel form.

First things first--despite how it is being marketed, Fidel is neither a graphic novel nor a biography of Fidel Castro. Instead, it is more of a political history of Cuba, in which Castro is of course a very important figure, that happens to be accompanied by artwork and illustrations. There is nothing wrong with this, but it certainly was not what I or others were expecting the book to be. Fidel's layout makes the subject matter very approachable but it is also problematic. The book is written as a progression of short entries, each focusing briefly on a specific topic with at least one related illustration. This allows Kohan to convey quite a bit of information in a relatively short period of time; the problem with this approach is that nothing is examined in depth and occasionally the text feels more like a listing of names, dates, and facts rather than a cohesive narrative. Because of this, some previous knowledge of the people and events involved (which I don't have) would be useful to a reader.

But even considering that, Fidel does still serve as a decent, if brief and opinionated, introduction to the subject involved. The entries follow a roughly chronological order beginning with Castro's birth in 1926 and ending with events in 2006, the year the book was first published. Unfortunately, there is no index included, but Fidel is fairly short and can be easily browsed. While Castro is an understandably recurring theme in the book, I wouldn't really say he is the focus. Instead Kohan explains revolutionary ideals and thought, Cuban politics and government, and Cuba's participation in the global arena.

Fidel is obviously written with an extreme bias and a blatant anti-United States sentiment. Now, I will be the first person to admit that the U.S. has done some pretty shitty things, but I found the one-sided vehemence to be off-putting and that's not because I am an American. For whatever reason I found Scherma's illustrations, which are as equally passionate and searing as the text is, much more palatable. In fact, the artwork was my favorite part of the book--Scherma effectively uses several different styles of illustration and collage work. Kohan and Scherma offer a valuable viewpoint in Fidel, one not often heard in the U.S., but I can't help but feel I've only heard part of the story. The differences between ideology and the reality of its implementation is glossed over and the presentation of events is easy to understand but ignores the complexities involved in any given situation. However, I am glad I had the opportunity to read Fidel and certainly learned some things about Cuba's international relations that I wasn't previously aware of.

Experiments in Reading½

First of all, I should clarify that this is NOT a "graphic novel biography", as the title is sometimes given. It is neither in the form of a novel nor is it a comic. It is simply a biographical and historical book that features illustrations.

There are plenty of good things to say about this book. It offers a straightforward and informative history of Cuba, which Americans have been so obviously lacking. It explains how a revolution came to be in Cuba, what it stands for, and how it has survived. It dispels much of the propaganda we have been exposed to, in particular showing how the communism of Fidel Castro is nothing like the communism of Stalin and Khrushchev. It gives us fresh perspectives on Cuban immigration, on Latin American struggles, and on Fidel Castro as a man.

On the other hand, the tone is often too heavy-handed and polemical, even for people sympathetic to the authors' point of view. The facts speak for themselves, and I don't need an image of Uncle Sam as a skeleton or a US soldier as a vampire to feel outrage at injustices and pathological greed. These propagandist elements felt manipulative and did not add to the book. The false quotes in some of the captions, clearly intended to instigate outrage, were also unnecessary and bothersome.

However, these elements are mostly restricted to the illustrations and their captions, while the overall narrative of the book is informative and interesting. Despite its flaws, it's nice to see a book of this type finally clarifying many of the misconceptions surrounding Cuba, and providing English language readers with a sympathetic biography of a man largely vilified in the United States.

A brief history of the Cuban revolution in the form of a graphic novel. This is written from a perspective strongly sympathetic to the revolution, and to its leader Fidel Castro. It is not so much a biography of Castro as it is a positive history of Cuba in the 20th century, especially since the Revolution. It is translated from Spanish, and shows some weaknesses as a result (Granada for Grenada, for example). Otherwise, a good introduction to the subject, if,perhaps, a little too uncritical.

Fidel distills the life of Fidel Castro into less than two hundred pages. Written by Néstor Kohan and illustrated by Nahuel Sherma, the book functions as a short biography and a primer on such topics as Latin American politics, South American fascism, and anti-globalism. (The hyperventilating political discourse of today has reduced the term “fascism” to an empty meaningless term. For an academic investigation, one should consult Stanley Payne’s A History of Fascism: 1914 – 1945. For a more literary examination, one should read Robert Bolaño’s Borges-esque Nazi Literature in the Americas.) Kohan writes about Leftist topics and Seven Stories Press, the publisher of Fidel, provides readers with works by Leftist authors.

The book does tend to become a Leftist hagiography of Fidel Castro, but this interpretation cannot overshadow Castro’s monumental influence on the foreign policy of the United States and his effect on world events. Castro inspired a revolution that toppled the Batista regime, a dictatorship that turned Cuba into a casino and a brothel. The reader also discovers that Batista was not the first pro-US dictator, but the last in a long line that stretched as far back as the Twenties. Since this is a Leftist interpretation, the authors seek to link Castro with the independence movements inspired by Simón Bolivar. One finds similar things happen, since both the forces of the Right and the Left want to claim descent from the Founding Fathers. Hagiography tends to simplify things, usually to the point of obscuring the humanity and fallibility of the human beings involved with the historical events.

Unfortunately, the Leftist perspective leaves itself open to an ideological blindspot. While the contentious bloody interrelationship between Cuba and the United States creates hard feelings on both sides, Castro remains the inescapable element. Castro may have helped topple Batista and end Cuba’s role as a United States colony, but like Batista, he became a long-ruling dictator. He ran the country from 1959 to 2008, eventually turning over control to his brother Raúl. Regardless of the regime, hereditary monarchy seems inevitable whether it is the United Kingdom, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or the United States (Adams, Harrison, Kennedy, Bush, and Gore). Despite all his successes, Castro ran Cuba for over fifty years. Despite all its failures, democracy at least gives one an illusion of choice and the leaders are in office for a mercifully shorter time.

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/fidel-by-nestor-kohan-and-na...