Talk:IB History Review Guide/The Rise and Rule of single-party States

Land Reform
The section on land reform was removed and has been restored. The content appears to be historically accurate, based on a brief search of other sources. Please discuss and support removal of this section. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting subject
I somewhat doubt there are very many states that aren't de-facto "single-party". At least in America, it seems that our political dichotomy is really just for show. Having said that, I eagerly await further developments in the section about Cuba, whose history I find very interesting. A good reference might be Thomas Wright's "Latin American in the Era of the Cuban Revolution", which I found very informative. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:23, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I should say that I haven't read very much else on the subject, so I do not claim to speak with any authority. I hope nobody minds though if I summarize in my own words a few points of interest from that book (at least as well as I remember them) that aren't mentioned in the current version of the resource but appeared salient, and a few of my own comments. First, the US response to the Cuban revolution involved a large effort to preempt revolution in other Latin American nations. Part of this effort included providing military/police support and training particularly in counterrevolutionary strategies, to many of the more "cooperative" regimes. Simultaneously, there was an attempt to placate the oppressed inhabitants of many other Latin American nations, but this did not seem to be a very genuine effort at true social reform. I would also like to see the resource cover the causes that precipitated the revolution in the first place, the reforms that Castro implemented, and why the US government responded in the way they did. In particular, Cuba's nationalization of land previously owned by US-based corporations factored largely in the response of the US government. In other words, it does not seem that the object of the response was so much to protect the American public, but to protect private corporate interests. I feel it would be fair to say Cuba was occupied by these foreign companies based in the US and that it would be a distortion then to call this particular reform an instance of communism per se. According to the book, the regime only really acquired a "communist" association after the fact, by their relation with Russia, and the resource does say something to this effect. I appreciate Thomas' emphasis on the points I've mentioned though, and I think they should be given due attention here as well AP295 (discuss • contribs)