THIS is essentially a book for battle, for the fight against Cuba’s adversaries, according to intellectual Rolando González, a José Martí scholar and current rector of the Institute of Art, upon introducing the most recent work by renowned Cuban researcher, essayist and journalist Enrique Ubieta Gómez, Cuba: ¿revolución o reforma? In Havana’s Casa del ALBA Cultural.

González, along with economist and National Assembly deputy Osvaldo Martínez; essayist Omar Valido, vice president of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC); and philosopher Rubén Zardoya agreed that this 201-page book, published by the Abril publishing house, has a cultural focus, primarily addressing the cultural debate around the Cuban Revolution with a perspective which transcends the ideological or artistic.

It is not a title which refers to specific individuals, since the polemic addresses basic tenets of cultural proposals to restore capitalism in Cuba and its principal advocates.

For this reason the author repeatedly quotes the academic and journalistic works of counterrevolutionary intellectuals – to a degree which exceeds the quality or importance of the individuals cited – and at the same time describes the cultural scene in present day Cuba and the subtle war of values which is unfolding within it.

This necessary work, written in cultured and elegant, profoundly Marxist language, but far removed from any dogmatic discourse, is not a classic volume or much less a history book, since it does not describe or analyze events in chronological order.

Nevertheless, it defines concepts of revolution and reform based on their historical manifestations, moving fluidly through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The international context within which the processes described took place is not ignored either, since the cultural counterrevolution can only be understood from a global point of view.