The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba's Freedom | Aran Shetterly

The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba's Freedom | Aran Shetterly | A brilliant biography that reads like a thriller

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The Americano: Fig...

	The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba's Freedom Aran Shetterly Algonquin Books, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Why do I fight here in this land so foreign to my own? Why did I come here far from my home and family??Is it because I seek adventure? No?I am here because I believe that the most important thing for free men to do is to protect the freedom of others.
?WILLIAM MORGAN, in a letter to Herbert Matthews at the New York Times

When William Morgan was twenty-two years old, he was working as a high school janitor in Toledo Ohio. Seven years later, in 1958, he walked into a Rebel camp in the Cuban Jungle to join the revolutionaries in their fight to overthrow the corrupt Cuban president, Fulgencio Batista. They were wary of the broad-shouldered, blond-haired, blue-eyed americano but Morgan's dedication and passion, his military skill and charisma, led him to become a chief comandante in Castro's army?he was the only foreigner to hold such a rank, with the exception of Che Guevera.

Vicious battles in the jungles were followed by victorious revelry in the cities. Morgan married a Cuban beauty. He single-handedly thwarted the Dominican Republic's attempt to overthrow Castro. And he was chosen to work with Castro and other high ranking Rebels to improve the quality of life for all people. This man who had lived under the radar in America was now a Cuban hero on the watch lists of several governments, all of whom wondered whose side he was really on.

It all ended in 1961, when, at age thirty-two, Morgan was executed by firing squad, at the hands of Fidel Castro.

Journalist Aran Shetterly takes us back to an era when democracy could have flourished in Cuba. He interviewed Morgan's friends and family and former Cuban Rebels, and examined FBI and CIA documents in search of the truth. What emerged was the true story of a young man who had never fit in but finally found his place in the world by fighting another country's war.

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Great story, well told

Morgan's story is almost too amazing to believe. A hapless soul with nothing to lose -- kicked out of schools and dishonorably discharged from the army -- washes up in Cuba and within months becomes a Cuban national hero?! This gringo didn't even speak Spanish and now (thanks to this book) has a legitimate claim to being properly recognized as one of the genuine heroes of the Cuban revolution. Just look at the cover with this dropout from Ohio walking arm-in-arm with Che and Castro.

This is a wonderful story of charisma, good timing, and derring-do -- and how someone really can have a second act in life. And what a second act: a drifter morphing into a central player on the international stage. The book offers a lot of color on the "peripheral characters" in Morgan's story, like Castro (a closet Communist at the time), the NY Times mischief-maker Herbert Matthews, and the ruthless Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

The book shares Morgan's charisma and good timing. It's fun, runs fast, and is full of endearing details to make you fall in love with the guy. Timingwise, it's perfect. The old timers who know what really happened were muzzled by Castro for the last fifty years. They're (mostly) not dead yet, but old enough to spill their guts without fear of retribution. Shetterly does a nice job of getting them to talk, which makes all the difference in this charming story of a forgotten/censored corner of US and Cuban history.

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A brilliant biography that reads like a thriller

There is no shortage of biographies on historical figures. Year after year, we're inundated with new editions on Kennedy and King, Lincoln and Leonardo da Vinci, each purporting to shine a new light on the great individual and their role in history. However, it's often the stories of people who have been lost to history that truly bring the particulars of a certain era into sharp focus. Such is the case with Aran Shetterly's The Americano, the story of William Morgan, a man from Toledo who fought alongside the rebels in the Cuban revolution.

A misfit whose taste for adventure was way bigger than the middle American sensibilities of his native Toledo, William Morgan, after years of mixing it up with small time hoodlums and a troublesome stint in the US Army, finds his way to Cuba, where he enlists with the rebel group the Second National Front of the Escambray. Within months, The Americano, as he is affectionately christened by his new comrades, is one of the unit's leaders, and on his way to becoming one of the central figures in the revolution and a Cuban celebrity.

Morgan rubs shoulders with all of the well-known usual suspects: the Cuban dictator Batista and the Dominican dictator Trujillo, the Argentine rebel commander Che Guevara, Ernest Hemingway, J. Edgar Hoover and the "jefe" himself, Fidel Castro. Shetterly delivers all of the requisite historical detail--names and roles of characters from important to incidental, all the relevant dates and locations, geopolitical backstory--but locates it all within a narrative that is as compelling and cinematic as any story I've read recently, fiction or non-fiction. By the time your come to the breathtaking ending--which somehow still feels like a surprise, even though it's previewed from the beginning--you're well-versed in the nuances of the Cuban story, *and* you've had one rollercoaster of a read.

Cubaphiles regardless of their persuasion will have a field day with this book, as it's exhaustively researched and offers the kind of detail that is usually found in more academic (read: boring) treatments of important moments in history. However, The Americano is so accessible and engaging that those of us with just a cursory knowledge of the history will turn the last page completely satisfied. Highly recommended!

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