For more than fifty years, the revolutionary experience in Cuba was the stage for such re markable personalities as Che Guevara and for dramatic events like the missile crisis. All these 20th century historic icons are interwoven with the deep internal restructuring of the Cuban economy and society, and the related challenge to the United States' prior unopposed hegemony over Latin America. The complexities of these elements should not be dismissed, for, in them selves, they are an explanation for the passions and interpretative battles that are evoked still today by this Caribbean revolution.