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the pressures of the international market, Soviet strictures, and even the ideological recalcitrance of the
Cuban masses. In dealing with each of these problems,
the Cuban government was often, despite its rhetoric,
surprisingly flexible. Economic policy was alternately
statist, market driven, and, in the recent crisis, even
precapitalist. Moreover, according to Eckstein, many
policies produced unintended consequences (such as
rising material expectations among the masses) that
presented new problems for the regime and led to
further shifts of direction. Ideology drove certain
policies (such as the early efforts to assist revolutionary movements in Latin America) but more often it
was employed to retain state control of the island's
political arena and its command economy, and to
gain more room for maneuver within the international political economy. The greatest inconsistencies arose when the Cuban government found that
the social programs that were the source of its
legitimacy contradicted the need for the fiscal controls that were the source of its economic and
political power.
Eckstein sees the Cuban Communist Party as a
special kind of bureaucratic mechanism, one that
provides special mobility to those who accept the
authority and wisdom of Fidel. Yet she finds Castro a
proponent, at times, of administrative decentralization. Castro is likewise inconsistent on the subject of
democracy; favoring it at each of the levels of power
(local, regional, state, party) except the highest, while
at the same time willing to create a host of policing
units in the effort to curb Cubans' attempts to
promote their own rather than the state's (that is,
the "revolution's") welfare. One of the great ironies
of recent policy is that the state is engaging in
blatant market operations of the kind that it abhorred in its citizens,
Eckstein's work is complex, refusing to write off
socialism and yet taking an unblinking look at its
Cuban incarnation. She joins Perez-Stable in regretting that the social gains of the revolution were not
allowed to extend to the political sphere and that, as a
result, Cuba risks losing both its democratic and its
socialist possibilities.
JULES R. BENJAMIN
Ithaca College
where indeed all compete equally. The 1920s chess
master Jose Raul Capablanca comes to mind, so does
the prima ballerina Alicia Alonso, among many other
Cubans to have achieved world fame.
The leaders of the Cuban Revolution understood
this reality, and they chose sports as the means of
claiming a place of international prominence and
prestige. The story of sports and the Cuban Revolution
has been the subject of much discussion in the last
thirty-five years. But only with the appearance of this
volume does the full rendering of sports in Cuba
receive the attention it merits.
Paula J. Pettavino and Geralyn Pye examine the
place of sports in Cuban society, not only as a form of
organized international competition but also as an
activity of mass participation. In the former category,
as Pettavino and Pye aptly demonstrate, Cuban sueccsscs have been nothing short of spectacular: in track,
in boxing, and, of course, in baseball.
Not as well understood, however, has been the
importance of sports inside Cuba, and specifically the
creation of a sports culture that serves to join almost
all Cubans in a common endeavor. It is in this discussion that Pettavino and Pye make a particularly important contribution, for they skillfully demonstrate the
ways that ideology and sport intertwine and fuse.
Introduced into the schools, from the elementary
school curriculum to the university, sports serve as a
means of social cohesion and national integration. It is
based on mass participation, men and women, young
and old, in the cities and the countryside, and it is from
the ranks of these inclusions that the athletes for
international competition are chosen.
Pettavino and Pye have made an important contribution to our understanding of socialist Cuba in a
particularly insightful and original way. This will no
doubt become the standard reference book on sports
in Cuba for years to come.
LOUIS A. PEREZ, JR.
University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
PAULA J. PETTAVINO and GERALYN PYE. Sport in Cuba:
The Diamond in the Rough. (Pitt Latin American
Series.) Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press.
1994. Pp. ix, 301. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.
Notwithstanding the loss of many valuable sixteenthcentury Spanish manuscripts, these surviving documents in Spanish and Guatemalan archives still offer a
rich source of information. Many of these documents
have seldom been read with care by modern historians.
Wendy Kramer's excellent work on early Guatemala
reflects her careful study of many of these papers and
complements the growing collection of books on postconquest Central America.
Other historians have dealt with the importance of
encomiendas in the region, but not with the same
intense concentration. Although the author states that
she has not written a social history, her findings are an
Soon after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the
new leadership made a number of decisions about the
ways to project the Cuban presence globally. Cubans
have long been mindful of the limitations inherent in
living in a small country, with a small population, with
limited resources. The particular Cuban genius has
been in identifying those endeavors where participants
of all countries are subject to the same rules, and
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
WENDY KRAMER. Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial
Guatemala, 1524-1544: Dividing the Spoils. (Dellplain
Latin American Studies, number 31.) Boulder, Colo.:
Westview. 1994. Pp. xiv, 293. $47.50.
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272
Reviews of Books
important contribution to our knowledge of the conquest society, 1524-44. Her focus on the division of
spoils, in the form of encomiendas, tells a great deal
about those men and their roles in the conquest and
early settlement of Guatemala. As a rule, those who
had distinguished themselves in battle were naturally
rewarded with the best encomiendas. Even so, most of
the encomiendas in Central America were quite small
and poor compared with those in Mexico and Peru.
Not surprisingly, those close to Pedro de Alvarado
fared well and counted themselves among the elite of
Guatemala.
Kramer's most welcome offering is her meticulous
care with her tables listing the ancient towns along
with their modern names, the encomenderos to whom
they were assigned, the length of their tenure, the
numbers of tributaries, as well as the amount and
nature of tributes paid. Chronological tables also
indicate the governors and their assignments of encomienda towns. Despite the fact that Alvarado had the
title of governor for seventeen years, he was absent
from Guatemala about half that time.
Kramer has found much of interest in the underused
Probanzas de meritos y servicios in legajos listed under
Patronato Real in the Archivo General de Indias (AGI)
in Seville. In addition, she has made good use of the
lusticia section in the AGI, especially from the pleitos
concerning encomiendas. Instead of simply listing the
names of the various files used, she conveniently
identifies each document with a description of the
contents.
Making good use of the original sources, Kramer has
noted numerous errors (notably by Salvador Rodriguez Becerra, Encomienda y Conquista: Los Inicios de
la Colonizaci6n en Guatemala [1977]). She also reveals
misleading correspondence from high officials; for
example, in a petition dated January 19, 1590, the
cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala suggested that the
encomienda system was not established in Guatemala
until Indian slavery was legally abolished in 1542 by the
New Laws. In fact, as Kramer points out, encomiendas
were introduced in Guatemala in 1524. Even the
indefatigable Silvio Zavala, an authority on encomiendas and Indian labor, in 1938, as a young scholar,
accepted that the first encomienda in Guatemala was
assigned there by Pedro de Alvarado in 1536. Rodriguez Becerra incorrectly indicates the date to be
1535.
Of considerable interest is the author's case history
of the early operation of the important encomienda of
Huehuetenango. Information for this kind of study is
scarce and scattered. Kramer is probably correct when
she observes that records were likely left obscure on
purpose in order to hide violations of tribute assessments and the abuse of Indian labor, both of which
were widespread.
Five appendixes give further information about the
structure of encomiendas, including sample titles to
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
their assignments. This is an important book that
should be consulted by all scholars in the field.
WILLIAM L. SHERMAN
EMERITUS
University of Nebraska,
Lincoln
CHRISTOPHER H. LUTZ. Santiago de Guatemala, 15411773: City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press. 1994. Pp. xx, 346.
$37.95.
Christopher H. Lutz's fine book traces the demographic and social evolution of Santiago de Guatemala, Central America's most important colonial center, from its founding until 1773, when a devastating
earthquake forced the capital's relocation. The author
begins by describing Pedro de Alvarado's conquests,
the establishment of Santiago (after one false start),
and the brief era of indigenous slavery. The second
chapter focuses on the city's peripheral Indian barrios,
giving detailed information on their size, ethnic composition, internal government, and relationship with
the Spanish "republic.' Lutz, using criminal court
records, paints a grim picture of life in the barrios,
where "abject poverty, ethnic rivalry, and alcoholism
. .. combined to create a fertile environment for
crime" (p. 42).
The next three chapters form the heart of the book
and tell its central story: the decline of the Indian
barrios and the triumph of the racially mixed gente
ordinaria. Lutz charts the dramatic growth of the
mulatto and mestizo populations; the former constituted Santiago's single largest racial category by 1740.
High intermarriage rates among the gente ordinaria,
the integration of naborias (nontributary Indians) into
the casta group, and-by the eighteenth century-a
growing number of casta/Spanish unions all led to the
creation of a "burgeoning 'middle strata' of mixed
descent" that was "increasingly homogenized in both
socioracial and cultural terms" (p. 157). Even the
Spaniards' phenotype began to alter through miscegenation and "passing." These trends foreshadowed the
development of the ladino/Indian dichotomy that
would become so central to Guatemala in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
As the casta population grew, it spilled out from the
central city into the Indian barrios. The miscegenation
that inevitably followed meant that many Indian parents would have mestizo children. Meanwhile, numerous barrio residents, eager to escape the burdens of
tribute and forced labor, fled to Santiago's Spanish
sector and adopted Hispanic language and dress in a
deliberate (and often successful) attempt to change
their racial status. As a result, by the eighteenth
century most "Indian" neighborhoods were Indian in
name only. As early as 1716, the middle-sized barrio of
San Francisco boasted only two complete families of
tributaries. The decline of the indigenous population
was also visible in the economic sphere: in chapter 6,
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1996