The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile

by Patrick Symmes

Book Overview

From the author of Chasing Che , here is the remarkable tale of a group of boys at the heart of Cuba's political and social history. Chosen in the 1940s from among the most affluent and ambitious... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375422838
• ISBN13: 9780375422836
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Pretty Good

When I first started reading this book, I was skeptical about the author because he was of European descent. However, not only did he prove to be an expert on Cuban culture and history but he also had many interesting viewpoints of his own about Cuba pre and post revolution. I enjoyed learning about the stories of all of Fidel's classmates and how they were the people most affected by his extreme socialist policies. I also appreciated the amount of travel the author did to get all his interviews. I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about Cuba's past and present.

Superb journalism!

As a graduate from Belen Jesuit Prep in Miami and a Cuban American, I really appreciated this book- specifically the very last paragraph as I lived it for many years. I have to say that this writer has impeccable writing skills and flawless journalism. His interviews are thorough and true to the facts. His descriptions of the street life in Cuba is well thought out. The information in this book on Castro's former classmates is priceless! A must read for anyone wanting to learn about the making of Fidel Castro and what actually went wrong and why we lost Cuba to this evil tyrant. This writers efforts are stunning!

Necessary reading

This is a wonderful book that explores the historical and social background of the success of a communist regime on an island ninety miles from the U.S. The author reports extensively on the school that Castro attended, and interviews several of his classmates, but this is only a microcosm of Cuban society at large. He has done a lot of homework to capture the Cuban mentality and society, from the 1930's right on up to the present. After 48 years, I finally understand, thanks to this book, what the social and political factors were which resulted in this oppressive regime being so wildly successful in capturing the support of the majority of its citizens, us exiles notwithstanding. This is a must read for any Cuban expats, their offspring, and also anyone having any notion of setting up a business or any roots in Cuba after democracy creeps in.

What Castro never revealed

"The Boys from Dolores", a rich and detailed account of Fidel Castro's boyhood as told through the eyes of his classmates, is terrific in every way. From the opening reunion in Miami of the alumni from the Jesuit Dolores School in Santiago, Cuba to the finale where the author returns to Miami, Castro is revealed to the hilt. Though Castro was never very popular in school, these aging classmates can't hide their despisement of the former Dolores student. Along the way, Symmes shows us a Cuba which few get to see. It's one thing to be an historical contributor (as Symmes no doubt is) but it's another to write so grippingly, keeping the pace flowing as he does. Not only does he relate the intricate details of what it was like to be a student at Dolores (down to the exact time allotments given to students each day at school) but Symmes also delves into the aspects of Cuban culture and the "doble caras" nature of the Cuban people. This gives a human face to the telling of the Castro story, replete with his final success in overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. In two short years the revolution was complete, Castro's Cuba was communist, much of the country's wealthy had fled and the people settled into the iron rule of a man who has been called everything from "Invincible Marshal of the Republic" to things far worse. Symmes's account of the Bay of Pigs invasion is particularly noteworthy and dramatically told. Yet it's what the author sets out to do the most that he does the best. Interviews with more than a half dozen of Castro's classmates at Dolores are the centerpiece of the book. Told in their own words, their collective indictment of Castro couldn't have been more personal and Symmes captures it all. His eleven trips to Cuba have added a full measure of insight. "The Boys from Dolores" is unique. Since Castro doesn't talk about his past, Symmes does, or rather his subjects do. I highly recommend this extraordinary book at a time nearing a probable transition in Cuba.

NYT: "Atmospheric, Richly Evocative"

July 27, 2007 Books of The Times The Boys From Dolores By WILLIAM GRIMES Every year, an aging group of Cuban exiles gathers in Miami to celebrate a school, a way of life and a past that recedes a little further into myth and memory day by day. They are los Dolorinos, former students of the Colegio de Dolores, a prestigious Jesuit academy in Santiago de Cuba, and their members represent what was once the city's social elite and liberal professional class. One classmate in particular, never present, overshadows all the rest, one of three brothers who attended the school and went on to greater fame. He is Fidel Castro, Cuba's supreme leader, but still known to some Dolorinos by his school nickname, Bola de Churde, or dirtball. Patrick Symmes, the author of "Chasing Che," returns to Cuba in fine style with "The Boys From Dolores." Sneaking up on his subject sideways, he uses the Colegio de Dolores and its graduates as the starting point for creating an atmospheric, richly evocative history of modern Cuba: the Cuba that produced Fidel; the Cuba that might have been, had the Dolorinos and their ideals prevailed; and the sorry, compromised Cuba of today, charismatic even in decay. Mr. Castro, always tight-lipped about his past, has never said more than a few words about his old school, which he attended as an adolescent from 1940 to 1942. But Mr. Symmes, probing the ethos of the Colegio, puts his finger on a moral question that shaped the thinking of every Dolorino. Life on earth was presented as a conflict between good and evil. On retreats in the mountains around Santiago, the same hills in which Mr. Castro and his rebel armies would later take refuge, the Jesuit fathers asked students to meditate on "the two standards," the battle flags carried by the armies of Christ and Satan, and ask themselves which they would choose. "Which standard?" runs like a leitmotif through Mr. Symmes's retelling of the events that led to the Cuban revolution, a narrative strand he intertwines with the personal histories of his Dolorinos, men like Lundy Aguilar, a liberal historian and early opponent of Mr. Castro; Alberto Casas, the class troublemaker turned tough-talking cattleman in Puerto Rico; and the three de Jongh brothers, two of them exiles in Miami, one a true believer in the revolution who stayed behind. First the revolution, then the Castro regime, forced life-changing moral choices on all the classmates. The Dolorinos belonged to a special generation, buoyed by the democratic 1940 Constitution and the cleanest elections in Cuban history, in 1944, after Fulgencio Batista had stepped down as head of state. "The boys of Dolores came of age in this era of hope," Mr. Symmes writes. "When they recalled Cuba, this was what they meant. The early 1940s. The old republic. The time before time." It was their generation that would make the revolution, which celebrated its 48th anniversary yesterday, and be broken by it. Two-thirds of them left Cuba, never to return.