EL FASCINANTE MUNDO DEL AJEDREZ
Author: Jose Luis Barreras Merino
Editorial Arte y Literatura (Havana 2006)
301 pages

Reviewed by Anthony Saidy

If I were a Cuban chess fan from the working class, I would be delighted to have this book to comfort me as I tried to eke out a living in an island under a worsening economic blockade for nearly a half-century by the Giant of the North. Barreras is a venerable organizer, credited among other intl. events with the 1966 Havana Olympiad. He divides the book into four parts.

The first and longest, 206 pages, is Masters of World Chess, from Ruy Lopez to Leko, with game examples for each (Capablanca gets -- surprise! -- far more than anyone else: 15). The selection is debatable. Call me a suspicious type, but I think Pillsbury deserved inclusion before Wm. Evans. And among 71 all-time greats, how did he manage to omit Reshevsky? But hey, who wants to get exiled to Matanzas for praising Yankees? (He does sneak in a Sammy win over Smyslov later, in match play.) The section on Fischer gives the texts of messages between him and Castro prior to Bobby's participation in the 1965 Havana Intl. by teletype -- the US Govt. barring travel to that isle. At the time Fischer conformed to the US Govt. line. I paraphrase thus:
  
Bobby: "I ain't playin' unless you stop tryin' to make propaganda hay out of my situation."
   
Fidel:  "That's your affair. If you aren't chicken."

Fischer played, and they met in person next year at the Soviet-financed Olympiad in Havana, when Castro reportedly said that he preferred "games where I make my own rules."
  
(After Larry Evans played in Cuba, the FBI harassed him for a year. The absolute nadir in US-Cuban chess relations was reached in the 1980s, when a Cuban GM won a $10G first prize in the NY Open, and -- whoosh! -- the Treasury Dept. swooped down and seized the check.)

Part Two is "Spectacular Chess," 35 pages of miniatures, Q sacs & combos.
  
Part Three consists of 22 pages about great competitions of history, and Part Four, 19 pages about FIDE, including a list of champions. (Was there really a Hungarian GM named "Lajos Fleischmann" who died in 1930? I don't think so.)
  
I'm not a Cuban, but a card-carrying gringo. Trade with Cuba is prohibited by Uncle Sam. So how did I get hold of this most worthwhile book? Surreptitiously! I sent a secret agent to the forbidden isle and asked her to buy chess books for me. Good luck to all Spanish-reading Americans in trying to get hold of it.
  
It is time to end sadistic policies, buy books and play chess.