The Cuba Libre Story (2015) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Joanna Matheson ★★ 2

  Seemed pretty informative and binge-worthy at first, but once you start to notice that reactionary exiles make up like 80% of the people interviewed it becomes hard to watch. Some pretty questionable sources. There are moments where straight-up lies fly by without being corrected, and thus construed as fact, such as the time where one of the exiles claimed the CIA only attempted a few assassinations against Castro. Glaringly obvious US propaganda, bleh. But what more can you expect from a Netflix docuseries? Anyway, there are much better documentaries that give voice to actual Cuban people, like “Curtain of Water” or “Cuba and the Cameraman.”

  
  edit: I also have a huge problem with how they deliberately framed a lot of Cuban issues, such as food shortages, as “failures of socialism” and not direct consequences of the US’s draconian embargo. Irresponsible as hell.

• Review by JaimeStarr ★★★

  I thought this was a relatively decent documentary about the history of Cuba, but it suffered somewhat from the inclusion of Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuban exile and academic at the University of Miami's Cuban Studies Center.

  He opposes Cuabn Studies academics going to Cuba, at all ever for any reason, which as a historian I find an abhorent position - its like saying "you want to be a mathematician, okay fine but don't learn how to count past 10 - the basics are all you need." His anti-Castro bias led to him saying some really stupid things, like claiming the universal healthcare and education policies in Cuba don't help people, which is patently ridiculous, and affected the whole tone of…

• Review by Tess ★★★½

  I liked the first episodes of this mini series, they were informative and good. The last half of them are unfortunately pro-US (yeay we are the greatest, but yeay sorry we caused everything). If you see the rest of the episodes with a chritical eye they're ok. Finally, I learned lot I didn't know about Cuba's history - extra half star for that.

  Gillade de första avsnitten om historia de var informativa och bra. Den sista hälften av avsnitten var informativa men vinklade mot USA (yeay we are the greatest, but yeay sorry we caused everything). Ser man resten av avsnitten kritiskt är de ok. Slutligen, jag lärde mig mycket som jag inte visste om Kubas historia. Plus för det.

• Review by aamirazh ★★★

  Overall pretty informative, but there is some clear propaganda sprinkled throughout, *especially* in the last two episodes. Pay attention to who they interview and adjust your interpretation accordingly, i.e. if it's someone from the US govt, or a Cuban exile, take that slant into account. If you're willing to sort through the propaganda though, it is informative and overall well designed and easy to follow.

• Review by Conor O'Neill ★★½

  About half of The Cuba Libre Story is actually a pretty good documentary, particularly in the first few episodes up until the actual 59 reveloition it's self, even the Cuban missile crisis episode was interesting; but when they spend at least 10 minutes gushing about the positive but ultimately minor reforms under the first Batista presidency, and then ignore the many excellent achievements of the socialist government under Castro whilest only really discussing and inflating the negative aspects of his regime, you start to see where this documentary's bias lies. The final two episodes are just outright anti Castro propaganda when the situation in Cuba today is presented as a failure of socialism and not isolation after the collapse of…

• Review by Karim M. Mansour ★★★★

  خوسيه مارتي ، فيديل كاسترو ، وتشي جيفارا .. لقد كانت رحلة طويلة لكنها مليئة بالنضال
  Hasta la victoria siempre!

  الواحد في مزاج لسماع ناتالي كاردون و هي تصدح بكوماندانتي
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqwy6ay1HQ

• Review by melinebb ★★★½

  - de façon général plutôt neutre
  - Fidel est mort l’année d’après
  - le poster du Che depuis qu’on est gosse dans notre chambre ( soeur et moi ) prend son sens

• Review by Despina ★★½

  Overall great explanation of the historical aspect leading up, some of the commentators tho were very biased and some of the stuff they said definitely had me questioning their credibility and reasoning.

• Review by Madeline ★★

  propaganda and too many German guys narrating but I still wanted to log it

• Review by dobi

  started off well then turned to american propaganda

• Review by Weewww ★

  Legit Bonafide CIA propaganda, they pretty much claim Mexico ordered the assignation of jfk too lol

• Review by JoacoG ★★★

  Venia lo mas bien cuando de repente salto el tio Sam a decirme en la cara que estados unidos best country in the guorld y el socialismo es un cancer porque imaginate que tenes 2 vacas