The Leadership Style of Fidel Castro: A Decolonial Perspective

IF 0.8 4区历史学 Q2 AREA STUDIES

Bulletin of Latin American Research Pub Date : 2025-02-24 DOI:10.1111/blar.13620

Denise Baden, Naveena Prakasam, Stephen Wilkinson

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Leadership theory stands accused of being Western-centric. To address this, we investigate Fidel Castro's leadership through 32 semi-structured interviews with Cuban people. Narratives reveal his decolonial leadership as he led the Cuban Revolution, and then Cuba for over 50 years, resisting Western hegemony. Findings problematise the applicability of conceptions of charismatic–transformational leadership (CTL) to non-Western cultures. Benevolent paternalism emerged as a key additional aspect in the Cuban context. Western critiques of CTL as leader-centric and prone to hero-worship were not seen as problematic in the Cuban sample. We explain this with reference to the unifying effects of Castro's decolonial project.

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来源期刊

Bulletin of Latin American Research AREA STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.20

自引率

11.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Bulletin of Latin American Research publishes original research of current interest on Latin America, the Caribbean, inter-American relations and the Latin American Diaspora from all academic disciplines within the social sciences, history and cultural studies. In addition to research articles, the journal also includes a Debates section, which carries "state-of-the-art" reviews of work on particular topics by leading scholars in the field. The Bulletin also publishes a substantial section of book reviews, aiming to cover publications in English, Spanish and Portuguese, both recent works and classics of the past revisited.