Patrick Symmes

Hello there! I am a Havana correspondent, author of three Cuba books, and a biographer of Fidel Castro.

My Cuba obsession started in other countries, when I saw the influence Cuba’s revolution had on places as diverse as Peru, Argentina, and even China. In 1991 I traced that revolutionary impulse to its source: Havana. For the next quarter century I returned to the island, visiting dozens of times, inluding three visits last year while preparing my new book. I have written about Cuban politics, the secret police and opposition figures, the island’s environmental issues, daily economics in Santa Clara, human rights and the rewriting of Cuban history, social relations, cocktail recipes, and even tobacco.

In a failed effort to rid myself of this Cuba obsession, I have also worked worldwide as a magazine correspondent, most recently for the New York Times Sunday Magazine in the Philippines. For magazines like Harper’s, Outside, GQ, Wired, and Condé Nast Traveler, I have had the privilege of covering the whole of the earth: riding the rails all over China, driving my motorcycle to Patagonia, and working everywhere from Phnom Penh to Stockholm, and Cape Town to Mongolia. I am fascinated by insurgencies, global environmental conflicts, travel, and the geopolitical fault lines that underlie them all. Above all, I want to know how the story of Cuba and its Revolution ends.