CUBA, THE PURSUIT OF FREEDOM by Hugh Thomas. 1,696 pages. Harper & Row. $20.
Villains somehow look blacker and heroines fairer under that Caribbean sun. In 1897, on the eve of the U.S. intervention to free Cuba from Spain, the fairest of all heroines to North Americans was a rebel named Evangelina Cisneros—"this tenderly nurtured girl," the New York Journal mourned, "imprisoned at eighteen among the most depraved Negresses of Havana." In the flesh, Evangelina was a bloodthirsty lass who tried to kidnap a Spanish officer, but no matter. The Journal had her smuggled out of prison disguised as a sailor...
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