This is a comprehensive account of the economic changes that have taken place in Cuba since Raul Castro assumed power that was prepared for the Lexington Institute by Philip Peters, an expert on Cuba. As informative and useful as it is the report lacks perspective.
Read MoreMuch of the emerging critical Cuban left is advocating worker self-management as a keystone of a truly democratic socialism. Farber argues that the idea has important implications that need to be fully explored.
Read MoreIt was 60 years this June since Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England after her father, King George VI, died in February of 1952. I was twelve years old at the time and was a high-school freshman at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Marianao.
Read MoreA legitimate workers’ leader would at least have asked for a salary increase to protect Cuban workers from the uninterrupted rise in the prices of consumer goods. But Valdés Mesa, general secretary of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, did nothing of the sort.
Read MoreThe justified popular rejection of the “socialist” model that existed in the USSR and Eastern Europe and its versions in China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, is a reflection and cause of the loss of credit that the ideas of socialism as such have undergone.
Read MoreMore and more virtual and real networks are bringing together various voices into dialogue around issues that affect the lives of Cubans on and off the island. Slowly, citizens of the island and its diaspora, as well as friends and supporters, are joining specific causes of social and cultural activism.
Read MoreOn March 26, Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in Cuba for a two-day whirlwind of religious ceremonies and meetings with the Castro brothers and other political leaders.
Read MoreThe widespread sexism that has existed in revolutionary Cuba, particularly against gays, has long been an uncomfortable issue for supporters of the Cuban regime, particularly in countries such as the United States where vital and influential women’s and gay liberation movements developed in the wake of the 1960s.
Read MoreCuban gays have suffered greatly, particularly during the first thirty years of the revolutionary period. For reasons that will be elucidated later on, the Cuban government forced gays out of the closet and politicized their situation to significantly increase their oppression. Excerpt from the book “Cuba Since the 1959 Revolution.”
Read MoreTo get some perspective on the issues of tourism and prostitution in the fifties we should consider that somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 tourists visited Cuba every year in the fifties, compared with well over two million for most of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
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