Cuba

Abstract

The concept of a new and consolidated world order has generated many a discussion about the role of states in the political economy of nations and in transitions from one state form to another. With all the apparent global changes that have occurred during the 1990s, especially the demise of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), a Sovietstyle parallel market system, the case of Cuba cannot be ignored. Most literature pertaining to the study of Cuba's insertion into the world economy concentrates on the crisis that plagues Cuba, its state-party apparatus, and the general population. Taking into consideration the fall of the CMEA, of which Cuba had been a part between 1973 and 1990, the amplified U.S. embargo, and all the social repercussions, Cuba obviously does fit into the crisis category. While some audacious writers have declared the coming of Castro's Final Hour,1 others have speculated about new scenarios for Cuba's future. In this section I intend to reveal how the Cuban state and the general population have adjusted to world hegemony of free-market capitalism. More specifically, this section covers how the state in Cuba has transformed in order to participate in the world economy while maintaining the welfare-state attributes for which it is famous. First, this entails exploring the nature of the revolutionary regime since 1959. Second, it requires delineating the causes of the crisis Cuba experienced during the first half of the decade. A critical analysis will be made of the effects of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the U.S. economic embargo. Then we are left with the question of what to do, or what Cuban political economists have done in order to pursue development. This means taking a look at state-party