Cuban Government Research Articles

“The Throttling of the Free Press in Cuba”: Exploring Transnational Journalism and Sigma Delta Chi’s Advocacy for Press Freedom in Cuba, 1959–1962

ABSTRACT Members of Sigma Delta Chi (SDX), the largest journalism professional organization based in the United States, engaged in advocacy for transnational freedom of information and press freedom in Cuba between 1959 and 1962, between the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Analysis of archival sources—including SDX member records, correspondence, and declassified government reports—and content in the official SDX magazine, reveals three themes: justifying a Latin America section with a primary focus on Cuba, the throttling of the free flow of information in and from Cuba, and documenting transnational flows of propaganda from Cuba and news from United States-based Cuban exiles to Cuba. Communist threats to reporters and democratic news organizations increased, and news management from the Cuban government and US government influenced information flows during this period. These findings add to the histories on free press advocacy abroad, cross-border journalism, and international press-politics in the context of US and Cuba relations.

Tourism-Led Housing Commodification: Transnational Real Estate Networks and State-Permeated Property Investment in Havana, Cuba

ABSTRACT In a context of ever-growing demand for tourism property, this paper scrutinizes emerging forms of tourism-led housing commodification in Havana, Cuba. In 2011, the Cuban property market reopened to investment when the socialist government allowed the sale of private property at prices set in a market environment. We pay attention to the critical role of Cuban migrants, remittance investors and lifestyle elites in commodifying Havana’s historic housing stock and transforming residential property into short-term rentals, hotels, private restaurants and tourist boutiques. We demonstrate how the Cuban government has become an active market facilitator, either by restraining private competition or by encapsulating tourism property investment within broader channels of the state. We conclude that the case of Havana is indicative of broader trends in tourism and hospitality, particularly in the Global South and East. We propose tourism-led housing commodification as a conceptual framework for understanding these broader commonalities.

An energy system model-based approach to investigate cost-optimal technology mixes for the Cuban power system to meet national targets

Cuba's power supply is characterized by the dependence on imported oil, outdated power plants and frequent power curtailment. Cuba's government aims at changing this situation through the National Economic and Social Development Plan, which targets a renewable share of 37 % in 2030. In the longer term, the Cuban government has already acknowledged the goal of 100 % renewable electricity supply. This work reviews the current ambitions of the Cuban government and provides a scientific approach to identifying the most cost-effective 100 % renewable energy system in 2030. First, we study whether the generation mix proposed by the Cuban government to reach 37 % renewables is the most cost-effective. Second, we run a simulation that considers fossil and renewable energy technologies purely to optimize costs. Third, we investigate the renewable future for Cuba with a simulation under the constraint of a 100 % renewable energy share. Our results suggest that energy sector plans should be reconsidered from a techno-economic point of view: With the overall cost-optimization, we find that much higher renewable energy shares of over 80 % are possible at lower overall costs. Finally, we analyze that the cost viability of a 100 % renewable electricity depends largely on the ability to use Cuba's biomass resources to balance solar generation.

Strategies toward an effective and sustainable energy transition for Cuba

This study evaluated the possibilities of energy transition in Cuba 2030. Cuba is currently in a vulnerable energy situation since it strongly depends on the importation of fossil energy. Strategies based on intermittent RES (solar and wind) can reduce this vulnerability, but the introduction of this type of source impacts the energy system's characteristics and aspects at a country/regional scale. Most of the studies about energy transition strategies focus on the evaluation of a few specific arbitrary scenarios or the classic economic optimization approach. This research relies on existing methods to evaluate energy scenarios. However, some aspects of our approach are original: differently to the comparison of arbitrary scenarios we evaluate a fairly large number of scenarios, and differently to the classic optimization we consider many different indicators (e.g., energy security, carbon footprint, air quality, and economic). This allows the description of the trends of the changes in the energy system and the evaluation of the benefits linked to a progressive introduction of intermittent sources. Scenarios for Cuba correspond to a progressive introduction of intermittent sources to reduce fossil fuel importation. These scenarios were compared with the official projection of the Cuban government for 2030 showing that the introduction of solar and wind improve the situation of the island by reducing CO2 emissions, improving air quality, and generating economic benefits. Monetizing the CO2 emissions results in greater economic benefits through carbon compensation. Furthermore, replacing Internal Combustion Vehicles (ICVs) with Electric Vehicles (EVs) could offer additional benefits across all these aspects.

Reframing Revolution and Solidarity: Photography and Visual Culture in ospaaal Poster Art (1967–1990)

Abstract This article analyses the uses of photography in the posters produced and distributed by the Organisation of solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (ospaaal) between 1967 and 1990. Founded during the Tricontinental Conference of 1966, ospaaal was active until 2019 and had as one of its main tasks the creation of propaganda materials helping promote causes supported by the Cuban government across the three continents. The organisation produced over 300 posters distributed globally along with its official magazine, the Tricontinental. We combine thematic and visual perspectives in examining how ospaaal posters published during the Cold War period made use of photography. Our goal is to understand how ospaaal contributed to a reframing of ‘solidarity’ and ‘revolution’ through tricontinental lenses. The article is structured to provide an overview of how the organisation utilised photography in its poster production, to demonstrate how this body of work is connected to inter-war photographic traditions and contemporary left-wing visual culture, and to reflect on ospaaal’s contributions to revolutionary iconography.

쿠바 사회주의 발전전략의 변화와 지속가능한 발전

This article examines how PNDES 2030, based on the Cuban socialist development model, corresponds to the SDGs, and through this, assesses whether Cuba's socialist development model can realize sustainable development. Furthermore, we reviewed the limitations of Cuban-style sustainable development and examined the conditions for the Cuban-style sustainable economic development model to be compatible with the SDGs, the dominant development paradigm in the international community. Since 1990, Cuba has made efforts to transform its development model and establish a sustainable development model in order to break away from external dependence in its economic structure and at the same time actively respond to changes in the global economy. The Cuban government established the 'Cuban National Strategic Plan 2030 (PNDES 2030)' for sustainable development goals centered on six strategic axes, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the mainstream paradigm, in each strategic axis. Detailed items were placed. These strategic axes were planned to coexist with the 17 sub-goals of the SDGs without significantly departing from the post-revolutionary socialist development perspective. However, in reality, the U.S. economic sanctions that have continued since the revolution are acting as an obstacle to PNDES 2030, which can be considered a Cuban-style sustainable development model, achieving certain economic results. Additionally, overcoming the inefficiencies and low productivity that occur within the framework of a planned economy can also be said to be an important condition for realizing sustainable development in Cuba.

Infrabanking: Mobilizing capital in communist Cuba

AbstractIn 2011, the Cuban government authorized banks to start offering loan credit to the country's growing number of small businesses for the first time since the beginning of the revolution. Yet in the following years, citizens have largely circumvented these services. This article draws on twenty months of fieldwork among market traders in Havana to examine why so few Cubans rely on the formal banking system to secure capital. It analyzes alternative methods people employ to organize their financial futures, by leveraging kinship ties, partnerships, friendships, property, and loan sharks, and by participating in rotating savings and credit associations. To understand the advantages these approaches offer to mobilize capital, it is crucial to grasp how people navigate their economic lives in ways that are influenced but not dictated by short‐term considerations of net profit. Nonmonetary concerns about access, time frame, and visibility lead people to raise and store wealth outside the formal banking system, constituting a domain I call infrabanking: banking practices that are too far removed from the established assumptions about banking to be perceived as part of the same phenomenon.

Specifics of media coverage of anti-government protests in Cuba (2021)

The article is devoted to revealing the features of coverage of the Anti-Government demonstrations in Cuban information space in July 2021. They began due to the social and economic crisis. According to the Cuban government, the crisis was caused by sanctions from the USA. On the other hand, the opposition considers that it is the consequence of the communist dictatorship reigning in the country. The authors of the article set themselves the goal of investigating media interpretations of the events as in the traditional media controlled by the state, and in the specific social and communication environment of the Internet space. Having analyzed the publications of the largest Cuban mass media, such as the newspaper «Granma» and portal «Cubadabate», as well as the materials of social networks, the authors have come to the conclusion that the massive spread of the Internet in 2018 marked the beginning of gradual changes in the media landscape of the country: social media have become an alternative source of information that has influenced the Cuban social and political life. They have served as social organizers not only online but also offline when having the popularity and taking a new platform for the promotion of anti-government ideas. One of the examples of its phenomenon were the protests on July 11, 2021, which have become a new challenge to the political leadership of a country that has been fighting the US economic blockade for decades.

Entrevista a Frei Betto

Frei Betto (Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo) was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1944. He is a Dominican friar and theologian, being among the most relevant and internationally recognised exponents of «liberation theology». This militant in pastoral and social movements resisted the Brazilian military dictatorship, under which he was imprisoned and endured torture: he related this experience in Baptism of Blood (Jabuti Prize, 1982) and in Letters from prison (1977). He was active in the construction of Base Ecclesial Communities and, during the first Lula Government, was adviser to the Presidency of Brazil for the Zero Hunger programme. He politically sympathized the socialist experiences in South America, and he has advised various governments, especially the Cuban government, on relations between the Catholic Church and the State. Among the dozens of works he has written, the following are worth mention (our translation): Fidel and Religion (1985), The Work of the Artist (1995), Hotel Brasil (1999), The Art of Sowing Stars (2007), A Man Called Jesus (2009), Mysticism and Spirituality (with L. Boff, 2010), Hunger for God (2014), Reinventing Life (2014), Paradise Lost (2015), A Very Human God (2015), Faith and Affection (2019), and Militant Jesus (2022).

Evaluation of the gender perspective from a public policy perspective in Cuba

Cuba has been working on gender and gender equity issues for decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959 from legal frameworks to addressing gender equity in aspects such as education, violence and political participation. In turn, the Cuban government has implemented a series of legal, judicial and administrative measures with the purpose of eliminating any type of inequality or discrimination related to gender. Within this context, this paper aims to evaluate the gender approach in Cuban public policies, which introduce the concept of mainstreaming the perspective in legislation, policies and programs implemented in the period from 2019 to 2023 with emphasis on the Program for the Advancement of Women and the Comprehensive Strategy for the Prevention of Gender and Domestic Violence.

Tensions Between Cuba and the USSR After the Cuban Missile Crisis: From International Politics to Political Economy

In this paper the author examines the contradictions between Cuba and the USSR after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The author's review of the academic literature on the subject reveals that both the conflict itself and its short-term consequences have been extensively analysed. Yet, as far as one could ascertain, there is no historiography that sheds light on the further development of the contradictions between Cuba and the USSR in the 1960s. Drawing on documents from the Soviet embassy in Cuba held in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, the author demonstrates that the Cuban government was still extremely concerned about its security and on several occasions even attempted to join the Warsaw Pact. Contradictions between the two countries deepened with the radicalisation of Cuban position on the international stage and the implementation of guerrilla tactics pursued by Ernesto Guevara, who also tried to implement them during his trip to Africa at the turn of 1964-1965. This is evident from the notes the revolutionary took during the trip. The document, held in the personal archive of Guevara at the Che Guevara Studies Centre in Havana, is being introduced into academic discussion for the first time. The author explores the contradictions between the USSR and Cuba over issues of socialist construction, taking as an example the economic debates in Cuba and the attempt to introduce the budgetary finance system, which was later replaced by the economic register, implying the total negation of monetary relations. The study shows that Cuban socialist construction schemes in the 1960s reflected a radical political economy approach that could not be characterised as classical “real socialism”.

Chinese Religions and the Cuban Revolution

The issue of religious practices within the Chinese diaspora in Cuba is increasingly debated within Chinese studies in Latin America. As the Chinese and African diasporas in Cuba have intermingled ethnically, their religious practices have historically also intermingled. While the rise of Afro-Cuban religions in recent decades is primarily understood as a response to centuries of Spanish colonialism and perceived as a resistance to Eurocentric hegemonic power, this article aims to examine the efforts of the Chinese diaspora to re-evaluate their religions from the same decolonial perspective. This article aims to determine the tendencies of interactions between Chinese religious beliefs and Cuba’s religions before and after the Cuban Revolution, including after the fall of the socialist bloc. Specifically, it examines whether post-revolution state atheism had an impact on the religious beliefs and ethnic heritage of members of the Chinese diaspora. In the 1990s there was a revival of the Guan Yu (关羽) cult which has been often interpreted as a consequence of the economic interests of the Chinese and Afro-Chinese diaspora or as a consequence of the interests of the Cuban government. However, we must also be aware of the broader historical, social and political context at play here.

Mapping MNEs in Cuba and barriers to their growth

Very little is known about the investment climate and operations of MNEs in Cuba due to limited data provided by the Cuban government. In this paper, we explore the investment climate in Cuba and identify factors that limit the activities of MNEs. We also assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future prospects for MNEs in Cuba. Our research is based on question¬naires and semi-structured interviews in MNEs operating in Cuba. MNEs consider low macroeconomic stability, the impossibility of acquiring real estate, access to financing and the movement of capital, and profit repatriation as the most problematic factors for their business activities. On the other hand, IPR protection, corruption, the skills and education of the available workforce and the availability of electricity were assessed as the least problematic. Less than half of the MNEs interviewed found positive changes con¬cerning the investment climate in Cuba during recent years. This implies limited prospects for economic growth in the near future.

Market-Based Reform, Industrial Restructuring and Economic Development of Cuba

This paper examines whether market-based reform, industrial restructuring and diversification efforts have contributed to economic development of Cuba. The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to serious depression in Cuba in the early 1990s. To overcome the economic difficulties, the Cuban government began to adopt market-based reform in the mid-1990s. Cuba gradually strengthened market-based reform measures again in the late 2000s and economic growth rate rose in the meantime. Cuba could diversify its economic structure from its heavy reliance on the agricultural sector to the service sector. Cuba has overcome the negative effects of US’ economic sanctions by strengthening its bilateral relationships with countries within the socialist bloc such as the Soviet Unionand Venezuela and developing value-added industries where it has a comparative advantage. The government’s emphasis on education appears to have contributed to the development of the Cuban economy led by tourism, exports of professional services such as medical services, and a technology-intensive pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile, insufficient allocation of resources to science and engineering coupled with the chaos in Venezuela have had negative impacts on Cuba. Finding other trade partners and foreign investors while emphasizing science and technology education may provide better opportunities for the Cuban economy.

Assembling humanitarianism in the Cold War: The role of the Red Cross in the Bay of Pigs prisoner exchange

This paper examines humanitarian relations between Cuba and the US at the height of Cold War conflict. After the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to overthrow the Cuban government had resulted in a memorable defeat for the United States of America, an unusual humanitarian operation in 1962-63 secured the release of the prisoners of war in exchange for food and medical supplies. Framing the Prisoner Exchange Project (PEP) as an assemblage helps to understand how humanitarian interventions can succeed in situations where diplomatic relations are severed, and without involving international organisations as mediators. I analyse how the project brought diverse non-state actors together under the banner of humanitarianism, as well as non-human elements including supplies, ships, aircrafts, documents, and affective elements such as desire and hospitality. The national Red Cross Societies of America and Cuba managed to successfully carry out the exchange through constant relational work and mechanisms to render the project technical. This case study offers important lessons about the entanglement of humanitarian and development work, and how the involvement of Red Cross Societies unsettled hierarchies between donors and recipients and traditional geographies of humanitarianism.

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

The Dialectic of the International: Elaborating the Historical Materialism of the Gay Liberationists

Abstract What is the relation between sexuality and the international? The literature on sexuality within international studies demonstrates that a full appreciation of contemporary transformations of sexuality across the globe requires an interrogation of the divisions—West/non-West, North/South, or core/periphery—that characterize our view of the international. While many have studied how the transnational circulation of sexual discourses troubles such divisions, fewer have asked how they came about in the first place. Historical materialism is uniquely instructive in this regard. This methodology expounds the division of the international into distinct spheres as historically constituted and founded on capitalist social relations. Such a methodology can be found within the intellectual writings of the gay liberation movement. Through their fraught relationship with the Cuban government, which represented them as a cultural imperialist offensive against the newly formed Communist state, the gay liberationists developed a dialectical conception of the international that acknowledged the differential constitution of sexual life within specific contexts, yet sought to reveal the international systems of power that produce and regulate those seemingly distinct sexual formations across international divides. Gay liberationism, this article argues, offers us a rich tradition for developing accounts of sexuality within a stratified capitalist world order.

The Gathering of the Protest Songs: Cuba, Thirdworldism, and the Birth of the Protest Song Movement (1967–1970)

ABSTRACT This article explores the efforts of the Cuban government to shape the content of political songs through its cultural institution, Casa de las Américas. Influenced by the spirit of the Tricontinental Conference (1966), Casa de las Américas organized in 1967 “El Encuentro de la Canción Protesta,” a global gathering in Cuba with musicians from Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and even the United States. This event aimed to push the musicians who attended the Encuentro to define “what a protest song was” and “what was the political potential of music.” Following this international gathering, they aimed to create a playlist, a standardized set of songs that were exchanged, learned, and translated across a variety of languages yet which retained their original/vernacular sonorities. The event resulted in the configuration of an alternative left-wing global music market and the creation of a transnational network of musicians that aimed to address music as a tool to make the revolution.

A New Scale for Global History

A New Scale for Global History

The Cuban Revolution Comes to America

The Cuban Revolution Comes to America