Socialist Cuba Research Articles

Leadership Emergence and Style: Fidel Castro of Cuba

This study examines Fidel Castro’s leadership emergence and style in Cuba with reference to the situation, goals sought, leadership process and the outcomes. The emergence of Fidel Castro was underpinned by the qualities he exhibited and significant popular support he enjoyed from different strata of the society. Transforming a pre-revolutionary corrupt, oppressive and discriminatory system by creating equal opportunities for everyone was the main objective of Fidel Castro’s led revolution in Cuba. Despite some efforts toward societal transformation, Cubans were divided over the achievements of the revolution. While some expressed positive views about Fidel Castro’s initiated socialism, others described it as a source of frustration. Findings reveal that the level of leadership effectiveness under Fidel Castro was largely attained through a variety of styles used to address different situations. The resilient abilities Fidel Castro shared with followers could enable socialist Cuba survive the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras.

Cuba's Socialist Economy Today: Navigating Challenges and Change ‐ by Spadoni, Pablo

Cuba's Socialist Economy Today: Navigating Challenges and Change ‐ by Spadoni, Pablo

Bureaucratic socialism in reform mode: the changing politics of Cuba’s post-Fidel era

Standard wisdom explains Cuba’s current transformation as one of economic change but political immobility. However, Cuban politics have also undergone a major change since the handing over of power from Fidel to Raúl Castro – even if the rhetoric used has been one of continuity. This article traces this process by looking at four areas: the depersonalisation and re-institutionalisation of the political structures; the diversification of the public sphere, particularly through the use of digital media; the liberalisation of travel and migration, with its transformative impact on state–citizen relations; and the turn to a moderate foreign policy, as highlighted by the rapprochement with the USA, with its implications for legitimising the underpinnings of Cuban socialism. Although the shift has been well below the threshold of a transition to multiparty democracy, Cuba has evolved from the charismatic model of the past to what can be understood as bureaucratic socialism in reform mode.

Living ideology in Cuba: socialism in principle and practice

This book represents an important contribution for studies on ideology. Katherine Gordy, professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, develops an excellent analysis of ideology and the production of subjects and subjectivities. Her book challenges traditional negative approaches to study the concept of ideology, offering a more positive interpretation of the concept. Her main argument is that critical thought and critical contestation are central features of Cuban socialism, rather than a threat to it. In this way, against the official anti-Cuban idea of “lack of debate” in the Revolution, Gordy shows how open and intense have been the political debates in Cuba in the last decades.

La relación arte-política en Cuba: Entre el silencio y el susurro. El arte como lugar de acción y repolitización de la vida.

Este artículo indaga cómo se expresa la relación arte-política en Cuba en el contexto de un cambio de perspectiva en la dirección del país. Se precisa cómo lo político atraviesa el arte, politizándolo y constituyendo nudos esenciales que permiten situar y revalorizar conceptos como gestión ciudadana y activismo artístico. El lapso 2006-2014 marca un periodo muy interesante en la historia cubana. Primero, porque hay una transferencia de poderes. Segundo, porque a partir de esa transición comienzan a manifestarse transformaciones que denotan un punto de giro en el enfoque socialista. El susurro de Tatlin (2014) es una performance de Tania Bruguera que marca este lapso y traza una parábola del socialismo cubano en el siglo XXI, planteando algunas preguntas, desde “¿hacia dónde vamos?”, “¿hay hacia dónde ir?”, “¿cómo llegar?”, sobre todo, cómo llegar después del camino desandado; hasta la constatación de una inminente gravitación hacia el norte.

Updating the Cuban Political Model: For a Systemic and Democratic-Participatory Transformation

The Cuban socialist project is in a period of transition. This transition is unfolding in conditions dictated by an underdeveloped economy, a persistent domestic economic crisis even though the eco...

Sobre el socialismo en Cuba by Mao Xianglin (review)

Mao Xianglin. Sobre el socialismo en Cuba. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2014. 410 pp.Professor Mao Xianglin is a Chinese scholar who for three decades has done research and published two previous books on Cuba. He is adviser to the Center for the Study Cuba, Institute Latin American Studies, and researcher in the Center for the Study World Socialism, both at the Chinese Academy Social Sciences (CASS), and a foreign correspondent for the U.S. Handbook Latin American Studies. In 1982 we met in Beijing-he was one the translators to Chinese my book Cuba in the 1970s-but his help was not acknowledged (as then was considered vanity). Things have changed for good, and now both the names and biographies the translators to Spanish Mao's book are included.The preface to the book is written by a former CASS vice president and the Cuban ambassador to the People's Republic China. Twelve chapters deal with the history Cuban socialism, the Communist Party, the political system, the armed forces, the economy (1509-2004), education, health care, religion, foreign affairs, Chinese relations with Cuba, and Mao's reasons of the vitality Cuban socialism. For Chinese readers, Mao's desire to provide a comprehensive Cuban panorama forces brief treatment in quite complex themes. The author mainly relies on Cuban and Western sources, and only a dozen Chinese books on Cuba or Latin America are in the bibliography, an indicator the scarcity Cuban scholarship in the PRC and the rarity this book.1Lack space forces a focus on China-Cuba relations that starts in 1847 when culies (coolies) arrived in Havana and later the Chinese participation in the War Independence. The author subsequently deals with Mao Zedong's endorsement the Cuban Revolution, Fidel's regional pioneering break in relations with Taiwan and establishment relations with the PRC, and the latter moral support Cuba in the United Nations and against the United States. Of particular importance are the conflict in 1964, when the Cuban government asked the Beijing ambassador to stop distributing propaganda (in Cuba's armed forces), Fidel's criticism China in 1966 on trade agreements, Beijing's answer that deteriorated the bilateral relations, and the 1970s freeze given the conflict with the Soviet Union. (In the ideological struggle for the international socialist movement that Mao analyzes, he fails to specify that China accused the Soviet Union being a second, social imperialist power and that Cuba sided with the Soviets.) In 1984 both countries signed an exchange experts, and Flavio Bravo, president Cuba's National Assembly, traveled to China, the first Cuban high official to visit that country in twenty years. In 1989 there was a swap visits by the chancellors both countries. The collapse the socialist bloc in 1990 provoked a grave socioeconomic crisis in Cuba, including severe oil scarcity, which virtually paralyzed transportation: China sent bikes and a bicycle factory. President Jiang Zemin visited Cuba in 1993 at the worst point in the crisis, then Fidel traveled to China in 1995 and Raul Castro in 1997. …

Diaspora and Trust: Cuba, Mexico, and the Rise of China by Adrian H. Hearn

Adrian H. Hearn, Diaspora and Trust: Cuba, Mexico, and Rise of China. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 280 pp.China and Future of History in Latin AmericaChina's global rise forces politicians, businesspeople, and researchers to debate and formulate fresh solutions to an old problem: what balance of state, market, and civic inputs can best harness world's shifting economic currents? (3). This especially holds true for Latin America. is challenging national economic policies throughout region, and efforts to block its influence on domestic markets appear certain to fail.This is message of anthropologist and political sociologist Adrian H. Hearn's book Diaspora and Trust: Cuba, Mexico, and Rise of China. He challenges entrenched debates about China's role and influence in latin America that have tended to vacillate between opposing visions of a promising China Model of South-South relations versus a Beijing Consensus as imperialistic and threatening as Washington one. Hearn goes beyond these contrasting visions rooted in policy debates. He takes Chinese migrant communities as entry point to look at larger economic, political, and cultural entanglements between China, Mexico, and Cuba. After nearly two centuries of Chinese diaspora settlement in both countries, these migrant communities make encouraging transnational bridging figures that promise to facilitate economic development. Moreover, as the Chinese government now looks outward with a brand of economic pragmatism unknown to Cold War contenders, it is forged through Chinese diaspora [that] is advancing a unique blend of materialist and idealist agendas (209f). In order to exploit this human and social potential, Latin American states have to learn how to engage with Chinese migrant associations, brokers, and business owners more effectively. This means creating a climate of general trust and legal protection for a minority group historically mistreated and discriminated against, as well as offering predictable public-private cooperation to enhance vertical trust with community leaders and local entrepreneurs. Not an easy task. The overall picture at present, as Hearn suggests, is quite different from such a rosy socio-economic future.Both Cuba and Mexico share a complicated history of Chinese immigration, and their current economic outlook is closely tied to (who is second largest trading partner of both countries). They differ starkly, however, in their economic policies. Neoliberal Mexico and state socialist Cuba stand at opposing ideological ends within Latin America, yet policy makers in both countries recognize need for forms of public-private cooperation that diverge from conventional development models (3).With comparison of Cuba and Mexico, Hearn not only contrasts two countries that face similar challenges from very different historical and political standpoints, but goes beyond conventional analysis of Chinese interest in natural resources. The book is a timely reminder that China's role in Latin America is not limited to extractivist practices. Research in emergent field of China-Latin America has been greatly centered on statebacked Chinese investments and loans in agricultural, hydrocarbon, and mining sectors. This engagement in resource extraction is certainly significant and politically and socially explosive, but there is more going on in Latin America-China relations. The two national contexts that Hearn compares embody trans-Pacific relations beyond resource extraction, as their economic relations with are multi-sectorial, and - in contrast to other, especially South American, countries-their problems with do not seem to rest on a re-primarization of their economies.The book can be seen as a response to repeated calls to go beyond macroeconomic and geopolitical analysis and to explore potential mutual benefit of rapid growth of China-Latin America trade relations in last decade (Strauss and Armony 2012). …

Las limitacione jurídicas de la cooperativa en el socialismo. Perspectivas para el perfeccionamiento de su regulación en Cuba

This paper examines the legal transformations that accompany the newly initiated updating process of the Cuban socialist socioeconomic model and the perspectives that this process opens to this form of business in building the prosperous and sustainable socialism the country needs. The starting point is therefore a general description of the legal regulation of cooperatives in socialist models, with special emphasis on the conception of their nature and their relationship with the State, in order to understand the constraints imposed by law in assigning their role in the socioeconomic system. On this basis, an analysis is made of the limitations presented by cooperative regulation in Cuba under socialism, relating to their nature, the recognition of their right to associate in cooperatives, sector of the economy in which they operate, purpose with which they are created, form of operation, etc. These limitations must be overcome in the ongoing process of change that the country is undergoing so that the institution can develop its different potentialities. Finally, this paper makes a critical approach to the most recent legal transformations faced by cooperatives within the upgrading process of the Cuban socialist socioeconomic system and to the perspectives this process offers so that law can play its regulatory and enhancing role in this regard.

Venezuela: Building a Socialist Communal Economy?

In 2005, Chavez declared that the Bolivarian Revolution was building “socialism for the 21st century.” Almost a decade later, however, the economy remains dominated by a parasitic capitalist sector which obstructs efforts to build alternative socio-productive relations. In avoiding a head-on confrontation with the bourgeoisie, the government is experimenting with the introduction of a parallel communal economy in which the social product is communally owned and invested on improvements to the habitat and wellbeing of the poor Venezuelan majority. This explains the strategic importance of the Communal Economic System (CES), as the principal vehicle for the introduction of socialist relations of production in the Venezuelan economy. The article discusses the challenges facing the development of the CES, based on my experience of working with the Vice Ministry of the Communal Economy, the institution responsible for fostering and regulating that system. Among Venezuelan government teams there is interest in Ernesto Che Guevara's contribution to the transition to socialism in Cuba. While Guevara's methodological and theoretical approach to socialist political economy can serve as guides to action, in Venezuela its potential is blunted by the lack of state control over the economy and socialisation of the means of production.

Transforming ideology into heritage: A return of nation and identity in late socialist Cuba?

This article explores the role of cultural heritage and museums in the materialization and spread of the new ideological and symbolic order in post-1990 late socialist Cuba. It suggests that the Cuban government has developed a new way of articulating ideology, identity and history that reflects a transition from real to symbolic wars against real and perceived external enemies. In the process of transforming ideology into heritage, the Cuban regime draws on the meta-cultural discourse of heritage in an attempt to generate a sense of historic depth and local identification with the new ideological campaigns of the regime, including the Battle of Ideas or the liberation of the Cuban Five. Drawing on ethnographic and original archive material, the article illustrates this process through the study of changes in monument and museum practices in Havana.

Material and cultural consumption in Cuba: new reference groups in the new millennium

Reference groups serve as markers for citizen-consumers to determine tastes and preferences about work and material and cultural consumption. These groups have evolved slowly in socialist Cuba, mostly during the post-Soviet era. This paper examines the symbolism, roles, and meanings of three such groups: the Cuban Diaspora, Cuban Gen-Yers or Millennials (survivors), and entrepreneurs. A combination of these groups is changing values about a new consumption taking hold across the island and offers insight into material and cultural consumption.

‘La Lenin is my passport’: schooling, mobility and belonging in socialist Cuba and its diaspora

Based on an ethnographic study of transnational networks of alumni of an academically selective boarding school in Havana, this article explores the nexus between mobility, schooling and belonging in the context of socialist Cuba and its diaspora. Drawing on Goffman’s work, I argue that the boarding school experience was transformative; it facilitated or consolidated social mobility for its pupils, which later, for many, led to geographic mobility in the form of study and work outside Cuba. After graduating, alumni continue to identify with the school and to reproduce their alumni identities. The affective webs of belonging forged through family links and friendships fostered at the school constitute emotionally sustaining networks that also provide material support after migrating. I propose that the school represents a site of identification for a globally dispersed non-national diaspora and argue that migration scholars need to embed international migration within people’s lives more broadly.

Updating Cuban Socialism

A critical look at what is officially called the “updating of the Cuban economic model” and the “perfecting” of the Cuban political system from the viewpoint of the utopias of the Cuban Revolution calls attention to the importance of deepening participatory and socially representative democracy, strengthening popular and grassroots control over state management, addressing some of the causes of the deterioration of moral and civic values, and increasing the participation of the mass media in counteracting negative effects. This should help prepare citizens, especially the generations that will lead the country from 2018 on, to deal critically and in a utopian fashion with the challenges posed by the Cuban socialist transition. Una mirada crítica a lo que se llama oficialmente la “actualización del modelo económico cubano” y el “perfeccionamiento” del sistema político cubano desde el punto de vista de las utopías de la Revolución Cubana llama la atención sobre la importancia de profundizar la democracia participativa y socialmente representativa, fortalecer al control popular y de base sobre la gestión del estado, abordar algunas de las causas del deterioro de los valores morales y cívicos, y aumentar a la participación de los medios de comunicación para contrarrestar los efectos negativos. Esto debería ayudar a preparar a los ciudadanos, especialmente las generaciones quienes liderarán al país desde 2018 en adelante, para hacer frente críticamente y de una manera utópica con los desafíos planteados por la transición socialista cubana.

Nonstate Enterprises in Cuba

The new types of nonstate enterprises, private and cooperative firms, that are beginning to take root in Cuba are part of the reform process that is taking place in that nation and redefining its socialist path. There are different positions in Cuba with regard to the adequacy of nonstate enterprises for the advance of Cuban socialism. Some consider them simply a necessary evil, while others consider them essential for the functioning of any economy. A third position is that nonstate enterprises and enterprises in general are most useful to the goals of socialism to the extent that they are democratically managed and responsive to social interests. The current process in Cuba is an opportunity to perfect Cuban socialism and bring it closer to its humanist and emancipatory goals. Los nuevos tipos de empresas no estatales, empresas privadas y cooperativas, que están comenzando a echar raíces en Cuba son parte del proceso de reforma que se está llevando a cabo en esa nación y que redefine su trayectoria socialista. Hay diferentes posiciones en Cuba con respecto a la adecuación de las empresas no estatales para el avance del socialismo cubano. Algunos los consideran simplemente un mal necesario, mientras que otros los consideran esenciales para el funcionamiento de cualquier economía. Una tercera posición es que las empresas no estatales y las empresas en general son más útiles para los objetivos del socialismo en la medida en que se gestionan democráticamente y que responden a los intereses sociales. El proceso actual de Cuba es una oportunidad para perfeccionar el socialismo cubano y acercarlo a sus objetivos humanista y emancipadores.

U.S. Proposals for an Unwanted Transition in Cuba

Two recent U.S. government and scholarly projects on a “transition toward democracy in Cuba”—the reports to the president of the Commissions for Assistance to a Free Cuba and the results of the Brookings Institution’s seminars on U.S. policy toward a Cuba in transition—are typical of attempts by U.S. academics and policy makers to make Cuban society conform to U.S. models of social organization and bring Cuba once again under U.S. hegemony. Failing to consult the work of Cuban social scientists who have directly assessed the gains and losses of the Cuban transition to a better society and criticized it from within, they overlook Cuba’s permanent shift from capitalism to socialism in the past 50-plus years and ignore the distinctiveness of the Cuban socialist system. Dos recientes proyectos gubernamentales y académicos estadounidenses sobre una “transición hacia la democracia en Cuba”—los informes al presidente de las Comisiones de Asistencia para una Cuba Libre y los resultados de los seminarios de la Institución Brookings sobre la política de EE.UU. hacia una Cuba en transición—son típicas de los intentos de parte de los académicos y los legisladores estadounidenses para que la sociedad cubana se ajuste a los modelos de organización social de los Estados Unidos y para nuevamente llevar a Cuba bajo la hegemonía de EE.UU. En no consultar el trabajo de los científicos sociales cubanos que han evaluado directamente las ganancias y pérdidas de la transición cubana a una sociedad mejor y criticarla desde dentro, se pasan por alto el cambio permanente en Cuba del capitalismo al socialismo en los últimos más de 50 años y ignoran lo distintivo del sistema socialista cubano.

Grupo Antillano: The Art of Afro-Cuba

In this age of e-books and mobile media, of pages on screens and images in malleable pixels, this book is the antithesis of all that. A gorgeous, weighty volume with gleaming reproductions and bilingual columns of text, it is a reminder of the sensory pleasures books can inspire. But this book appeals beyond the aesthetic. As a history, archive, and catalogue of Cuba's forgotten Grupo Antillano, it is also a necessary intervention in the political and cultural histories of race in the Americas. The Grupo Antillano was an art collective comprised of Cuban artists who exhibited their work between the years of 1978 and 1982. Led by the sculptor and printmaker Rafael Queneditt Morales, this loosely organized group of visual artists understood themselves to be revaluing the disparaged legacies of afrocubanismo and negritude. Their art posited an ongoing African presence in Cuban culture, drawing from surrealist, abstract expressionist, and modernist idioms in provocative rebukes to racism in socialist Cuba. More than that, they aimed to incorporate music, dance, history, and literature in their resuscitation of cultural forms. Working across disciplines, they collaborated on performances, organized forums, and staged concerts within exhibits in efforts to create a broad public. This short-lived assemblage of creative energy faded and left only the faintest traces, until now, in Cuban history and art history.The book itself compiles different kinds of texts and images. A testimonial section includes short essays by the artists with their reflections on the intentions and motivations of the Grupo Antillano's project. Replicas of press clippings, posters, and reviews reconstruct the exhibits from multiple perspectives. Perceptive short essays by the art historian and critic Guillermina Ramos Cruz on each of the artists, excerpts from reviews and critiques, and reproductions of the art highlight the participants' specific qualities. Finally, a sampling of works from a recent exhibit that paid tribute to the Grupo Antillano completes the volume and reminds readers of ongoing artistic dialogues about blackness in contemporary Cuba. The array of media provides a visual and discursive immersion in this creative milieu.As the editor, Alejandro de la Fuente uses his essay to situate the Grupo within the Cuban state's long and twisted relationship with Afro-Cuban cultural production. Opening with a brief account of “drapetomania,” the nineteenth-century pathologizing diagnosis of slaves' desire to flee their bondage, he traces shifting meanings and comes to rest on a notion, developed by Caribbean intellectuals such as Edouard Glissant and René Depestre, of cultural cimarronage, understood as an effort to use aesthetic creation to reshape dire histories. De la Fuente frames the work of the Grupo Antillano with this idea: they were, according to him, the then-contentious and now forgotten inheritors of efforts to sustain and reinvent connections to African cultural forms in Caribbean contexts and to voice critiques of the marginalization of those legacies.From a historian's, rather than an art critic's, perspective, the volume's emphatic beauty does not mute the controversial, political nature of the art. The changing status of Afro-Cuban spiritual and artistic practices in the revolution, ranging from initial condemnation as decadent to Castro's eventual declaration of Cuba as an Afro-Latin country, existed in parallel to but did not extinguish the everyday disregard for people of African descent. Grupo Antillano's artists intended to intervene and reconfigure this with their invocations of Yoruba gods and captive pasts. They did so by drawing from the kinds of bold abstractions that Wifredo Lam, an acknowledged influence and eventual participant, used to conjure coexistent beauty and pain. At the height of the Grupo's public presence, Volumen Uno, a rival artistic movement that would eventually become emblematic of Cuban contemporary art, declared such modern formalism passé. The political and aesthetic roots of the evaluation and subsequent demise of Grupo Antillano remain entangled, and de la Fuente's deft presentation invites further inquiry. The volume does not resolve the debates surrounding the representation of slavery, race, spirituality, and belonging, but it recovers the visual and textual contexts, both in the late 1970s and the early twenty-first century, in which those debates took place and persist.

Socially Responsible Enterprise in Cuba: A Positive Role Model for Corporate Social Responsibility?

This article examines the unique institutional environment of socialist Cuba, where currently a process of controlled marketisation and expansion of private enterprise is taking place. The article investigates business behaviour in Cuba with particular reference to implicit assumptions relating to socially responsible enterprise, or ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) as the term is understood in Western Liberal Democracies. It draws upon a series of interviews with business practitioners and business commentators (both Cuban and non-Cuban residents on the island). The interviews focused on the participants' awareness of business ethics and socially responsible enterprise, and the cultural differences in assumptions and expectations relating to the concept of CSR between the Cuban and non-Cuban interviewees. We find that Cuba at this early stage of tentative marketisation presents a positive role model of socially responsible enterprise. Both the highly regulated State economy, and the embedded norms and values of social equity that have emerged as a consequence of Cuba's socialist revolution facilitate business social responsibility. The relevance of this research to current debates in relation to CSR is discussed, and it is argued that capitalist economies may similarly benefit from tighter regulatory control and by cultivating more pro-social business norms that prioritise ethical over economic concerns.

Chinese Cubans: A transnational history by Kathleen Lopez (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Cubans: A transnational history by Kathleen Lopez Lomarsh Roopnarine Chinese Cubans: A transnational history By Kathleen Lopez. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Without a doubt, the literature on Cuba since the mid-nineteenth century to contemporary times has primarily focused on Cuban wars of independence, the abolition of slavery, the United States of America’s involvement and domination and Fidel Castro’s revolution and socialism. Spanish Whites, Black Africans and Mulattos have been the main ethnic groups discussed. Cuban Chinese have largely been unexplored, save for the period 1847–74, when they were introduced as indentured “Coolies.” Kathleen Lopez tries to rescue Cuban Chinese from their marginalization in Cuba’s national discourse by examining and expanding on their history. She takes a transnational approach and shows how Chinese in Cuba have maintained meaningful connections with their homeland and other Chinese in the United States and Peru. She also demonstrates how racial ideologies, class stratification, gender imbalance among the Chinese and Castro’s socialist doctrines converged to shape Chinese presence in Cuba. The end result is a rich narrative of Chinese struggle, participation, and contributions to Cuba. Lopez divides her book into three neat sections. The first section, “From Indentured to Free,” is really a journey of why and how the Chinese were brought to Cuba and their subsequent treatment on the sugar plantations. Lopez paints a sad picture of how Chinese were manipulated and deceived into leaving their homeland and worked as indentured laborers in Cuba. The Chinese were told that they would be wage-laborers, but in reality their employers treated them like African slaves. Some Chinese resisted their deplorable working and living conditions, but a majority of them served out their contracts, drifted into noncontractual plantation employment and became fruit and vegetable vendors. As they earned wages, they also “participated in the social and cultural life of the towns and helped to build the foundations for Chinese communities in Cuba” (81). However, the “planting of their roots” in Cuba was not without challenges. The Chinese were exposed to bouts of discrimination and cultural ridicule from the wider Cuban society and suffered from internal schisms within their own society, particularly between the second wave of business elites and the former indentured “coolies.” Yet, they persevered. The second section, “Migrants between Empires and Nations,” is an analysis of how Chinese Cubans gradually practiced selective assimilation within a class- and race-conscious plantation society, while simultaneously maintaining their own culture and identity. They formed a series of international and national associations, which they used as a base to build solidarity and to participate in Cuban society. The result was impressive. Chinese Cubans were involved in the building of modern Cuba. They fought in many wars and sided with and supported the independence movement. Readers may be surprised at the magnitude of Chinese participation in Cuba from the 1890s to 1959. Their participation might have emanated from their desire to be Chinese Cuban, but anti-immigration laws and anti-Chinese sentiments in Cuba and the Western Hemisphere as well as political turbulence in their homeland might have also pushed them to be more proactive in their new homeland. Whatever the reasons for their participation might have been, Lopez provides an excellent narrative of Chinese Cubans as freedom fighters, rebels and nation-builders as never depicted before. The third section, “Transnational and National Belonging,” describes a dramatic turn in the general welfare of Chinese in Cuba, precipitated by the overthrow of the nationalist government in China (1949) and the introduction of socialism in Cuba (1959). Both events affected the Chinese community in Cuba. Many Chinese fled the new communist government in China, and relations between China and Cuban Chinese broke down. Ten years later, Fidel Castro toppled the US-backed regime in Cuba and embarked on a socialist journey for Cuba. However, communist China and socialist Cuba were at odds with each other since Cuba leaned towards the Soviet Union. These complex international events had an enormous impact on the Chinese in Cuba. Castro nationalized and disallowed private businesses, and as a consequence, almost all aspects of Chinese life deteriorated and declined, including their businesses, their associations...

Healing Practices and Revolution in Socialist Cuba

More than a state ideology, the concept of 'Revolution' holds multiple meanings for Cubans. A historic moment, the government, the country, the people—Revolution is any one of these and all of them at once. How, then, do people experience a permanent Revolution in their daily lives? The interactions between biomedicine, alternative health practices, and the syncretic system of beliefs known as Santería have important implications for the socialist project of the Revolution. As a central concern of Revolution, health provides a particularly clear example of the interaction between revolutionary ideology and practice. This distinction elucidates the epistemological and experiential complexity of Revolution, providing the Cuban state with a powerful signifier that allows it to adapt to situations of crisis, continuously reinvent itself, and be in a permanent state of Revolution.