Socialist Cuba Research Articles

Foucault, Marxism, and the Cuban Revolution: Historical and Contemporary Reflections

This article relates central themes of Marxist and Foucaultian thought to the intellectual and political legacy of the Cuban revolution. Against the backdrop of a reading of Foucault's relationship to the revolutionary Left, it is argued that Marxist theoretical discourse on guerrilla struggle (as articulated by Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and others) provides an intriguing case for biopolitical struggle. In the case of the Cuban revolution, an ethics of self-transformation appears in which new ways of living and practicing life are cultivated in opposition to sedimentations of state power. Moreover, in addition to this historical case, a discussion is offered of the reception of Foucault's work in contemporary Cuba, through an analysis of the published proceedings of a conference on Foucault held at the University of Havana in 1999. Here, Foucault's thought is appropriated as part of an effort to revitalize Cuban socialism itself.

Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba ‐ by Robin D. Moore

Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba ‐ by Robin D. Moore

“We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists”: Medicalized subjectivities, emergent capital, and socialist entrepreneurs in post‐Soviet Cuba

ABSTRACTThrough an engagement with historical, epistemological, and ethnographic modes of analyses, I trace how individual bodily practices—that is, practices relating to the body and its health—in contemporary Cuba provide a fertile terrain for examining the multiple pathways through which political subjectivities are created and transformed. Specifically, I highlight the ways in which these practices serve as de facto access to basic health services and supplies and actively contribute to the daily functioning of Cuba's socialist health care system. I argue that scholars must move beyond contrasting rote descriptions of socialism vis‐à‐vis capitalism and, rather, look to new fields of inquiry that address the coproduction and coexistence of different forms of capital and new configurations of statecraft and subjectivity in 21st‐century Cuba. [Cuba, state, capital, bodily practices, subjectivity, socialism]

Deciphering the Global: Its Spaces, Scales and Subjects

Preface Introduction: Deciphering the Global Saskia Sassen Part One: Microspaces in Global Scalings Postindustrial Bohemia: Culture, Neighborhood, and the Global Economy Richard Lloyd Translocal Civilities: Chinese Modern Dance at Downtown Los Angeles Public Concerts Marina Peterson Re-Imagining Old Havana: World Heritage and the Production of Scale in Late Socialist Cuba Matthew J. Hill Becoming Global?: Evangelism and Transnational Practices in Russian Society Sarah Busse Spencer Deciphering the local in a global neoliberal age: Three favelas in Sao Paulo, Brazil Simone Buechler Part Two: Translocal Circuits and their Mobilities Locating Transnational Activists: The United States Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Confines of the National Evalyn W. Tennant Deciphering the Space and Scale of Global Nomadism: Subjectivity and Counterculture in a Global Age Anthony D'Andrea Outsourcing Difference: Expatriate Training and the Disciplining of Culture Heather Hindman Producing Global Economy from Below: Chinese Immigrant Transnational Entrepreneurship in Japan Gracia Liu Farrer The Sub-national Constitution of Global Financial Markets Rachel Harvey Part Three: Shifting Spaces and Subjects of the Political The City and the Self: The Emergence of New Political Subjects in London Anne Bartlett Ghetto Cosmopolitanism: Making Theory at the Margins Rami Nashashibi Deregulating Markets, Reregulating Crime: Extralegal Policing & the Penal State in Mexico Jennifer L. Johnson The Transnational Human Rights Movement and States of Emergency in Israel/Palestine Josh Kaplan Illegal Immigrants as Citizens in Malaysia Kamal Sadiq Global-National Interactions and Sovereign Debt Restructuring Outcomes Giselle Datz

Cuban Reform and Economic Opening

Cuba's reform and economic opening have been crucial to its post—cold-war survival and the development of a uniquely Cuban socialism. The country has moved from a public-property system to a mixed economy and from a sugar mono-economy to a diversified economy while introducing and increasing foreign investment. The result has been steady increase in growth without the abandonment of socialist principles. Some problems remain to be resolved, however, if Cuba is to rise to prominence in the global order.

Book Review: Workers in Cuba: Unions & Labor Relations Debra Evenson; Detroit, MI: NLG/Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, 2002, ii + 92 pp. + appendices, $10.00. Inside the Revolution: Everyday Life in Socialist Cuba Mona Rosendahl; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998, x + 197 pp., $16.95. Cuba: A Revolution in Motion Isaac Saney;

Book Review: Workers in Cuba: Unions & Labor Relations Debra Evenson; Detroit, MI: NLG/Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, 2002, ii + 92 pp. + appendices, $10.00. Inside the Revolution: Everyday Life in Socialist Cuba Mona Rosendahl; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998, x + 197 pp., $16.95. Cuba: A Revolution in Motion Isaac Saney;

Land Reform, Rural Social Relations and the Peasantry

A new book, Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform, edited by Peter Rosset, Raj Patel and Michael Courville is considered. This book, via both general analytical treatment and a series of case studies set in Latin America, Asia and Africa, offers a powerful critique of the World Bank's market‐led agrarian reform (MLAR) and provides an alternative model of agrarian reform, the ‘food sovereignty movement’, that has been articulated by La Via Campesina. Food sovereignty requires that priority be allocated to the domestic production of food and that a right to land be given to small farmers and their families. It is a vision of agrarian reform, with an emphasis on smallholder farming and the transformative power of rural social movements, that has truly emerged ‘from below’. The critique of MLAR is compelling. It is argued in this essay, however, that two crucial questions are abstracted from. The first is that of the vastly differing sets of social relations that exist (compare, say, socialist Cuba and capitalist Brazil) and their implications. It is not clear that food sovereignty can, in effect, offer a coherent political economy of an alternative global agrarianism. The second relates to the implicit assumption, found throughout the book, that the peasantry is a homogeneous, undifferentiated social group. This is manifestly not so, and what the existence of socially differentiated peasantries implies requires careful examination.

Cultural Policy and Music Making in Revolutionary Cuba

Cultural Policy and Music Making in Revolutionary Cuba

Robin D. Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and Chicago, IL: Columbia College, Center for Black Music Research, 2006), pp. xvi+350, $25.95; £15.95, pb.

Robin D. Moore, <i>Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba</i> (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and Chicago, IL: Columbia College, Center for Black Music Research, 2006), pp. xvi+350, $25.95; £15.95, pb.

Baseball in the breach: Notes on defection, disaffection and transition in contemporary Cuba

This article explores the popular ambivalence permeating contemporary Cuban socialism as Cuban citizens struggle to reconcile a deep sense of pride and accomplishment in the revolution with the need for political, economic and social reform. I focus on the everyday lives of Cuban baseball fans attempting to make sense of the deprivations and distortions of an economy and cultural order in crisis that is made all the more real for them in the emergence of baseball player defections to play in American professional baseball. Through an analysis of these defections as well as Cuban baseball fan responses to them, I argue that the context of economic crisis in contemporary Cuba has entailed a dynamic rethinking of Cuban culture and political economy, a process that is intimately bound up with American cultural, political, and economic forms such as Major League Baseball, but that these Cuban transformations are never simply determined by them.

Music and revolution: cultural change in socialist Cuba

Moore, Robin D. and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2006. 350 pp. In his compelling and beautifully written new study, and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba, musicologist Robin D. Moore offers a comprehensive, general study of musical production in Cuba since 1959. The product of a fifteen-year love affair with Cuban music in all its forms, and eight years of active research both on and off the island, Moore's book explores the dynamic and often contentious relationship between music and government policy under the socialist regime. As Moore underscores, whether the genre is dance music, Nueva Trova, or Afro-Cuban folklore, to name just a few, the rhythm of the state is a steady fluctuation between suppression and support, and sometimes back around to suppression. Throughout, Moore wears many hats, demonstrating a rigorous knowledge of history, anthropology, and political science, in addition to his musical expertise. The book begins with an introductory discussion of socialism and Marx's and Engels's limited comments on the role of the arts in the new society. He discusses at length the theoretical contradictions implicit in turning political theory into state policy, namely the tension between the individual artist and the masses in a worker's state. After this introduction, the book divides into three interrelated sections. Chapters one, two, and three are a loosely chronological overview of cultural changes in Cuba since 1959. Chapter one, Revelry and Revolution: The Paradox of the focuses specifically on the 1950s. Set against the political backdrop of the Batista coup d'etat, the attack on the Moncada barracks, urban violence, the Sierra Maestra Campaign, and the 1959 triumph of the Revolution, Moore explores the sad ironies of the musical watershed. While Cuban music performed in the swanky Tropicana, Cabaret Monmartre, and Sans Souci reached new heights through the music of Beny More and Perez Prado, the brutal poverty and repression outside the clubs went unchecked. Tourists eager for music, gambling, and sex-and often not in that order-danced mambo and chachacha but average Cubans could barely keep food on their tables. While Havana was undeniably two worlds in the 1950s, the creative and commercial success of Cuban music is not altogether surprising. As Moore observes, music provided an escape from the realities all around. Chapter two, Music and Social Change in the First Years, discusses the abrupt policy shifts that came about with the success of the Revolution and the consolidation of power by Castro's 26 July Movement. The revolutionaries were, not surprisingly, the subjects of many popular songs, notably those of Carlos Puebla. from those earliest years, like literature, film, and the visual arts, is typified by bursts of creativity and experimentation. Early 1960s Havana also featured a vibrant Jazz scene. Nonetheless, the situation changed quickly as nightclubs lost much-needed revenue previously earned through gambling and prostitution. State support was vital, and resulted in nationalization. The bail-out had far-reaching effects, however, as poor management, inexperience, attempts to dictate content, and paranoia combined to undermine the initial artistic euphoria. A further creative drain was the hemorrhaging of talent as waves of exiles fled the island. The Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) in 1961 further radicalized the island, along with the Missile Crisis of 1962, resulting in many more popular (and populist) songs, but an overall decline in support for the arts. Whereas the 1950s had been a time of much recording activity on the island, the 1960s and nationalization led to an overall drop in facilities, resources, and output, compounded by ill-advised state decisions regarding international copyrights. The final chapter of overview, Artistic Institutions, Initiatives, and Policies, addresses many of the cultural initiatives since 1959, considering their short and long-term successes and failures. …

The Yoruba diaspora in the Atlantic world

1. The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World: Methodology and Research by Matt D. Childs and Toyin Falola.I. The Yoruba Homeland and Diaspora 2. The Diaspora of Yoruba-Speakers, 1650-1865: Dimensions and Implications by David Eltis. 3. The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade by Paul Lovejoy. 4. The Enslavement of Yoruba by Ann O'Hear.II. The Yoruba Diaspora in the Americas 5. Nango and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil by Joao Jose Reis and Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian 6. The Yoruba in Cuba: Origins, Identities, and Transformations by Michele Reid. 7. Africans in a Colony of Creoles: The Yoruba in Colonial Costa Rica by K. Russel Lohse. 8. Yoruba in the British Caribbean: A Comparative Perspective on Trinidad and the Bahamas by Rosalyn Howard. 9. The Influential Yoruba Past in Haiti by Kevin Roberts.III. The Cultural Foundations of the Yoruba Diaspora 10. The Nagoization: Process in Bahian Candomble by Luis Nicalau Pares. 11. Santeria in Cuba: Tradition and Transformation by Christine Ayorinde. 12. From Gbe to Yoruba: Ethnic Change and the Mina Nation in Rio de Janeiro by Mariza C. Soares. 13. Yoruba Family, Gender, and Kinship Roles in New World Slavery by Kevin Roberts. 14. Revolution and Religion: Yoruba Sacred Music in Socialist Cuba by Robin Moore. 15. Lost and Found: Yorubna Elements in African American Arts by Babatunde Lawal. 16. Yorubaisms in African American Speech Patterns by Agustine AgwueleIV. The Return to Yorubaland 17. Yoruba Liberated Slaves Who Returned to West Africa by Robin Law. 18. The Yoruba Diaspora in Sierra Leone's Krio Society by C. Magbaily Fyle. 19. Liberated Slaves and Islam in Nineteenth Century West Africa by Gibril R. Cole.

Soziale Bewegungen in Lateinamerika

At the beginning of the 20th century, social movements in Latin America were heavily influenced by anarchist immigrants from Europe and then by the ideological struggles around the Russian revolution. Beginning in the 1930s, many social movements started to incorporate into leftwing and populist parties and governments, such as the Cardenismo in Mexico. Facing the shift of many governments towards the left and the 'threat' of socialist Cuba, ultrarightwing groups and the military, supported by the US, responded in many countries with brutal repression and opened the neoliberal era. Today, after 30 years of repression and neoliberal hegemony, the social movements are gaining strength again in many Latin American countries. With the anti-globalization movement, new insurrections like the Zapatismo in Mexico, and some leftwing governments coming into power in Venezuela, Brasil and other countries, there appears to be a new turn in Latin America's road to the future.

Protecting Cuba’s Environment: Efforts to Design and Implement Effective Environmental Laws and Policies in Cuba

In the early 1990s, when Cuba was in the thick of its severe economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government indicated that protection of the environment and natural resources would henceforth be top policy priority. The stage was set at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 when President Fidel Castro delivered a high-profile speech embracing the concepts of environmental protection and sustainable development. As a consequence, the government amended its constitution and initiated a sweeping series of reforms aimed at redressing past environmental harms and minimizing future degradation of air, water, and land resources. These actions signalled the government’s intent that economic recovery go hand in hand with initiatives to reduce pollution and address new threats to the island’s abundant and rich biodiversity. The present article examines the efforts of the new Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment (CITMA), in conjunction with other agencies and bodies to design and implement a comprehensive vision for environmental protection and sustainable development. Addressing severe environmental problems and preventing future ones depends first on a solid legal framework. Implementation and enforcement must then follow. The article summarizes some of the country’s new environmental laws and regulations, particularly those that pertain to conservation of marine and coastal resources and the environmental review of proposed construction projects. This article also highlights some of the progress made to date in implementing the new environmental legal framework still under development, and discusses some of the factors that have impeded full implementation. Resumen A inicios de los noventa, cuando Cuba se encontraba inmersa en el periodo mas difícil de la crisis económica que siguió al colapso de la Unión Soviética, el gobierno señalo que la protección del medioambiente y los recursos naturales seria máxima prioridad política en lo sucesivo. Una nueva etapa comenzó en 1992, cuando el Presidente Fidel Castro dedicó un discurso de alto perfil que incluyó los conceptos de protección ambiental y desarrollo sustentable. Como consecuencia, fue enmendado el Articulo 27 de la Constitución de la Republica de Cuba y se inicio una serie de reformas radicales orientadas a reparar los daños al medioambiente y a minimizar la degradación de recursos como el aire, el agua y los suelos. Estas acciones indicaron la intención del gobierno de reactivar la economía, al mismo tiempo aplicando iniciativas para reducir la contaminación y enfrentar nuevas amenazas para la rica y abundante biodiversidad de la isla. El presente artículo analiza los esfuerzos del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medioambiente (CITMA), en conjunto con otras agencias e instituciones para diseñar e implementar un marco coherente para la protección del medioambiente y el desarrollo sustentable. Enfrentar los severos problemas ambientales y prevenir los nuevos depende, en primer lugar, de la implementación de un marco legal sólido y su consecuente cumplimiento. Este trabajo resume algunas de las nuevas regulaciones ambientales, implementadas en el país, particularmente aquellas pertenecientes a la protección de los recursos marinos y costeros y la evaluación ambiental de propuestas de proyectos constructivos. Este articulo también destaca algunos progresos logrados, hasta la fecha, en la implementación del nuevo marco legal ambiental, aun en desarrollo, y comenta algunos factores que obstaculizan su coherente aplicación.

Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (review)

Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (review)

The Cuban Economy during the Special Period and Beyond

Max Azicri and Elsie Deal, eds. Cuban Socialism in a New Century: Adversity, Survival and Renewal. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. 363 pp.Antonio Cannona Baez. State Resistance to Globalization in Cuba. London: Pluto Press, 2004.264 pp.Mauricio de Miranda Parrando, ed. Cuba: Estructuracion Economica y Globalizacion. Cali, Colombia: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 2003.372 pp.Jorge Dominguez, Ornar Everleny Perez Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds. The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2004.430 pp.Jorge Perez-Lopez and Jose Alvarez, eds. Reinventing the Cuban Sugar Agroindustry. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005.323 pp.Omar Everleny Perez Villanueva, ed. Reflexiones sobre Economia Cubana. Havana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2004.493 pp.Archibald R. M. Ritter, ed. The Cuban Economy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.248 pp.Despite the severe economic crisis Cuba suffered after the socialist camp collapse, or perhaps because of it, the scholarly literature on the island economy has boomed in recent years. The inclusion of well-trained Cuban scholars in edited collections published abroad and Cuban economists publishing their own edited volumes constitute welcome additions to the literature.1As more is published on the subject, it becomes increasingly difficult to cover all the main themes in a single volume by a single author, hence the proliferation of compilations and specific areas treated by a team of experts. These trends are illustrated by the seven books reviewed herein, virtually all of which focus on the economic restructuring under the Special Period (1990-2004) and its effects. Six of the books under review are edited compilations; four include Cuban economists and a useful interchange of ideas; one is published in Havana with only Cuban authors; and one deals with the sugar industry alone. In total there are sixty-eight authors and eighty-four chapters. Roughly 31 percent of the authors are Americans; 28 percent Cubans; 23 percent Canadian, European, and Latin American; and 18 percent Cuban Americans. Due to such magnitude and variety, as well as space limitations, painful decisions have been made. For instance, non-economic subjects in Azicri and Deal were omitted from consideration. More difficult was the decision to leave out the social effects of the crisis and economic restructuring on poverty, equality, personal consumption, social expenditures and services, as discussed in Dominguez et al. by Espina, Iniguez and Perez Villanueva, Togores and Garcia (see also Alvarez and Mattar 2004; Mesa-Lago 2005a).Five of the books do not have conclusions; various authors contribute two or more chapters in the compilations; and occasionally the same chapter appears in various books, in Spanish and English, or enlarged and updated versions. This essay merges the materials into seven major themes and introduces my own divergent views within the thematic divisions: (1) Cuba's restructuring and globalization, (2) de-dollarization and recentralization, (3) domestic macroeconomic evolution, (4) decline of the sugar agroindustry, (5) external sector and foreign investment, (6) tourism and remittances, and (7) economic reforms for the future.Cuba's Restructuring and GlobalizationThe collapse of the socialist camp, combined with erroneous domestic economic policies in 1986-1990, provoked the worst economic crisis under the revolution, with a nadir in 1993 (a tightening of the U.S. embargo occurred in 1996, when the worst part of the crisis was over and the recovery was on the way). To confront a 35-percent decline in GDP, a 75-percent fall in foreign trade, and the termination of Soviet aid ($65 billion in 1960-1990, 60 percent of which were grants and non-repayable price subsidies), the government launched a supposedly temporary restructuring reform, euphemistically called The Special Period in Time of Peace, which is still in operation. …

Emigration and Regime Stability: Explaining the Persistence of Cuban Socialism

The 'Cuban safety-valve theory' explains sustained survival of Cuban socialism in part through the high levels of emigration, following Hirschman's model of 'exit' undermining 'voice'. The article argues that this remains insufficient in two important ways. Taking a closer look at the crisis years since 1989, at least as important as the opening of exit options was the Cuban state's capacity to rein in uncontrolled emigration and to reassure its 'gatekeeper role'. In addition, the transnationalization of voice and exit must be taken into account as a crucial factor, as much in feeding the regime's anti-imperialist discourse as, paradoxically, by generating sustained economic support from the emigrants.

Emigration and regime stability: The persistence of Cuban socialism

Albert O. Hirschman's model of ‘exit and voice’ postulates a see-saw mechanism between the two options, hence permitting the argument that emigration can be a key factor for regime stability. Analysis of the Cuban case shows the fruitfulness of this approach, but also the need to move beyond its initial postulates in two important ways. Comparison of the decisive role exit played in the demise of the GDR to the rather stabilizing impact of even mass emigration in Cuba points to the importance of the modalities, not the sheer numbers of exit, particularly whether or not the state is able to secure its ‘gatekeeper role’ regarding emigration. In addition, the increasing transnationalization of exit and voice challenges the supposed see-saw mechanism between the two. Exit is not the clear-cut dichotomous variable often assumed, but can lead to the externalization of voice, which despite its de-location remains part of the politics in the country of origin. At the same time, even despite political opposition to a regime, exit can generate crucial economic support through the flow of remittances in transnational emigrant networks. He has worked widely on the political, social and economic dynamics of Cuba's crisis and transformation since 1989 and has recently published The Politics of the Internet in Third World Development: Challenges in Contrasting Regimes with Case Studies of Costa Rica and Cuba (2004). He wishes to thank all who commented on earlier presentations of this article, at the Institute for Iberoamerican Studies in Hamburg, at the Free University of Berlin's political science department, and at the Latin American Studies Association Congress in 2004. Particular thanks for their constructive comments are due to Monika Gerhart, Javier Corrales, Fabrice Lehoucq and Barbara Fritz, and also to the two anonymous reviewers.

Marx's Vision of Sustainable Human Development

In developed capitalist countries, debates over economics of socialism have mostly concentrated on questions of information, incentives, and efficiency in resource allocation. This focus on calculation reflects mainly academic context of these discussions. By contrast, for anti-capitalist movements and post-revolutionary regimes on capitalist periphery, socialism as a form of human development has been a prime concern. A notable example is Ernesto Che Guevara's work on Man and Socialism in Cuba, which rebutted argument that the period of building socialism...is characterized by extinction of individual for sake of state. For Che, socialist revolution is a process in which large numbers of people are developing themselves, and the material possibilities of integral development of each and every one of its members make task ever more fruitful.This article can also be found at Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at Monthly Review website.

¿Vive la revolución?

Cuba's socialist science policies are producing top-notch research from scant economic resources. But, as Jim Giles reports, they have harsh consequences for scientists who do not fit in with government priorities.