tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/cuban-revolution-33814/articlesCuban revolution – The Conversation2023-07-24T14:47:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2095742023-07-24T14:47:08Z2023-07-24T14:47:08ZSeven things to read and watch on the 70th anniversary of the movement that sparked the Cuban revolution<p>It’s been 70 years since the moment that sparked the Cuban revolution. On July 26 1953, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/26th-of-July-Movement">an attack on army barracks</a> in eastern Cuba heralded the consolidation of a Cuban national resistance movement against the dictatorship of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fulgencio-Batista">General Batista</a>. A group of 111 young rebels attacked the army barracks, the Cuartel Moncada and Cuba’s second most important military fortress. The latter contained 1,000 soldiers from Batista’s army.</p>
<p>The attack was intended as a diversionary tactic. The hope was that soldiers based at the army headquarters in Havana would be redirected to the east of Cuba, leaving the capital open to occupation by the rebels. The attack was unsuccessful. Many of the young rebels were tortured, killed or imprisoned. </p>
<p>Despite this, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08263663.2012.10817030?casa_token=dnjrfVIuR2UAAAAA:YoM9EvRx1b1gGMx_Gs5ZKfnRxaH27JP3rKFMm2RU5VXaqAvbEkQqclP1Bj44LtsFkra0RJTsBz5M">the 26 of July Movement</a> (as it came to be known) became a central part of the campaign that emerged triumphant in early January 1959.</p>
<p>Here are seven things I recommend reading and watching to better understand and mark the anniversary. </p>
<h2>1. Fidel Castro’s defence speech</h2>
<p>The imprisonment of key actors in the attack – most notably a 27-year-old <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fidel-Castro">Fidel Castro</a> – quickly created a mythology and symbolism around the events, as well as a narrative promising a better future. </p>
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<img alt="A black and white photograph of a bearded Fidel Castro." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537041/original/file-20230712-21-naxodh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fidel Castro in the 1950s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fidel_Castro_1950s.jpg">Mondadori Publishers</a></span>
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<p>When Castro stood trial in October 1953, his self defence not only detailed the atrocities committed against the rebels of the 26 of July Movement, but also laid out the blueprint for a new Cuba based on social justice. He cited the 19th century writer and independence leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jose-Marti">José Martí</a> as the inspiration and intellectual guide.</p>
<p>In particular, he laid out <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm">six areas</a> of social injustice that required radical change via revolution: housing, health, education, land, industrialisation and unemployment. The speech <a href="https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-4-cuba/primary-documents-w-accompanying-discussion-questions/document-no-10-history-will-absolve-me-by-fidel-castro-ruiz/">ended with the words</a> “Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”</p>
<p>Castro was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, but served only two and left for Mexico. Three years later, he returned to the east of Cuba by yacht with a group of 82 rebels (including <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Che-Guevara">Ernesto “Che” Guevara</a> and others). There he began the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Revolution">popular insurrection</a> from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiSUw9GjXgQ">text of Castro’s speech</a> was smuggled out in note form by a young Cuban journalist, <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cuba-Mourns-the-Death-of-Prolific-Journalist-Marta-Rojas-20211004-0017.html">Marta Rojas</a>, and published after 1959. It gave voice, credibility and momentum to the frustrations of many Cubans about the inequalities and social divisions that characterised their nation. </p>
<p>Owing to the silencing of critique by the dictatorship, it was predominantly Cubans living in exile abroad that were first able to capture this zeitgeist in their artistic work.</p>
<h2>2. El Mégano (1955)</h2>
<p>Released in 1955, the short documentary El Mégano highlighted the extreme poverty that afflicted rural Cuba. It was made by young Cuban filmmakers <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0305651/">Julio García Espinosa</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Jose+Massip&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8">Jose Massip</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tomas-Gutierrez-Alea">Tomás Gutiérrez Alea</a>, who were trained in the <a href="https://www.movementsinfilm.com/italian-neorealism">Italian neo-realist</a> tradition.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sPH8ew77CWU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">El Mégano.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The documentary reflected (through experimental techniques no doubt partly intended to evade censorship) the miserable working and living conditions of the charcoal burning sector in the southern coast of Cuba.</p>
<h2>3. The novels of Alejo Carpentier</h2>
<p>The Cuban writer and musicologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alejo-Carpentier-y-Valmont">Alejo Carpentier</a>, writing from exile in Caracas, published startlingly original novels with experimental forms. They contained <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/latin-american-literature-in-transition-19301980/return-of-the-galleons/99321A5994D121649A0514C75BD32C9A">a radical message about colonialism</a> and its impact in Latin America and the Caribbean. </p>
<p>He saw the “<a href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/unsettled-territory/625712fcc42c7900211727a4/marvelous-real-alejo-carpentier-literature/">marvellous real</a>” (a precursor to the magical realism genre) as a cultural heritage that characterised Cuba and would eventually allow it to fulfil its destiny of national sovereignty after four centuries of colonialism, delayed independence and 50 years of neo-colonial rule.</p>
<p>His novels, <a href="https://archive.org/details/kingdomofthiswor00carp">The Kingdom of this World</a> (1949) and <a href="https://archive.org/details/loststeps00alej">The Lost Steps</a> (1953), offer fascinating explorations of the impact of colonialism and the wealth of cultures in the region.</p>
<h2>4. The poetry of Nicolás Guillén</h2>
<p>The Cuban poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Guillen">Nicolás Guillén</a> was equally prolific in exile, but with a distinctive focus on race and racism.</p>
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<img alt="Close up sepia photograph of Nicolás Guillén's face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537042/original/file-20230712-23-3rme4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicolás Guillén photographed in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NicolásGuillén-1942.jpg">Casa Natal de Nicolás Guillén</a></span>
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<p>Having joined the Cuban Communist Party and travelled widely in China, Europe (including during the Spanish Civil War) and South America, he was refused entry to Cuba in 1953 and took exile in Chile until 1959.</p>
<p>Much of his work deals with the impact of colonialism, although it is explicitly political and often conversational in style. Collections such as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40653134">West Indies Ltd</a> (1934) offer an insight into the racialisation of power in pre-1959 Cuba.</p>
<h2>5. The poetry of Roberto Fernández Retamar</h2>
<p>Many of the intellectuals and artists mentioned above left exile to return to Cuba soon after 1959. While much cultural production embraced the opportunity to describe history in the making, the continued focus on the socio-economic injustices of the 1950s remained centre stage for at least a decade.</p>
<p><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/159/article/745841/pdf">Roberto Fernández Retamar</a> is best known for his seminal essay, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25088398">Caliban: Notes towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America</a> (1968), that reworked the Shakespearean figure of Caliban as a metaphor for anti-colonialism. But he also wrote poetry that underlined the humanist underpinnings of the rebel and revolutionary movements, such as <a href="https://www.poetryinternationalonline.com/poems/11938/">Blessed Are the Normal</a> (1962).</p>
<h2>6. The Situation by Lisandro Otero (1963)</h2>
<p>Lisandro Otero’s novel, The Situation, examined <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23050260.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aca135f6a0abf1ed473566f34de9964d2&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1">the bourgeoisie</a> in 1950s Cuba. </p>
<p>With its publication, Otero – a middle-class Cuban when the revolutionary government came to power in 1959 – marked his changing position to a writer in service of the Revolution.</p>
<h2>7. Bertillón 166 by José Soler Puig (1960)</h2>
<p>New writers from the lower classes were also contributing to the movement, both in terms of depicting extreme inequality but also growing popular resistance. <a href="https://www.radioenciclopedia.cu/cultural-news/exclusive/the-undisputed-masterpiece-of-jos-soler-puig-20201126/">José Soler Puig</a>’s novel, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fStXcoGYKkUC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Bertillón 166</a>, narrated the events of the second half of the 1950s in Santiago de Cuba, including the growth of the 26 of July Movement.</p>
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<img alt="The 26 July Movement flag flying on a building in on building in Santa Clara, Cuba." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537056/original/file-20230712-25-erv1zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The 26 July Movement flag flying on a building in on building in Santa Clara, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/santa-clara-cuba-january-5-2017-762743548">Riderfoot/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The events of July 26, 1953 marked just one of many stages in a complex and often violent exit from colonialism that lasted for half a century. For many Cubans, the date is as significant and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022009403038001969?casa_token=dtibfg_fvEwAAAAA:D-2ECif-TjWSFIL_F62ldMOK74GErwKVFq5YJ1W5jdZf0lIpIIXuXXS031JaSMjo-OqwzAf4lQza">ripe for commemoration</a> as the return of the exiled rebels in 1956 to begin the insurrection in the mountains or, indeed, January 1, 1959, <em>el triunfo de la revolución</em> – the triumph of the revolution. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Parvathi Kumaraswami received funding from The Leverhume Trust in 2004-9 and 2014-19.</span></em></p>The 26 of July Movement became a central part of the movement that emerged triumphant in early January 1959.Parvathi Kumaraswami, Chair in Latin American Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2056202023-06-12T12:24:33Z2023-06-12T12:24:33ZLinguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530654/original/file-20230607-23-bbcsrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C9%2C2171%2C1548&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Travel to Miami, and you might hear people say 'get down from the car' instead of 'get out of the car.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-hang-out-the-window-of-a-car-on-flagler-street-news-photo/51091597?adppopup=true">Miami Herald/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We got down from the car and went inside.” </p>
<p>“I made the line to pay for groceries.”</p>
<p>“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”</p>
<p>These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.</p>
<p>In Miami, however, they’ve become part of the local parlance.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://news.fiu.edu/2023/get-down-from-the-car-miami-dialect">my recently published research</a>, these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.</p>
<p>This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish. </p>
<h2>When French collided with English</h2>
<p>Whether you’re an English speaker living in Miami or elsewhere, chances are you don’t know where the words you know and use come from. </p>
<p>You’re probably aware that a limited number of words – usually foods, such as “sriracha” or “croissant” – are borrowed from other languages. But borrowed words are far more pervasive than you might think. </p>
<p>They’re all over English vocabulary: “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pajamas">pajamas</a>” from Hindi; “<a href="https://animalia.bio/arabian-gazelle">gazelle</a>” from Arabic, via French; and “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tsunami">tsunami</a>” from Japanese.</p>
<p>Borrowed words usually come from the minds and mouths of bilingual speakers who end up moving between different cultures and places. This can happen when certain events – war, colonialism, political exile, immigration and climate change – put speakers of different language groups into contact with one another. </p>
<p>When the contact takes place over an extended period of time – decades, generations or longer – the structures of the languages in question may begin to influence one another, and the speakers can begin to share each other’s vocabulary.</p>
<p>One bilingual confluence famously changed the trajectory of the English language. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Norman-Conquest">In 1066</a>, the Norman French, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England in an event now known as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Norman-Conquest">the Norman Conquest</a>.” </p>
<p>Soon thereafter, a French-speaking ruling class replaced the English-speaking aristocracy, and for roughly 200 years, the elites of England – including the kings – did their business in French.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Faded color illustration of soldiers and injured troops." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530640/original/file-20230607-26-mlovtv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 18th-century illustration of the Battle of Hastings, which initiated the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-battle-of-hastings-found-in-the-collection-of-british-news-photo/520722235?adppopup=true">Heritage Images/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>English never really caught on with the aristocracy, but since servants and the middle classes needed to communicate with aristocrats – and with people of different classes intermarrying – French words trickled down the class hierarchy and into the language. </p>
<p>During this period, <a href="https://medium.com/english-language-faq/how-many-french-words-are-there-in-english-how-did-they-get-there-538f54ea016b">more than 10,000 loanwords</a> from French entered the English language, mostly in domains where the aristocracy held sway: the arts, military, medicine, law and religion. Words that today seem basic, even fundamental, to English vocabulary were, just 800 years ago, borrowed from French: prince, government, administer, liberty, court, prayer, judge, justice, literature, music, poetry, to name just a few.</p>
<h2>Spanish meets English in Miami</h2>
<p>Fast forward to today, where a similar form of language contact involving Spanish and English has been going on in Miami since the end of <a href="https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/cuban-immigration-after-the-revolution-1959-1973">the Cuban Revolution</a> in 1959.</p>
<p>In the years following the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas. </p>
<p>Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual. In 2010, more than 65% of the population of Miami-Dade County identified as Hispanic or Latina/o, and in the large municipalities of Doral and Hialeah, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/15765243/Multilingual_Miami_Trends_in_Sociolinguistic_Research">the figure is 80% and 95%</a>, respectively.</p>
<p>Of course, identifying as Latina/o is not synonymous with speaking Spanish, and language loss has occurred among second- and third-generation Cuban Americans. But the point is that there is a lot of Spanish – and a lot of English – being spoken in Miami. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of Cubans walking on beach holding luggage and children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530639/original/file-20230607-29-tu4xz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban refugees on the island of Cay Sal wait for the U.S. Coast Guard to take them to Florida in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-refugees-on-sal-cay-waiting-for-us-coast-guard-to-news-photo/50679206?adppopup=true">Lynn Pelham/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among this mix are bilinguals. Some are more proficient in Spanish, and others are more skilled English speakers. Together, they navigate the sociolinguistic landscape of South Florida in complex ways, knowing when and with whom to use which language – and when it’s OK to mix them.</p>
<p>When the first large group of Cubans came to Miami in the wake of the revolution, they did precisely this, in two ways. </p>
<p>First, people alternated between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence or clause. This set the stage for the enduring presence of Spanish vocabulary in South Florida, as well as the emergence of what some people refer to as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/08/10/158570815/puedes-believe-it-spanglish-gets-in-el-dictionary">Spanglish</a>.” </p>
<p>Second, as people learned English, they tended to translate directly from Spanish. These translations are a type of borrowing that linguists call “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/loan-translation-calque-1691255">calques</a>.”</p>
<p>Calques are all over the English language. </p>
<p>Take “dandelion.” This flower grows in central Europe, and when the Germans realized they didn’t have a word for it, they looked to botany books written in Latin, <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/dandelion">where it was called dens lionis</a>, or “lion’s tooth.” The Germans borrowed that concept and named the flower “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/L%C3%B6wenzahn">Löwenzahn</a>” – a literal translation of “lion’s tooth.” The French didn’t have a word for the flower, so they too borrowed the concept of “lion’s tooth,” calquing it as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/25/plantwatch-dandelions-hawthorn-sunshine">dent de lion</a>.” The English, also not having a word for this flower, heard the French term without understanding it, and borrowed it, adapting “dent de lion” into English, calling it “dandelion.” </p>
<h2>A new lingo emerges</h2>
<p>This is exactly the sort of thing that’s been happening in Miami.</p>
<p>As a part of my ongoing research with students and colleagues on the way English is spoken in Miami, I conducted <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/eww.22036.car">a study</a> with linguist <a href="https://buffalo.academia.edu/KristenDAlessandroMerii">Kristen D’Allessandro Merii</a> to document Spanish-origin calques in the English spoken in South Florida. </p>
<p>We found several types of loan translations. </p>
<p>There were “<a href="https://pureenglish.org/2012/05/06/calques-loan-translations/">literal lexical calques</a>,” a direct, word-for-word translation. </p>
<p>For example, we found people to use expressions such as “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car.” This is based on the Spanish phrase “bajar del carro,” which translates, for speakers outside of Miami, as “get out of the car.” But “bajar” means “to get down,” so it makes sense that many Miamians think of “exiting” a car in terms of “getting down” and not “getting out.” </p>
<p>Locals often say “married with,” as in “Alex got married with José,” based on the Spanish “casarse con” – literally translated as “married with.” They’ll also say “make a party,” a literal translation of the Spanish “hacer una fiesta.”</p>
<p>We also found “<a href="https://langeek.co/en/grammar/course/359/loan-words-and-calque">semantic calques</a>,” or loan translations of meaning. In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef” – as in, “I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.” </p>
<p>And then there were “phonetic calques,” or the translation of certain sounds. </p>
<p>“Thanks God,” a type of loan translation from “gracias a Dios,” is common in Miami. In this case, speakers analogize the “s” sound at the end of “gracias” and apply it to the English form.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoTeQ73rP9I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Examples of unique expressions that have emerged in Miami.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Miami-born adopt the calques</h2>
<p>We found that some expressions were used only among the immigrant generation – for example, “throw a photo,” from “tirar una foto,” as a variation of “take a photo.” </p>
<p>But other expressions were used among the Miami-born, a group who may be bilingual but speak English as their primary language. </p>
<p>In an experiment, we asked Miamians and people from elsewhere in the U.S. to rate local expressions such as “married with” alongside the nonlocal versions, like “married to.” Both groups deemed the nonlocal versions acceptable. But Miamians rated most of the local expressions significantly more favorably than folks from elsewhere.</p>
<p>“Language is always changing” is practically a truism; most people know that Old English is radically different from Modern English, or that English in London sounds different from English in New Delhi, New York City, Sydney and Cape Town, South Africa. </p>
<p>But rarely do we pause to think about how these changes take place, or to ponder where dialects and words come from. </p>
<p>“Get down from the car,” just like “dandelion,” is a reminder that every word and every expression have a history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It came about through sustained contact with native Spanish speakers who directly translated phrases from Spanish into English, a form of linguistic borrowing called ‘calques.’Phillip M. Carter, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1724342021-11-24T16:01:52Z2021-11-24T16:01:52ZCuba: five years after Fidel Castro’s death, how fares the revolution?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433520/original/file-20211123-27-1uc95jn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">h</span> </figcaption></figure><p>If recent events in Cuba are anything to go by, the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez is facing significant challenges as the country marks five years since the death of its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, on <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-crisis-stricken-venezuela-fidel-castros-legacy-lives-on-69531">November 25 2016</a>. </p>
<p>At least one leading dissident, journalist Guillermo Farinas, was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/13/cuban-opposition-figure-arrested-ahead-of-banned-protest">taken into custody</a> ahead of a protest planned for November 15, while, according to some reports, others were placed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/16/cuba-democracy-protests-thwarted-after-rallies-banned-and-leaders-arrested">under house arrest</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/21/world/americas/yunior-garcia-exile-spain.html">Yunior García</a>, one of the organisers of the protest – which was shut down by authorities – was placed under house arrest but allowed to leave Cuba for Spain. </p>
<p>It’s tempting to view protests – and the idea of constant internal crisis – as the defining feature of contemporary Cuba. But critique and protest have been a part of Cuba’s history since independence. And – more importantly – Cubans are taught that it is their revolutionary duty to question and critique constructively. </p>
<p>Debates are not confined to the intelligentsia either – most Cubans have an opinion on how to improve their country. But, on the whole and despite the undeniable hardships that still face the Cuban people, the majority continue to demonstrate a <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/cuba-more-excited-about-school-reopening-then-protests/278972/">commitment to</a> maintain the system – albeit while working to improve conditions.</p>
<p>The way in which the death of Castro was commemorated in Cuba tells us much about the complexity of Cuban society. The <em><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-38201169">Caravana de la Libertad</a></em> (Caravan of Freedom) that carried his ashes to the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba mirrored the route that the triumphant <em>guerrilleros</em> took in early 1959 as they returned to Havana, having ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two women, one with face painting honouring the late Cudan president Fidel Castro." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433544/original/file-20211123-19-1g2vjof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Yo soy Fidel’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sonia Almaguer</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2016, just as in 1959, Cubans lined the central highway along the length of the island to pay their respects, many of them holding images of Fidel Castro, waving the Cuban flag or displaying the hashtag <em><a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/I-Am-Fidel-Cubas-Youth-Deepen-Commitment-to-Revolution-20161204-009.html">#Yo soy Fidel</a></em> (I am Fidel). Some outside commentators <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/nov/28/fidel-castro-he-was-no-hero-says-the-uks-national-press">interpreted this</a> unusual commemoration as evidence of an authoritarian – or, at least, coercive – system which demands loyalty and obedience. Others noted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/cuba-fidel-castro-three-generations">varying responses</a> from different generations, whose expectations have changed as those with direct memories of pre-revolutionary Cuba have begun to die out.</p>
<p>Those who closely follow Cuban society recognised a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/today-we-dont-talk-about-baseball-cubans-react-to-castros-death">complex range</a> of responses and emotions by Cubans of all generations across the island. Some were there to mourn a figure who had improved their lives, others to commemorate the end of a historical period, and yet others to witness a historical moment that captured the world’s attention.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-crisis-stricken-venezuela-fidel-castros-legacy-lives-on-69531">In crisis-stricken Venezuela, Fidel Castro's legacy lives on</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>From Obama to Trump to Biden</h2>
<p>Five years on, that complexity is very much still in evidence, but the context has changed immeasurably and in ways that could not have been anticipated. <a href="https://theconversation.com/diplomatic-thaw-with-the-us-is-a-gift-to-the-cuban-economy-35692">The rapprochement</a> between Cuba and the US during the Obama administration was reversed – and sent into punitive overdrive – by the raft of <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/cuba-us-sanctions-caused-billions-of-dollars-in-losses/2277824">243 sanctions</a> implemented by Donald Trump’s administration to restrict Cuba’s economic activity. Joe Biden has yet to reverse these sanctions, which have hit Cuba particularly hard in terms of income from tourism – the island’s economic mainstay since the collapse of trade with the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cubans, some holding portraits of the late Fidel Castro, mourning the death of the president in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución, November 2016." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433541/original/file-20211123-13-6aky1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cubans mourn the death of Fidel Castro in the Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, November 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sonia Almaguer</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/1/what-will-cubas-new-single-currency-mean-for-the-island">Currency reforms</a> in December 2020 – the <em><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/1/what-will-cubas-new-single-currency-mean-for-the-island">Tarea Ordenamiento</a></em> or “fusion” of the dual currencies that had existed since the 1990s as a response to the end of trade with the Soviet Bloc – brought increased salaries for public sector workers, but led to rising inflation. This, coupled with the restrictions of life under the pandemic and the negative impact of the heightened US embargo, created further economic instabilities, inequalities and precariousness. </p>
<p>Meanwhile Castro’s death, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuban-president-diaz-canel-made-communist-party-leader-ending-castro-era-2021-04-19/">retirement from office</a> of his brother Raúl Castro, and the election of a new generation of leader in the shape of party stalwart Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in 2019 have created additional unknowns – not least since the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/16/988019067/cuba-without-a-castro-the-islands-old-guard-exits-the-stage">historic generation</a>” that led the revolution in 1959 has all but disappeared.</p>
<h2>The impact of COVID</h2>
<p>On the face of it, <a href="https://covid.observer/cu/">data shows</a> that Cuba has handled the pandemic very well: with just 8.5% of the population infected and 0.73 deaths per thousand in Cuba (compared to 15% and 2.13 respectively in the UK). In addition, figures sourced from the University of Oxford’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html">Our World in Data project</a> shows that Cuba has fully vaccinated 80% of its population. This places the country third in the world behind UAE and Brunei.</p>
<p>Cuba’s renowned biotech sector has also produced <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1912">five COVID-19</a> vaccines – the first Latin American country to produce a vaccine. Meanwhile the tradition of medical internationalism, for which Cuba is famous, continued with the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/01/09/its-time-to-give-cuba-the-credit-it-deserves-for-its-global-medical-accomplishments/">Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade</a>, which sent medical professionals to 40 countries. </p>
<p>But COVID has also created social divisions – largely between those who followed the rules and those who didn’t. Early on in the pandemic, debates raged about how Cubans depended on the <em>coleros</em> (queuers). These are people who wait in line for now-precious basic commodities and often re-sell at increased prices. There were criticisms that some of these people were compromising collective pandemic discipline and social equality. </p>
<h2>Who decides the nature of change?</h2>
<p>It is against this backdrop of political and economic insecurity and COVID restrictions that the protests of July and November <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-mass-protests-are-driven-by-the-misery-of-covid-and-economic-sanctions-164505">must be seen</a>. In effect they are not greatly dissimilar to similar demonstrations in the US, the UK or Europe. But in Cuba these protests have an additional component. There is <a href="https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2111/S00040/why-is-the-us-fueling-the-november-15-cuba-protests.htm">evidence of</a> clear, sustained and organised interference from organisations in the US. </p>
<p>Since 1959, Cubans have been emphasising that revolution is a constant process, not an event. Current discussions by Cubans of all generations, including the leadership, focus on the revolutionary duty to “change everything that needs to be changed” – a reference to Fidel Castro’s 2000 <a href="https://www.radiogritodebaire.cu/English/cuba/fidel-concept-revolution/">definition of revolution</a> as a constant concept underpinning the Cuban revolution. In this sense, the real issue at stake is the concept of change and who decides to implement it. </p>
<p>In 2021, as in 1959, the key issue is who controls Cuba. Cuba gained its independence in 1898, almost a century after many other Spanish colonies in the Americas. Another century on, and – thanks to US intervention – Cuba’s destiny as a sovereign nation – the right to make its own mistakes as well as celebrate its own successes – is still not entirely in its own hands.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Parvathi Kumaraswami received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. </span></em></p>Cuba has handled COVID well, but sanctions and economic uncertainty are causing unrest among some sections of society.Parvathi Kumaraswami, Chair in Latin American Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706112021-11-19T13:16:28Z2021-11-19T13:16:28ZCuba’s post-revolution architecture offers a blueprint for how to build more with less<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429039/original/file-20211028-19-1ndyd3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C118%2C3602%2C2428&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Builders construct experimental vaults of brick and cement blocks in Santiago de Cuba in December 1960.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Centro de Documentación, Empresa RESTAURA, Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Around the world, there’s a conjoined crisis of climate change and housing shortages – two topics at the <a href="https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/cop26-climate-change-and-why-housing-matters-73166">top of the list of discussions</a> in the recent <a href="https://ukcop26.org/">COP26 climate summit</a> in Glasgow. </p>
<p>Construction and buildings <a href="https://unhabitat.org/the-climate-is-changing-so-must-our-homes-how-we-build-them">account for more than one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions</a>. Meanwhile, according to a September report by Realtor.com, the U.S. alone <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/america-is-short-more-than-5-million-homes-study-says.html">is short 5.24 million homes</a>.</p>
<p>Addressing both crises will require building structures <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/15/the-case-for-making-low-tech-dumb-cities-instead-of-smart-ones">more sustainably</a> and <a href="https://www.designworldonline.com/abb-robotics-advances-construction-industry-automation-to-enable-safer-and-sustainable-building/">more efficiently</a>.</p>
<p>But this isn’t the first time architects and governments have had to deal with dwindling resources and the task of housing large numbers of people. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/post-revolution-cuba/">In 1959</a>, an armed revolt led by Fidel Castro ousted Cuba’s military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. As part of a broader plan to improve the quality of life for millions of Cubans, Castro’s new government sought to develop a program to mass-produce new housing, schools and factories.</p>
<p>In the years that followed, however, this dream clashed with difficult realities. Sanctions and supply chain disruptions had created a shortage of conventional building materials.</p>
<p>Architects realized they needed to do more with less and invent new construction methods using local materials.</p>
<h2>A thousand-year-old technique</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.3.321">In an article</a> that I co-authored with architect and engineer <a href="https://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/people/mhr29%40cam.ac.uk">Michael Ramage</a> and architect <a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1406-4588">Dania González Couret</a>, we explored the creative challenges of this period by focusing on a specific structural element that these Cuban architects soon seized upon: the tile vault.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/988501">Tile vaulting</a> is a technique that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean <a href="https://www.academia.edu/46049241/2021_BRICK_CONSTRUCTION_IN_ALMORAVID_MARRAKECH_THE_QUBBAT_AL_BARUDIYYIN">after the 10th century</a>. </p>
<p>It involves constructing arched ceilings made of multiple layers of lightweight terra cotta tiles. To build the first layer, the builders use fast-setting mortar to glue the tiles together with barely any temporary support. Afterward, the builder adds more layers with normal cement or lime mortar. This technique doesn’t require expensive machinery or use of a lot of timber for formwork. But speed and craftsmanship are paramount.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pencil drawings of different arches." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429024/original/file-20211028-26-1rirswx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three types of vaults – clockwise, from top left: conventional stone, tiled dome and tiled vault.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://oa.upm.es/38027/">Luis Moya Blanco</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because of its affordability and durability, tile vaulting spread <a href="https://researchportal.vub.be/en/publications/the-construction-of-tile-vaults-in-belgium-1900-1940-contractors">to different parts of Europe</a> and <a href="https://papress.com/products/guastavino-vaulting-the-art-of-structural-tile">the Americas</a>. It became known as <a href="https://sap.mit.edu/article/standard/guastavino-vaulting-art-structural-tile">Guastavino tiling</a> in the U.S – a nod to Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino, who used the technique in <a href="https://savingplaces.org/stories/7-majestic-guastavino-tile-vaults-from-around-the-country#.YZS4P9BBzIU">over 1,000 projects in the U.S.</a>, including the Boston Public Library and New York’s Grand Central Station. </p>
<h2>Vaults in vogue</h2>
<p>In Cuba, tile vaults were famously used to build the National Art Schools, or Escuelas Nacionales de Arte. </p>
<p>Fidel Castro advocated for the construction of the five schools on what, before the revolution, had been a golf course in Cubanacán, a town west of Havana. </p>
<p>Designed by Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, the <a href="https://papress.com/products/revolution-of-forms-updated-edition-cubas-forgotten-art-schools">schools integrate terra cotta shells and arches with the site’s green landscape</a>. They were long thought to be the only tile vault buildings in post-revolution Cuba. </p>
<p>However, we discovered that the National Art Schools are only the tip of the iceberg. From 1960 to 1965, a range of vault experiments and projects took place across the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of an open air arched building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429025/original/file-20211028-13-11t51l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The School of Ballet by Vittorio Gratti, one of the five vaulted National Art Schools in Havana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">M. Wesam Al Asali</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shortly after the revolution, architects and engineers at the Ministry of Construction – known as MICONS – went to Camagüey, a province known for its terra cotta brick-making, to learn more about the craft. One of these architects, Juan Campos Almanza, then a recent graduate of the University of Havana, led the research team. As an experiment, he built a load-bearing vault on the grounds of the Azorin brick factory. </p>
<p>It was a success. He went on to use the design to construct affordable and elegant beachfront homes in Santa Lucía, north of Camagüey, using the same vault design.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Vaulted homes lined up side by side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=194&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429026/original/file-20211028-19-13u43mb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Juan Campos Almanza’s beachfront homes were built based on a vaulting experiment that took place in 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation Center, Office of the Historian of Havana</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The best of both worlds</h2>
<p>Brick-and-tile vault construction appeared to be a promising solution to build replicable and cost-effective ceilings. </p>
<p>The Center of Technical Investigations, an agency tasked with developing housing, schools and factories, used Almanza’s research to construct its own vaulted offices. An outdoor space nearby – famously called “El Patio del MICONS” – became a staging ground for more structural experiments.</p>
<p>In El Patio, craftspeople, engineers and architects worked together to develop affordable vaulted buildings, while teachers at El Patio’s tile masons’ school taught building techniques to cohorts of apprentices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429033/original/file-20211028-25-hbesj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Builders practice putting together a vaulted roof in the Patio del MICONS in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation Center, Office of the Historian of Havana</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vaulted buildings and homes soon started cropping up across the country. In 1961, Juan Campos Almanza completed his first housing projects in Altahabana, a new neighborhood located near Havana, building simple barrel vaults on prefabricated beams. Similar designs were used for more beachfront houses, schools and factories.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429036/original/file-20211028-17-1ui2vdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Architect Mario Girona built a vaulted elementary school in Marianao, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation Center, Office of the Historian of Havana</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his report about the Altahabana pilot project, Campos defined his method as “tradicional mejorado,” or “improved traditional construction” – a mix of conventional building methods with some prefabricated elements. </p>
<p>This way, he argued, builders could gain the best of both worlds: The construction, some of it built by hand, was fast and replicable. And it didn’t require a lot of materials and preexisting infrastructure.</p>
<p>The best example of this construction method is the vaulted Pre-University Center at Liberty City, the site of a former U.S. Army base. The structure was designed in 1961 by Josefina Rebellón, who at the time was a third-year architecture student. </p>
<p>Only a couple of miles from the Schools of Art, Rebellón’s design was completed in 18 months. It was made up of two circular vaulted buildings, with conical vaults and prefabricated beams, with an undulating two-story classroom building between the two circles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bird's-eye drawing of two circular buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432083/original/file-20211115-13-1bgtdne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sketch of Josefina Rebellón’s Pre-University Center.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation Center, Office of the Historian of Havana</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A brief experiment with a lasting legacy</h2>
<p>These exciting new construction methods didn’t last long. </p>
<p>In 1963, Havana hosted the conference for the International Union of Architects. That year’s theme was <a href="https://www.uia-architectes.org/webApi/en/congress/havana-1963.html">Architecture in Developing Countries</a>.</p>
<p>The conference gave Cuban architects an opportunity to reflect on their recent experiences. The Ministry of Construction pushed to end what it viewed as a period of experimentation; mass housing, they argued, demanded industrialized construction.</p>
<p>Buildings started being made in factories and then assembled on site. Skilled and specialized labor, like vault-building, was no longer seen as an asset but an obstacle, since vault builders were difficult to find in the country’s remote areas, and novice builders required extensive training.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 140,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>Yet the story of these buildings offers lessons for designing with scarcity. </p>
<p>The ability to experiment is important. Coordination among builders, governments and architects is crucial. And craftsmanship matters, too, whether it’s tile vaulting or <a href="https://practicalpreservationservices.com/traditional-joinery-what-it-is-and-why-is-it-important-in-preservation/">traditional carpentry</a>. </p>
<p>For too long, buildings that required craftsmanship have been thought of as overly expensive pet projects that deployed techniques better suited for a different era. But the Cubans were able to show that craftsmanship can be developed, scaled up and combined with technological advances.</p>
<p>Today, a handful of promising initiatives show how the craft of tile vaulting can serve for the <a href="https://architizer.com/projects/rwanda-cricket-stadium/">low-carbon construction of buildings</a> or engineered <a href="https://block.arch.ethz.ch/brg/research/rib-stiffened-funicular-floor-system">ceiling systems</a>. Back in Cuba, tile vaulting is now being taught in the <a href="http://www.eusebioleal.cu/noticia/se-crea-aula-taller-eusebio-leal-spengler/">Escuela Taller Gaspar Melchor</a>, a training center in Havana’s historical center.</p>
<p>Cuba’s vaulted architecture reflects the relationship between necessity and invention, a process that many people mistakenly think of as automatic. It isn’t. It is a relationship based on perseverance, trial and error and, above all, passion.</p>
<p>Look no further than what Juan Campos Almanza and his peers left behind on the island: beautiful, replicable buildings, many of which are still standing today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>M. Wesam Al Asali is the Lead Designer and Founder of IWlab and CERCAA.
</span></em></p>After Fidel Castro took power, government plans to build new housing, schools and factories were hindered by sanctions and supply chain issues, forcing architects to come up with creative solutions.M. Wesam Al Asali, Global Fung Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1649962021-08-04T12:32:27Z2021-08-04T12:32:27Z5 ways Americans often misunderstand Cuba, from Fidel Castro’s rise to the Cuban American vote<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413828/original/file-20210729-21-1rd251l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C25%2C5681%2C3807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Street view of Havana, Cuba, July 26, 2021, several weeks after mass protests broke out.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-a-street-decorated-with-a-cuban-flag-in-tribute-to-news-photo/1234213570?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cuba recently erupted in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-protests-4-essential-reads-on-dissent-in-the-post-castro-era-164456">largest protests</a> seen there in six decades, reflecting popular anger over a crippling economic crisis, scarce food and medicines and a half-century of repression.</p>
<p>Cuba remains largely an enigma to outsiders, and especially to Americans. Myths prevail because of Cuban government censorship and the United States’ historic tendency – born of the Cold War – to stereotype and simplify the communist island.</p>
<p>“The truth is that Cuba is often more talked about, idealized or vilified than known,” <a href="https://jacobinlat.com/2021/07/22/esta-en-juego-la-vida-buena-y-justa-para-cubanos-y-cubanas/">wrote Martín Mosquera</a>, editor of the Latin American edition of Jacobin, a leftist publication, recently. </p>
<p>This article examines five common areas of confusion about Cuba, Cuban Americans and the U.S.-Cuba relationship. </p>
<h2>#1. The Cuban Revolution</h2>
<p>Fidel Castro and a band of guerrillas overthrew the brutal <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/books/backing-the-wrong-tyrant.html">U.S.-backed</a> dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. At the time, Castro’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/magazine/fidel-castro-s-years-as-a-secret-communist.html">political ideology was unclear</a>; he had not yet publicly committed to communism. <a href="https://atom.library.miami.edu/chc0510">Anti-communist revolutionaries</a> allied with him. </p>
<p>In Castro’s famous 1953 “<a href="https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-4-cuba/primary-documents-w-accompanying-discussion-questions/document-no-10-history-will-absolve-me-by-fidel-castro-ruiz/">History Will Absolve Me</a>” speech, he said his revolution would return “power to the people” and proclaimed Cuba’s liberal democratic 1940 Constitution as “the Supreme Law of the State” until “the people should decide to modify or change it.”</p>
<p>The revolution was a nationalist revolution for most Cubans, then, not a communist one. When Castro installed a socialist economy and a one-party political system, many fellow revolutionaries <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/post-revolution-cuba/">felt betrayed</a>. Cubans fought to form a government that would answer to the Cuban people, rather than foreign interests. They got Castro’s Soviet-backed regime. </p>
<p>Many poor Cubans revered Castro for implementing policies that promoted equity and minimized discrimination, including <a href="https://www.ascecuba.org/asce_proceedings/cuba-and-venezuela-revolution-and-reform/">major reforms</a> in land, agriculture, education and housing. </p>
<p>Others fled because of fear and persecution. Exiles included large landowners, Batista supporters, religious leaders, the middle class and revolutionaries who opposed Fidel’s manner of governing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Marchers on street hold pictures of Cuban leaders" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413832/original/file-20210729-17-ad9q34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A counterprotest of Cubans who defend Castro’s revolution against the anti-government marches of July 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-holds-a-portrait-of-cuban-late-leader-fidel-castro-news-photo/1234023834?adppopup=true">YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>#2. The US embargo</h2>
<p>The Cuban government <a href="https://diariodecuba.com/cuba/1603531638_25909.html?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_5568ec19b405bd48be28217b33bd4a545e4ec6ba-1627425505-0-gqNtZGzNAfijcnBszQk6">blames the United States</a> for poverty on the island, but many of Cuba’s economic problems are homegrown.</p>
<p>The U.S. embargo originated in the early 1960s to prevent the spread of communism from Cuba to other Latin American countries. It also sought to compel Cuba’s new government to compensate American corporations for property expropriated by the regime and to prevent further confiscations.</p>
<p>Today the embargo has evolved to include six separate pieces of legislation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/927/text">Some laws</a> put pressure on the Castro regime in the 1990s, when Cuba’s economy was vulnerable after the fall of the Soviet Union. They deny U.S. visas to leaders of companies that invest in Cuba. Additional embargo policies restrict Americans from traveling or sending money to Cuba – though <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/services/Pages/tsra.aspx">there are loopholes</a> enabling U.S. Treasury-licensed food and medical supply sales to Cuba.</p>
<p>The 60-year-old embargo inhibits the fledgling Cuban private sector and makes it harder to obtain the goods they need. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.letcubalive.com/">Many people</a> in the U.S. and beyond are urging President Joe Biden to lift the embargo to ease Cuba’s current food and medical shortages. But the president of the United States cannot do that unilaterally. Lifting the embargo would require Congress to either certify that Cuba has become sufficiently democratic according to the 1996 <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/927?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr927%22%5D%7D&s=3&r=14">Libertad Act</a> or pass a new bill overturning it.</p>
<p>However, the embargo is not the primary reason Cuban people are struggling. </p>
<p>The Cuban government has a history of political repression and fiscal mismanagement, both of which harm the economy. For example, it tightly controls who may obtain state-issued licenses to start their own businesses. It bans <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/cuba#6a43ba">independent labor unions</a>, which would protect workers from exploitation.</p>
<p>Finally, <a href="http://misiones.minrex.gob.cu/en">few countries</a> still limit trade or diplomatic relations with Cuba because of the embargo. They have <a href="https://www.ibanet.org/article/872A709E-49DE-4153-92C7-798FA9A88196">created laws</a> that help protect their businesses from retaliatory U.S. legal action when operating in Cuba.</p>
<h2>#3. US interference in Cuba</h2>
<p>Just as it blames the U.S. embargo for poverty in Cuba, the Cuban government blames U.S. interference for political unrest there, as it did <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cubas-president-blames-discontent-us-sanctions-2021-07-12/">after protests</a> erupted on July 11.</p>
<p>Indeed, the U.S. government has upheld Cuban dictators – before Castro – and employed wide-ranging coercive sanctions against the country. The United States even <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/comandante-pre-castro-cuba/">occupied Cuba</a>, in the early 20th century. After Castro took power, the U.S. <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-bay-of-pigs?gclid=CjwKCAjwgISIBhBfEiwALE19SU5D0g6sGdtuIwiy9-nR_yO4ihrzBjJjKppBLhazu-SYMEb7EwFCCRoCXHwQAvD_BwE">supported anti-Castro uprisings</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, though, the Cuban government’s <a href="http://ccdhrn.org/">long record</a> of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/cuba">human rights abuses</a> and repression created the current political instability. </p>
<p>Cuba has a well-documented history of <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/mar/22/raul-castro/are-there-political-prisoners-cuba/">harassing, intimidating and imprisoning activists and dissidents</a>. <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-38omFpJdDiKTSBoUOg19tv2nJxtNRS3-2HfVUUwtSw/htmlview">Over 700</a> Cuban protesters have been <a href="https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2021-07-26-u185759-e185759-s27061-ascienden-700-detenidos-cuba-protestas-11j">detained or disappeared</a> since July 11, according to the human rights organization Cubalex.</p>
<p>The government continues to suppress freedom of expression and closely monitor civilians, which has <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12/cuba-san-isidro-movement-allies-under-frightening-levels-surveillance/">spurred resistance</a> from artists, journalists and civil society organizations. LGBTQ people <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48242255">still face persecution</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mariela Castro rides in a car decked out in pride flags surrounded by crowds in a pride parade" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413834/original/file-20210729-13-hg9xjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mariela Castro, center, daughter of Cuban former President Raul Castro, advocates for LGBTQ rights at the 2018 Havana Pride parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mariela-castro-daughter-of-cuban-former-president-raul-news-photo/957823510?adppopup=true">YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>#4. Cuban Americans</h2>
<p>The media often stereotypes Cuban Americans as overwhelmingly conservative. But they are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-called-latino-vote-is-32-million-americans-with-diverse-political-opinions-and-national-origins-149515">racially, economically and politically heterogeneous community</a>.</p>
<p>Cubans who’ve come to the U.S. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/23/as-cuban-american-demographics-change-so-do-views-of-cuba/">since 1990</a> are even more diverse than the largely white first waves of <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/cuban-migration-postrevolution-exodus-ebbs-and-flows">exiles who came after the Cuban Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>Cuban Americans’ political opinions differ depending on their <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2020-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">race, socioeconomic status, gender and age</a>. Cuban Americans as a group became overwhelmingly Republican after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/03/25/the-cuban-bloc-florida-anti-communists-rally-to-gop/b53aeb4d-b013-4640-9110-68f33593ab30/">Ronald Reagan courted them</a> in the 1980s, but they are increasingly <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-cuban-american-poll-20190131-story.html">independent voters</a>. In the 2020 presidential election, around <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-cultivated-latino-vote-florida-it-paid-n1246226">55% of Cubans in Florida</a> voted for Donald Trump. </p>
<h2>#5. Race and equality in Cuba</h2>
<p>Castro’s Communist revolution brought disadvantaged Cubans greater <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cuba-is-an-education-success-story-and-what-it-can-teach-africa-50211">access to education</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0169796X19826731">universal health care</a>. Many poor Cubans became world-class doctors, scholars and scientists.</p>
<p>However, Cuba is not an egalitarian society. Its political leaders are overwhelmingly white and male, and the government <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/19/cuba-protests-afro-cubans/">does not treat all Cubans equally</a>. </p>
<p>Afro-Cubans, who comprise at least <a href="http://www.onei.gob.cu/sites/default/files/publicacion_completa_color_de_la_piel__0.pdf">one-third</a> of Cuba’s 11.3 million people, experience <a href="https://minorityrights.org/minorities/afro-cubans/">widespread discrimination</a>. As a result, they have higher poverty rates, less access to stable currency and low rates of property ownership. Afro-Cubans also <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/09/cuba-government-blm-police-racism-black-lives-needs-to-look-within-as-it-denounces-us/">suffer more police violence</a> than white Cubans.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Black and brown Cuban <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/19/cuba-protests-afro-cubans/">artists are leading</a> the current protests. The rap song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP9Bto5lOEQ">Patria y Vida</a>” – which means “Homeland and Life,” a word play on the revolutionary slogan “Homeland or Death” – has become an anthem for Cuban government opposition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164996/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline McCulloch interned with the U.S. Department of State but is not currently affiliated.</span></em></p>Cuba: It’s complicated.Caroline McCulloch, Professor of International Relations, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1590022021-04-19T21:27:51Z2021-04-19T21:27:51ZWhat’s next for Cuba and the United States after Raul Castro’s retirement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395771/original/file-20210419-19-ve9yk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C6%2C4285%2C2854&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With Raul Castro's resignation as first secretary of the Communist Party, the Castro era is officially over in Cuba.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-first-secretary-of-the-communist-party-and-former-news-photo/1189655929?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cuba’s Castro dynasty has officially ended. </p>
<p>On April 16, 2021, Raul Castro – younger brother of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro – <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article250465321.html">relinquished his position as first secretary</a> of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most powerful position in Cuba. </p>
<p>Castro, 89, became Cuba’s president in 2008, after his brother’s incapacitation, and took over the first secretary role from Fidel in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016. </p>
<p>Just as Fidel’s death did not <a href="https://theconversation.com/castros-conundrum-finding-a-post-communist-model-cuba-can-follow-81242">suddenly transform antagonistic U.S.-Cuban ties</a>, neither does Raul Castro’s departure.</p>
<p>Cuban <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-new-president-what-to-expect-of-miguel-diaz-canel-95187">President Miguel Díaz Canel</a>, who took office in 2018 after Raul Castro stepped down as president, has resisted calls for democratic reforms and has <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-cuba-raul-castro-resigns-20210416-5atqyx5infhmra6fptoneoabpa-story.html">pressing economic issues</a> to manage, as well as a pandemic. </p>
<p>So does his American counterpart, President Joe Biden. The White House <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article249826558.html">recently said Cuba policy</a> is “not a top priority.”</p>
<p>Neither leader is likely to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-04-16/white-house-says-shift-in-policy-on-cuba-not-one-of-bidens-top-priorities">risk his political future</a> with bold diplomacy. But younger Cubans continue to separate themselves from the policies and priorities of their government, creating a basis for a different relationship with the U.S.</p>
<h2>No longer a threat</h2>
<p>Raul Castro’s retirement coincided with the <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?510599-1/bay-pigs-60th-anniversary">60th anniversary</a> of Cuba’s military triumph over the U.S. at the Bay of Pigs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of militiamen with weapons in a field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395779/original/file-20210419-23-1rhxoqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban troops use Soviet-made anti-aircraft artillery to thwart a U.S.-supported invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/picture-dated-april-1961-of-cuban-troops-using-soviet-made-news-photo/504769636?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On April 17, 1961, Cuban nationals aided by the CIA <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-bay-of-pigs">began an invasion</a> designed to overthrow Fidel Castro. The Cuban army quickly defeated them, humiliating the Kennedy administration. </p>
<p>Cuba soon allied itself with the Soviet Union, then America’s greatest enemy. The U.S. responded with a <a href="https://www.state.gov/cuba-sanctions/">rigorous trade embargo</a>. </p>
<p>In the six decades since, U.S.-Cuban relations have alternated between hostile and icy, with a <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2016/03/18/cuban-thaw-a-history-of-us-cuban-relations">brief thaw</a> under President Barack Obama. </p>
<p>Fidel Castro’s Cuba supported <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/castro-and-cold-war/">leftist insurgencies and Soviet allies</a> across Latin America and the world, from Nicaragua to Angola. In 1962, Castro permitted <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis">Soviet missiles</a> to be set up in Cuba and aimed at the U.S., about 100 miles away, leading the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. </p>
<p>Today Cuba is still communist and it remains on the State Department’s <a href="https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/">list of countries</a> that support terrorism, alongside Iran and North Korea. But bereft of <a href="https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/0708capstones:137/datastream/PDF/view">patrons like the Soviets</a>, it presents no danger to the U.S. mainland or its allies. </p>
<p>Cuba can do little more than irritate U.S. presidents by supporting Latin American leaders who resist American power, like <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-sanctions/u-s-slaps-sanctions-on-cuba-defense-minister-over-support-for-venezuelas-maduro-idUSKBN1Z11IM">Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro</a> and Bolivia’s ousted former leader <a href="https://cubasi.cu/en/cuba/item/14625-bolivian-president-evo-morales-greets-raul-castro-on-social-media-praises-cuba-s-solidarity">Evo Morales</a>.</p>
<h2>Entrepreneurship, Cuban-style</h2>
<p>The Cuban people have changed just as much, according to my <a href="https://today.appstate.edu/2016/01/26/gonzalez">two decades of research on and travel to the island</a>. </p>
<p>Unlike their parents and grandparents, Cubans in their 20s, 30s and 40s <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidels-cuba-is-long-gone-120271">never enjoyed a sustained, functional contract with the regime</a>: We provide you a living, and in exchange you give us support, or at least acquiescence. </p>
<p>Cubans who came of age during or after the so-called “Special Period” of the 1990s – when Cuba faced <a href="https://cubaplatform.org/special-period">economic collapse</a> – rely on the government to deliver certain services, primarily health care and education. But they know it cannot feed, clothe and house its people in any but the most basic way. </p>
<p>Young Cubans have to <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidels-cuba-is-long-gone-120271">hustle to survive</a> – or “<a href="https://medium.com/@d.yau/cubas-resolver-mentality-makes-it-the-next-startup-hub-2f10ea2096a0">resolver</a>,” a Spanish verb that means “to resolve” but which in Cuba refers to providing for one’s family. </p>
<p>And the Cuban hustle has a capitalist bent.</p>
<p>In 2008 <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2012-12-27-sns-rt-cuba-economyreforml1e8nq23a-20121227-story.html">Raul Castro’s government cut</a> public payrolls and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-politics-castro-changes-explaine/explainer-the-state-of-raul-castros-economic-reforms-in-cuba-idUSKBN1HO0CL">allowed Cubans to earn private incomes</a>, hoping Cubans would earn more money and generate more tax revenue. Previously, all jobs in Cuba were government jobs, whether you were a grocer or an architect, with government-regulated salaries. </p>
<p>Today, official statistics say about a <a href="https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/economy/the-private-sector-generates-32-of-employment-in-cuba/">third of Cubans</a> are privately employed. But the real proportion is almost surely higher. Almost all the adult Cubans I know have their own business – whether cutting hair or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_particular">renting their home as a bed and breakfast</a> – along with a traditional government-regulated job. </p>
<h2>Cuban resolve</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, the government has <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/cuban-reforms-reduce-subsidies-and-raise-costs/av-56263057">begun to eliminate</a> the subsidies that long defined Cuban life. Ration books for staple foods are disappearing and with them, subsidized prices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly person wearing a face mask walks along a street of Havana, holding a grocery bag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395789/original/file-20210419-21-18d1tw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Food prices have gone way up in Cuba, and lines at government-run markets can be long.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-elderly-person-wearing-a-face-mask-walks-along-a-street-news-photo/1232189703?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Food and clothing costs have doubled or tripled in Cuba in the past year. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy-analysis/analysis-cubas-looming-monetary-reform-sparks-confusion-inflation-fears-idUSKBN29418I">Utility prices have increased</a> by factors of four or five.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-announces-increase-wages-part-economic-reform-n1024451">Cuban state salaries have risen</a> since economic liberalization, but not that much. </p>
<p>Consequently, many Cubans operate outside of the law, trading in everything from clothing to scrap metal or gasoline stolen from the state. Cubans call people with illegal businesses “<a href="https://www.spanishdict.com/answers/163581/what-does-bisnero-mean-appears-in-a-cuban-text">bisneros</a>.”</p>
<p>Whether legal restaurateur or black-market bisnero, Cubans operate businesses not to become rich but to “<a href="https://medium.com/@d.yau/cubas-resolver-mentality-makes-it-the-next-startup-hub-2f10ea2096a0">resolver</a>.” They hope to improve their lots modestly, allowing their families to eat a wider range of fresher foods, or to save for a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/oct/12/teens-tiaras-quinceanera-celebrations-cuba-havana-diana-markosian-in-pictures">child’s birthday party</a>. </p>
<p>Cuba “forces us to be criminals just to make a living,” said 26-year-old Carlo Rodríguez, a server at a Havana restaurant. </p>
<h2>Generational divide</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Centers/Bildner%20Center%20for%20Western%20Hemisphere%20Studies/Publications/Strug6_000.pdf">Older Cubans remain</a> faithful to the Castros’ vision of Cuba as an anti-imperialist, anti-American outpost. But revolutionary slogans like “socialismo o muerte” – “socialism or death” – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-56606748">do not resonate</a> with young Cubans. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white photo of Castro, in his traditional revolutionary beret, driving a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow, surrounded by Russians in traditional dress" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395785/original/file-20210419-13-2hdjer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fidel Castro visits Moscow, Russia, in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/moscow-ussr-cuban-revolution-leader-fidel-castro-at-a-news-photo/522502032?adppopup=true">TASS via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Young Cubans also want more free speech. While Cubans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/cubans-are-using-social-media-to-air-their-grievances--and-the-government-is-responding-sometimes/2019/07/07/01b3cba2-912e-11e9-956a-88c291ab5c38_story.html">can and do complain</a> privately, the Cuban government has long restricted civil liberties. Journalism is mostly state sponsored, and the country’s few independent newspapers run into trouble when stories criticize the regime.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-50823142">Social media</a> only recently became legal and relatively widespread in Cuba. </p>
<p>Last year, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-cracks-down-on-artists-who-demanded-creative-freedoms-after-unprecedented-government-negotiations-152073">dissident artists movement</a> organized via WhatsApp and gained enough popular support to force the government into unprecedented negotiations about expanding freedom of expression in Cuba. A crackdown followed, with some dissidents jailed. But calls for free expression persist among <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/opinion/cuba-san-isidro-movement.html">younger Cubans</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Most Cubans also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/poll-shows-vast-majority-of-cubans-welcome-closer-ties-with-us/2015/04/08/6285bfe4-d8c3-11e4-bf0b-f648b95a6488_story.html">want closer ties</a> to the U.S., according to a 2015 poll. Since the adoption last year of <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/12/16/cuba-ends-its-dual-currency-system">a single currency pegged to the U.S. dollar</a>, American money is “like gold” on the island, my friend Tony, a shopkeeper, told me. </p>
<p>It is the U.S. embargo and former president <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-nods-to-cuban-exiles-rolls-back-ties-experts-react-79559">Donald Trump’s tightened restrictions on travel to the island</a> – not the Cuban government – that prevent Americans from spending their dollars on the island. </p>
<p>Cubans know this, and they resent the <a href="https://www.state.gov/cuba-sanctions/">embargo</a> for making their lives miserable. But younger Cubans recognize Cuba’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-16/raul-castro-to-stand-down-as-head-of-cuba-s-communist-party">ailing centrally planned economy</a> as a problem, too. </p>
<p>Cuban Americans, on the other hand, largely <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2020-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">supported Trump</a>. Recent <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/frustration-over-lack-of-democratic-reform-in-cuba-fuels-growing-support-for-u-s-trade-embargo-among-south-florida-cuban-americans-poll">polling showed</a> about 45% support keeping the embargo, up 10 points from two years ago. </p>
<p>Such sentiments make it more difficult for Biden to initiate his own Obama-style “thaw.” But they cannot stop the changes at work in Cuban society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph J. Gonzalez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just as Fidel Castro’s 2016 death did not transform US-Cuba ties, his brother Raul’s exit from politics is unlikely to do so. But Cuba itself is changing. Eventually, Havana and Washington will, too.Joseph J. Gonzalez, Associate Professor, Global Studies, Appalachian State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1520732020-12-17T13:26:32Z2020-12-17T13:26:32ZCuba cracks down on artists who demanded creative freedoms after ‘unprecedented’ government negotiations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375498/original/file-20201216-21-1fnrqil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C202%2C3072%2C1554&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of young intellectuals and artists demonstrates at the doors of the Ministry of Culture during a protest in Havana on Nov. 27. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-intellectuals-and-artists-demonstrate-at-the-news-photo/1229825681?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/inusual-protesta-de-artistas-en-cuba-el-gobierno-acepta-negociaciones-para-luego-suspenderlas-151638">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Cuban artists and intellectuals want more rights – and, in an unusual show of dissent, they demanded the government sit down with them to negotiate.</p>
<p>At 10:45 a.m. on Nov. 27, about 300 people <a href="https://oncubanews.com/opinion/columnas/la-vida-de-nosotros/la-cuba-de-anoche/">gathered outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana</a> to demand freedom of expression, an end to police harassment and the right to make art that Cuba’s communist government disagrees with. They organized the meetup on WhatsApp, a globally ubiquitous smartphone app used in Cuba only since 2018, with the arrival of <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/es/americas/20181206-llega-internet-los-telefonos-moviles-en-cuba">mobile internet</a>.</p>
<p>“I believe we were all convinced that we had to do something, and do it publicly and categorically,” the filmmaker Raúl Pardo, who helped organize the protest, said via Facebook message. “Each one of us sent messages to various people, we created a WhatsApp [chat], convened [the group] and explained what we were going to do.”</p>
<p>After hours of waiting, shouting and clapping, 30 of the artists managed to speak with Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman in black wearing a facemask speaks, surrounded by a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, center, reads discussion points after the Nov. 27 meeting with the vice minister of culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-installation-and-performance-artist-tania-bruguera-news-photo/1229826871?adppopup=true">Yamll Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The negotiations would end soon after they began, followed by a major crackdown on dissent. But the <a href="https://fb.watch/2i1ETVOI3J/">size, duration and public nature of the artists’ opposition</a>, which continues today, are unprecedented – a sign of how resistance in Cuba has grown and changed in recent years.</p>
<h2>Opposition then and now</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of Fidel Castro’s <a href="http://en.escambray.cu/2018/cuba-commemorates-proclamation-of-socialist-character-of-the-revolution/">Cuban Revolution</a>, opposition on the island has basically had one strategy – <a href="https://vimeo.com/139089136">confrontation</a> – and one goal – ending the political system he founded. </p>
<p>Many Cuban dissidents have been quietly financed by <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/cuba-projects-2001-to-2018/">the United States government</a>, which <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/amr250072009spa.pdf">promotes regime change in Cuba</a>, and are warmly received in Washington by Cuban American politicians like <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2013/9/senator-rubio-colleagues-meet-cuban-democracy-activist-ant-nez">Sen. Marco Rubio</a> and <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-diaz-balart-immigration-cuba-121910-story.html">Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart</a>. </p>
<p>This relationship with the United States has undermined the legitimacy of the Cuban opposition, not only with the Cuban government but also with the Cuban people. Polling shows Cubans <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2020-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">reject U.S. involvement in their internal affairs</a>, including the six-decade-old Cuban economic embargo.</p>
<p>The Nov. 27 protests were homegrown – a result of <a href="https://www.ide.go.jp/library/Japanese/Publish/Download/Report/2009/pdf/2009_408_ch2.pdf">Cuba’s recent economic liberalization</a> and changing social dynamics, not American interference. </p>
<p>In 2009, Fidel Castro’s brother <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20180412-raul-castros-reforms-cuba-work-progress">Raúl Castro</a> passed a series of economic reforms that, among other changes, made it possible for people to run small businesses. Galleries and theaters opened in homes and other private spaces across Cuba, enabling artists to create and show their work <a href="https://www.ipscuba.net/cultura/decreto-genera-inquietudes-sobre-arte-independiente-en-cuba/">outside of state-run channels</a>. </p>
<p>Dissident artists took advantage of this newfound freedom to advance their political demands, leading the government in 2018 to publish a <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2018/08/cuba-new-administrations-decree-349-is-a-dystopian-prospect-for-cubas-artists/">decree seeking to regulate independent artistic production</a> and limit where artists can perform.</p>
<h2>A different dissent</h2>
<p>Rather than remain silent about repression, as they have on so many other occasions, Cuban artists have taken to the streets.</p>
<p>The Nov. 27 protest at the Ministry of Culture came in response to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw_cB69zGxM">Nov. 26 government raid</a> on the home of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement, an artist collective that opposes the 2018 decree. Alcántara had been on a <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/movimiento-san-isidro-por-qu%C3%A9-hacer-huelga-de-hambre-en-la-habana/a-55726989">hunger strike</a> to protest the detention of Cuban rapper Denis Solís for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100017269035041/videos/790464094872551/">“insulting” a police officer</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in a skimpy pink-feather outfit with a headress and cape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Otero Alcántara as ‘Miss Biennial of Havana,’ 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BVQTq7JBV5v/?igshid=2zcdj42c8ojo">Courtesy of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100017269035041/videos/790464094872551/">Solís</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/oteroyalcantara/videos/1653356691495707">Alcántara</a> are vocal critics of the Cuban government, which they call a “dictatorship.” </p>
<p>Such language has led to accusations that the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/3265988550178986">San Isidro Movement is a U.S.-funded operation</a>. On Dec. 11, a news program on state television ran a video of a San Isidro Movement member <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/1505924806281250">calling for a U.S. military intervention in Cuba</a>. </p>
<p>On Nov. 24, just before the artist protests, the U.S. State Department released <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/12/04/grants/">US$1 million dedicated to increasing civil, political and religious rights in Cuba</a>. It is unclear whether U.S.-financed groups are funneling money to the San Isidro Movement, according to the <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/12/09/democracy-2/">Cuba Money Project</a>, which reports on American programs and projects related to Cuba. </p>
<p>In any case, while the raid on San Isidro sparked the Nov. 27 protest, only a few members of the movement were present in the crowd that gathered outside the Ministry of Culture. These protesters had <a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=108578367767622&id=107312641227528">broadly artistic, rather than explicitly political, demands</a> and sought to work with – not against – the government to achieve them.</p>
<p>For “a group of contrary artists … to sit and talk with an institution that has never wanted to recognize their existence. That is a historic and unique act,” <a href="https://oncubanews.com/gente/juan-pin-vilar-debemos-reconocer-la-existencia-de-los-artistas-y-espacios-independientes/">one participant</a> told OnCuba News on Dec. 8.</p>
<h2>Broken dialogue</h2>
<p>If the events of Nov. 27 were novel, the government’s response was familiar. </p>
<p>On Nov. 28, after he met with the protesting artists, Vice Minister Rojas <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/364295371339156">was interviewed for a TV special on a Cuban state-run channel</a>. In it, he recounted the events of the protest day and reiterated the Ministry of Culture’s willingness to continue the “dialogue” in a second meeting. </p>
<p>The remainder of the program, however, cast the San Isidro Movement in a negative light, calling its members “mercenaries” in an apparent effort to discredit the street protest. No protesters were invited to talk on the show. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men hold la banner reaading 'Fuerza! San Isidro'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cubans living in Spain show their support for the San Isidro Movement and the jailed rapper Denis Solís.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cubans-living-in-spain-demonstrate-in-support-of-the-san-news-photo/1229790709?adppopup=true">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A week later, on Dec. 4, the Cuban Ministry of Culture announced that the dialogue with protesters had been “<a href="https://www.ministeriodecultura.gob.cu/es/actualidad/noticias/nota-del-ministerio-de-cultura-rompen-el-dialogo-quienes-pidieron-dialogo">ended by the people who asked for it</a>.” The post blamed the protesters for putting unreasonable conditions on a second meeting, including the presence of Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and of independent media. </p>
<p>For journalist Jorge Fernandez, however, the “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/jorge.fernandezera.5/posts/1777228029095194">dialogue was already dynamited</a>” by the TV hit job.</p>
<h2>Beyond San Isidro</h2>
<p>Since negotiations ended, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/carlosmanuel.alvarezrodriguez/posts/2155337227930999">house arrests and arbitrary detentions</a> of Cuban artists have both increased.</p>
<p>But so have demands for change. </p>
<p>A document published on Nov. 28 and <a href="https://eltoque.com/articulacion-plebeya-a-proposito-de-los-sucesos-en-el-ministerio-de-cultura/">signed by more than 500 intellectuals, artists, filmmakers and others</a> reiterates the protesters’ original request – no more police harassment – and adds to the list of demands nothing less than political pluralism and the rule of law. </p>
<p>Such reforms, they say, are necessary for “the conservation of national sovereignty, independence and the integrity of the fatherland” – language seemingly chosen to demonstrate that their dissent has nothing to do with the United States. It’s opposition by and for the Cuban people.</p>
<p>The Cuban government continues to accuse anyone who sides with the dissenting artists of being “<a href="https://lapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/articulacion-popular-y-socialista-por-bufa-subversiva/">paid by U.S. agencies</a>.” </p>
<p>“Since the beginning, the revolution has been the object of foreign interference,” <a href="https://jcguanche.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/que-esta-pasando-en-cuba-en-estos-momentos/#more-2935">says the filmmaker Ernesto Daranas</a>. “But putting every criticism in that same bucket is now isolating [Cuba’s government] from reality.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>María Isabel Alfonso is affiliated with Cuban Americans for Engagement (CAFE).</span></em></p>Talks with the government ended with accusations that the dissenting artists were ‘paid by North American agencies’ – an age-old way to discredit dissent in Cuba. But these protests are homegrown.María Isabel Alfonso, Professor of Spanish, St. Joseph's College of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1344292020-03-26T10:26:52Z2020-03-26T10:26:52ZBy sending doctors to Italy, Cuba continues its long campaign of medical diplomacy<p>As Italy continues its battle against the global coronavirus pandemic, Cuba has sent <a href="https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2020/03/21/news/coronavirus_cuba_in_soccorso_dell_italia_52_medici_e_infermieri_in_arrivo_a_crema-251931147/">52 doctors and nurses</a> to the country to help. The excellent training of Cuban doctors as well as the fact that they are used to working in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/cubas-impressive-role-on-ebola.html">precarious and high-risk situations</a> will provide invaluable support for the Italian people. </p>
<p>For nearly 60 years, Cuba has been sending healthcare professionals around the world. It does this in solidarity with those in need, but also as part of a concerted campaign of medical diplomacy and to make money to help the country survive an ongoing US embargo. </p>
<p>Since the very early years of the Cuban revolution, its former leader, Fidel Castro, made clear that universal healthcare and internationalism would be key to the country’s strategy. Based on the socialist concept that everyone should have the same opportunities in life, Cuba believed these ideals should be applicable at the global level. The Cuban programme was born out of an interest to export its revolutionary socialist ideals, first to Africa, and later to South America and the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Cuba sent its first long-term mission of Cuban doctors to Algeria in 1963, a country facing a territorial conflict with Morocco. Since then, Cuba has sent more than 400,000 healthcare professionals to work in 164 countries, according to <a href="http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2020-03-23/cubasalva-practica-humanista-de-la-revolucion-23-03-2020-01-03-38">statistics published</a> by the state media.</p>
<p>They have helped both in disaster relief, as well as to provide access to healthcare for those living in remote areas, for example in Venezuela and Brazil. These interventions are born out of trade cooperation agreements between the receiving country and Cuba, for which the Cuban government <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/12bd92f8-1bae-11d9-8af6-00000e2511c8">gets paid either in cash or in goods</a>. </p>
<p>In 2019, more than <a href="https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-22/cuba-envia-a-italia-y-america-latina-brigadas-medicas-para-enfrentar-el-coronavirus.html">28,000 Cuban healthcare professionals</a> were working abroad. And before the outbreak of the coronavirus, 59 countries were benefiting from Cuba’s medical internationalism. The Cuban government recently <a href="http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2020-03-23/cubasalva-practica-humanista-de-la-revolucion-23-03-2020-01-03-38">confirmed</a> that its medical missions will be maintained and that, where needed, the services provided by their doctors would focus on combating the virus.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1241675000794558466"}"></div></p>
<p>The national press never misses an opportunity to present Cuba’s <a href="http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2019-05-22/los-medicos-son-los-heroes-22-05-2019-21-05-15">internationalist doctors as heroes</a>, responsible for giving hope to people all over the world who are in desperate situations. Pedro*, one of the doctors I interviewed as part of my <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26382599?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">research</a> on the life stories of Cuban healthcare workers, explained the uniqueness of the Cuban doctors’ position:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The doctor can be Cuban, or from another country, but not every doctor will sacrifice their life and put themselves in danger to save lives, and this without any kind of financial compensation. This is something we Cubans only do. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Critics and fugitives</h2>
<p>Despite the admirable aspects of the programme, it has also received criticism. Some suggest the <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5531/d06ec4e99076859a725a397f7b6c83752a2c.pdf">real interests</a> of the programme are economic and diplomatic and that it allows Cuba to shift scrutiny away from its own <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/cuba">poor human rights record</a>. </p>
<p>Others have <a href="https://www.ascecuba.org/asce_proceedings/cubas-business-of-humanitarianism-the-medical-mission-in-haiti/">criticised</a> what they see as the “selective humanitarianism” of the programme, calling attention to the lower numbers of doctors available to the Cuban population due to the high numbers of doctors working abroad. In my research in Cuba, I’ve witnessed long waiting times in medical centres and several of the people I interviewed spoke of a lack of continuity in doctor-patient care.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-cuban-healthcare-system-really-as-great-as-people-claim-69526">Is the Cuban healthcare system really as great as people claim?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As for the doctors and nurses who take part, their participation is not always driven by solidarity but in <a href="https://theconversation.com/castros-legacy-cuban-doctors-still-go-abroad-but-its-no-longer-driven-by-international-solidarity-65181">some cases by the opportunities</a> these missions represent for them and their families. In many cases, working on a mission will improve their standard of living when they return to the island. Many are also able to send goods such as fridges or other household appliances to their families while they are away. </p>
<p>Many doctors have also used the mission as a way to escape a country that is still governed by an authoritarian regime and between 2006 and 2016, more than 7,000 Cuban doctors <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-usa-doctors-idUSL1N14S1LY20160108">defected to the US</a>. Several have even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/americas/brazil-cuban-doctors-revolt.html">accused the Cuban government</a> of using them as modern slaves. </p>
<h2>A moment for global cooperation</h2>
<p>Cuba always offers its medical help, but Italy is the first developed European country which has decided to accept it. </p>
<p>Many global leaders have been wary of doing so, because of Cuba’s poor human rights record. The case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is illustrative here. Castro offered to send 1,500 doctors to the US to help with the relief effort. A special group of healthcare professionals was formed for the task called the Henry Reeve medical brigade, <a href="http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005/esp/f040905e.html">named after</a> an American who supported the Cuban independence forces in 1868 and died in combat for the cause. But US president George W Bush <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/09/05/katrina.cuba/index.html">never got back to Castro</a> and the doctors and nurses were redeployed elsewhere. It’s this same brigade which has now gone to Italy. </p>
<p>In 2005, while waiting for Bush’s response, Castro <a href="http://www.fidelcastro.cu/it/node/1257">made clear</a> what should be at the centre of decisions in times of crisis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is not a war between human beings, it is a war for the life of human beings, it is a war against diseases, against repeating calamities, and one of the first things this world should learn especially now, with the changes that are taking place and the phenomena of this type, is to cooperate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While everyone may not agree with Castro’s revolution, perhaps this is a moment for the world to put ideological disagreements aside and focus on the global war against coronavirus by all working together. </p>
<p><em>* Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of interviewees.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla has received funding related to this research from the British Council.</span></em></p>Cuba stresses its programme to send doctors abroad is based in solidarity. But there are diplomatic and economic reasons too.Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Associate Professor in Global Sustainable Development, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1156722019-04-18T10:45:13Z2019-04-18T10:45:13ZTrump declares economic war on Cuba<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269857/original/file-20190417-139110-yomti8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Airlines that fly into Cuba's main airport could now be sued for profiting off of property confiscated during the country's 1959 revolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Cuba-Tourism/e0c80225cc0f48b996220733c2c25d15/34/0">AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Trump administration has <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article229341009.html">declared</a> the most severe new sanctions against Cuba since President John F. Kennedy imposed an <a href="https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/cuba/">economic embargo</a> banning all trade with the communist island in 1962. </p>
<p>Speaking in Miami on April 17, the anniversary of the United States’ <a href="https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/history/bay-of-pigs-the-botched-invasion-happened-58-years-ago/67-d5895183-235f-4b1d-a8b7-7b92d7c60e5a">failed 1961 invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs</a>, national security adviser John Bolton announced the end of virtually all non-family travel to Cuba and placed new limits on the money Cuban Americans can send to family on the island. </p>
<p>He also said the U.S. will now implement a <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article224646995.html">23-year-old law aimed at blocking both U.S. and foreign investment in Cuba</a>, first passed by Congress in 1996 as part of a broader sanctions package against Cuba but <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19991214_RL30386_714aa7ff79cec8fc7f29926c448f6d1bc1d6bef2.pdf">put on hold because it triggered immense opposition</a> among U.S. allies.</p>
<p>The harsh new sanctions reverse “the disastrous Obama-era policies, and finally end the glamorization of socialism and communism,” Bolton said.</p>
<h2>A law too controversial to implement</h2>
<p>Trump’s decision activates a long-suspended 1996 provision of U.S. Cuba sanctions that allows Cuban Americans to <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article224646995.html">sue in U.S. courts</a> any company that benefits from private property of theirs confiscated by Fidel Castro’s regime. </p>
<p>Normally, U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over property owned by non-citizens that is nationalized by a foreign government. For U.S. courts to sit in judgment of another government’s actions toward its own citizens in its own territory is a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-cuba-economy/investors-in-cuba-wary-of-impact-from-u-s-threats-venezuela-crisis-idUSKCN1PW2UJ">challenge to that government’s sovereignty</a>.</p>
<p>U.S. allies who do business with Cuba vehemently <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-u-s-policy-on-cuba-sanctions-threatens-eu-ties-11555421835">oppose the move</a>. </p>
<p>In 1996, when the U.S. law was first approved, the European Union <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB931464187753635502">filed a complaint</a> with the World Trade Organization and adopted a law prohibiting EU members and their companies from complying with the U.S. legislation. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/13/world/canada-and-mexico-join-to-oppose-us-law-on-cuba.html">Mexico, Canada</a> and the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/3171/contents/made">United Kingdom</a> soon passed similar legislation.</p>
<p>In response, President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/21/world/europeans-drop-lawsuit-contesting-cuba-trade-act.html">Bill Clinton suspended</a> the lawsuit provision, which is called Title III, for six months, and in 1998 he signed <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-usa-cuba/eu-warns-u-s-against-exposing-eu-firms-in-cuba-idUSKCN1RT147">an agreement</a> with the EU that European companies who do business in Cuba would not be targeted. </p>
<p>Since then, every president, Democrat and Republican, has renewed the suspension. Trump himself renewed it three times – until he didn’t. </p>
<p>The president has now <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190417-cuba-sanctions-trump-eu-opposition-economy-business-usa">reignited international outrage</a> over this sanction, which abrogates Clinton’s agreement with the EU and complicates already rocky U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada.</p>
<h2>Who wins?</h2>
<p>A small but elite community stands to benefit from Title III: Cuba’s former <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/castro-cuban-exiles-america/">one percenters</a> – members of the exiled upper class that owned nearly all the land and business in Cuba prior to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. </p>
<p>Most wealthy Cubans fled the country after Fidel Castro’s Communist government <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Revolution">nationalized their businesses and confiscated</a> their homes, bank accounts and property. Some <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article213916384.html">still dream</a> of recouping their lost fortunes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban women seeking political asylum in Florida, Jan. 1, 1959.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-FL-USA-APHS460141-Cuba-Revolution-C-/cfa63ac7d7ac445d95673fabb8324785/12/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They can now sue Cuban, American and foreign companies that profit in any way from the use of that property. </p>
<p>For example, former owners of Cuba’s nickel mines could seek damages from Canada’s <a href="https://www.sherritt.com/English/operations/metals/Moa/default.aspx">Sherritt International Corporation</a>, which has invested in Cuba’s nickel mining industry. The former owners of Cuban hotels could sue the Spanish hotel company <a href="http://www.meliacuba.com/">Melia</a>, which manages hotels across the island. </p>
<p>Every U.S. and foreign company that <a href="https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/1139/1/S0900391_en.pdf">does business with Cuba</a> – or might do so in the future – risks being sued if they make use of property once owned by a Cuban exile who is now a U.S. citizen. According to a 1996 <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44822">State Department analysis</a>, implementing Title III could flood U.S. federal courts with as many as 200,000 lawsuits.</p>
<h2>Trump’s 2020 bet</h2>
<p>Most Cuban Americans will gain nothing from Trump’s latest sanctions. </p>
<p>It exempts private residences from compensation. So, if the main thing you owned back in Cuba was a house that was confiscated after Jan. 1, 1959, you’re out of luck. </p>
<p>The exiled owners of thousands of <a href="https://havanatimes.org/?p=74021">small Cuban mom-and-pop shops nationalized in 1968</a> won’t see compensation, either, because the law exempts Cuban small businesses that were confiscated.</p>
<p>Those who stand to benefit are the oldest, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-to-expect-from-the-cuban-american-electorate/">most conservative</a> and wealthiest segment of Florida’s 1.5 million Cuban Americans. </p>
<p>Trump <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/donald-trump-says-cuban-voters-love-him-but-hes-wrong-9146019">believes</a> these influential Republicans helped him win Florida in 2016 because he promised to take a hard line toward Havana, rolling back President Obama’s restoration of diplomatic and economic relations with the island. </p>
<p>If the president thinks these punishing new sanctions can <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article156579409.html">deliver Florida to him</a> again in 2020, he may have miscalculated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has championed the Trump administration’s sanctions against Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Cuba/02e2bcf00f64494795fdf45389daf850/27/0">AP/Lynne Sladky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve studied <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/wleogra.cfm">Cuba-U.S. relations for decades</a>. While activating the law may please Cuba’s former wealthy business owners, Trump’s new sanctions – like limiting the money Cuban Americans can send back to the island – are unlikely to be popular in the broader Cuban American community.</p>
<p>By decisive majorities, <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2018-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">Cuban Americans support</a> free travel between the U.S. and Cuba, broader commercial ties and President Obama’s decision to normalize relations. Every year, they send <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/opinion/cuba-castro-united-states.html">$3 billion</a> to family on the island, and hundreds of thousands of them travel there to visit.</p>
<p>These Cuban-American voters don’t want to inflict more economic pain on the Cuban public, which includes their friends and family. </p>
<h2>Hurting everyday Cubans</h2>
<p>The punitive aspects of the newly implemented law, which administration officials have for months <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article220976370.html">hinted that they would put into effect</a>, are already having an impact.</p>
<p>Cuban American families who owned the land and facilities at the <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article213916384.html">port of Havana</a> and <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/cuba/us-might-allow-lawsuits-over-us-properties-nationalized-in-cuba-20190117/">José Martí International Airport</a> have warned the cruise ship companies and airlines that their use of these properties could put them at legal risk.</p>
<p>Along with money sent from their families abroad, tourism-related income sustains many everyday Cubans.</p>
<p>If travel businesses withdraw from Cuba, and if U.S. and foreign firms <a href="https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-02-07/investors-in-cuba-wary-of-impact-from-us-threats-venezuela-crisis">hesitate to enter</a> into new commercial relations with Cuba for fear of incurring lawsuits in the United States, Cuba’s already <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy/cuba-lowers-economic-growth-forecast-as-trade-continues-to-drop-idUSKCN1N90JO">fragile economy</a> would take a serious hit.</p>
<p>That may play well with Cuba’s old elite. But the rest of Florida’s Cuban Americans will feel the hurt, too.</p>
<p><em>This article has been corrected to more accurately identify the businesses subject to litigation under new U.S. sanctions. There is no minimum profit level required for a company that operates in Cuba to be sued.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William M. LeoGrande does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Trump administration has declared the most severe new sanctions against Cuba since President John F. Kennedy imposed an economic embargo banning all trade with the communist island in 1962.William M. LeoGrande, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1140572019-03-25T16:29:19Z2019-03-25T16:29:19ZCuba after Castro: royal visit to Havana reflects important shift in UK policy<p>From Winston Churchill to the Rolling Stones, Cuba has hosted its fair share of famous Britons over the years. But the first official royal visit by the Prince of Wales and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall in 2019 heralds an important shift in Her Majesty’s Government’s longstanding policy towards the island. </p>
<p>Until recently, little had changed since 1898, when the US intervened to end Spanish colonial rule in Cuba and <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9780230295445">Britain largely surrendered</a> to growing US dominance in the Caribbean sphere. But Britain’s soft power play today indicates an alignment with Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-35858350/barack-obama-in-cuba-at-start-of-historic-visit">2014 diplomatic re-engagement</a> with the island, rather than <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/donald-trump-reverses-barack-obamas-cuba-policy">Donald Trump’s rolling back</a> of this initiative. Obama judged the 54-year-long US trade blockade a failure, and ordered the unfreezing of Cold War-era policy. </p>
<p>Fidel Castro’s fiercely anti-American outlook and accommodation with Moscow were always the main issues for Washington. While Fidel and his then younger brother, Raúl Castro, were in charge, Britain could not disentangle its relations with Cuba from its much weightier “special relationship” with the United States. With <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/world/americas/miguel-diaz-canel-bermudez-cuba.html">Miguel Díaz-Canel</a> now president in a post-Cold War, <a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-private-home-ownership-recognised-for-first-time-since-the-revolution-100204">post-Fidel Cuba</a>, the British government is freer to steer a more independent course. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265426/original/file-20190323-36260-17o6wh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Cuban couple in Buenavista, Havana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Felko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Change in the wind</h2>
<p>The future king and his wife are the first British royals to set foot in Cuba since the Duke of Windsor. He sailed in from West Palm Beach in 1955, following visits in 1948 and 1954 to play amateur golf. On his final trip, the US ambassador, <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/gardner-arthur">Arthur Gardner</a> (a non-career diplomat), hosted the former King Edward VIII – not famed for his sound political judgement – and his American wife Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor. </p>
<p>Cuba’s dictator Fulgencio Batista granted the two friends a special audience at the Presidential Palace, now the Museum of the Revolution. Just two months later, Batista committed the grave error of granting amnesties to imprisoned brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro. This freed them to plot his revolutionary downfall just two years after their first failed uprising. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265424/original/file-20190323-36279-n1fee8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barbershop, Havana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arien Chang Castán</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>British writer Graham Greene correctly sensed pending political change, reflected in his iconic espionage satire Our Man in Havana which was published 12 weeks before the Revolution on January 1 1959. A new <a href="https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9781643130187-our-man-down-in-havana">biographical study of Greene in Cuba</a> reveals the backstory to his spy spoof, including the novel’s insight that “the president’s regime was creaking dangerously towards its end”.</p>
<p>When Greene began writing the story in Old Havana itself in late 1957, the capital was abuzz with rebel insurrection and rampant hotel construction. The Capri, Habana Riviera, and Habana Hilton hotels towered over the city’s Vedado neighbourhood. The Castro-led Revolution soon replaced free-market capitalism with Soviet-style socialism, nationalising the new hotels (the Hilton becoming the Habana Libre) and other established US businesses on the island. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265429/original/file-20190323-36252-mim3l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Grand Packard hotel under construction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lissette Solórzano</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A good view</h2>
<p>Today, foreign rather than Cuban representations still dominate the way Westerners imagine Havana and its inhabitants. The city’s transformation into a visual mecca became particularly evident in the 1990s, when a stream of visual cliches in film and photography appeared in advertising, travel guides, coffee table photobooks, movies, music videos and documentaries. The highly influential film Buena Vista Social Club (1999) by Wim Wenders became the benchmark for the way outsiders came to imagine Havana. His documentary’s iconic scenes helped shape the dominant perception of a city frozen in time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265425/original/file-20190323-36276-1isdinr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Street scene, Havana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arien Chang Castán</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Various types of images further popularised a time capsule myth about Havana, underlining the city’s survival in the face of a relentless economic blockade. It encouraged people to make a mental link between pre-Castro Cuba and its revolutionary present. Footage of vintage American cars and crumbling buildings was accompanied by traditional Cuban songs performed by ageing musicians. Over the past two decades, this type of aesthetic has been extended through foreign representations of Havana.</p>
<p>The royal tour’s inclusion of a meet and greet with current Buena Vista Social Club band members indicates the way this phenomenon still shapes the tourist experience today. But the reality is quite different. For example, despite the outdated way outsiders still view the country, Cubans – especially the young – have embraced new technologies, including latest generation <a href="https://thehill.com/latino/434847-4g-sim-cards-fly-off-the-shelves-in-cuba">WiFi and 4G internet</a>. Dynamism and modernity are in the air. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319640297">new book</a> reveals how different ways of seeing have shaped the way foreigners imagine Havana. The upcoming exhibition <a href="https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/events/this-is-cuba-documentary-photography-after-fidel">This is Cuba: Documentary photography after Fidel</a>, featuring recent, unseen work by Cuban and foreign photographers (some of which accompanies this article), at Royal Holloway, University of London, further explores these themes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265427/original/file-20190323-36256-uy53xu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Havana’s Malecón esplanade at sunrise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Clifford Kent</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Economic and political isolation, intensified by the aforementioned US trade embargo, reinforces outsiders’ impression that Cuba is a “unique” island of communism, surviving – come hell or high water – in a sea of global capitalism. But tourists – including both “bucket list” and repeat visitors – travel to Cuba in their millions to experience an intoxicating cocktail of cultures, set in tropical surroundings to the sound of a distinctive Afro-Cuban beat. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265431/original/file-20190323-36273-gt6e11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mourning Fidel Castro’s death in Havana’s Revolution Square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raúl Cañibano Ercilla</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No golden arches</h2>
<p>Foreigners appear in a hurry to experience a communist post-Cold War relic before either they or the revolution disappears – or before McDonald’s opens its first franchise and spawns a vista of golden arches across the island. Rather than product advertising, however, roadside billboards implore Cubans to resist their dominant northern neighbour. Big Macs remain off the local menu, and therein lies Cuba’s special appeal.</p>
<p>Before Fidel Castro’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidel-castro-immortalised-in-photographs-70380">death in late 2016</a>, outsiders presumed the revolution would die alongside its leader and the island would revert to its pre-revolutionary condition of US dominance. The moment passed, yet his revolutionary project and the city’s romanticised aesthetic endure.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265428/original/file-20190323-36276-wc1lzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A vigil in Havana following Fidel Castro’s death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leandro Feal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cuba in the Western imagination continues to teeter doggedly but alluringly on the cusp of change, with the Revolution’s day of reckoning constantly postponed. Echoing the years preceding 1959, large foreign investment (including from France, Spain, and Qatar) is once again transforming Havana’s skyline. Recent openings of luxury hotels in the rundown capital include the Gran Hotel Manzana and the Grand Packard, with the Prado y Malecón due to complete in late 2019.</p>
<p>From where and from whom, therefore, should we anticipate change? The British royal visit itself signals a departure from the long-held Cuban policy of Washington’s closest ally. With other Western countries <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9ef0f118-4fcd-11e8-a7a9-37318e776bab">exploiting economic openings in Cuba</a> – and Britain keen to compete with them more openly – does only Trump’s administration stand in the way?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Clifford Kent acknowledges support received from MEITS, a flagship AHRC-funded project which aims to revitalize Modern Languages and shape UK language policy by showing how multilingualism can empower individuals and transform societies.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Hull does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A first-ever official royal visit now signals a sea change in British foreign policy towards post-Fidel Cuba.James Clifford Kent, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonChristopher Hull, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of ChesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093422019-01-08T12:10:36Z2019-01-08T12:10:36ZHow the Cuban revolution kickstarted the country’s golden age of cinema<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252675/original/file-20190107-32121-sf1tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, director of the 1968 Cuban film Memories of Underwood.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:TOMAS_GUTI%C3%89RREZ_ALEA.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the bearded guerrillas from the Sierra Maestra mountains <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidel-castro-and-the-revolution-that-almost-wasnt-69659">took Cuba from dictator Fulgencio Batista</a> in January 1959, a revolution began. Changes <a href="https://theconversation.com/education-and-art-for-all-castros-cultural-legacy-69513">were seen in everything</a> from education to health care, politics to the arts. The country became a site for social experimentation in all aspects of life – including cinema. </p>
<p>The formation of the the Cuban Film Institute (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, or ICAIC) on March 24, 1959 was the first of many <a href="https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/cubasi/article/202/the-cultural-policy-of-the-cuban-revolution">new institutes</a> designed to take back control of all Cuban life. Before the revolution, Cuba’s film industry was very small with a few notable successes, such as El Capitán Mambí (1914). But it was always dominated by large North American studios such as MGM and Warner Bros, who had a virtual monopoly over film production and distribution throughout Latin America. </p>
<p>It was never the aim of the ICAIC to try and replicate this silver screen success, however. It was set up to produce and disseminate a new culture, one designed to decolonise the island from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19576144">its long history</a> of Spanish and US dominance.</p>
<p>Cuban filmmakers found a variety of new aesthetics inspired by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015648/">Soviet socialist realism</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056663/">French nouvelle vague</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/">Italian neorealism</a>. They mixed documentary and fiction styles to deliberately blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. They went far beyond either Hollywood or European influences to write a new history of the island in celluloid. </p>
<p>Many of these films gained international recognition. 1968’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063291/">Memories of Underdevelopment</a>, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, is recognised as one of the top 100 films of all time <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/feb/10/artsfeatures">by leading critics</a> and continues to divide opinion <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/memories_of_underdevelopment">as to its meaning</a>. Radical, densely layered and complex, the film examines one man’s struggle to come to terms with the new Cuba in the early 1960s. A Cuba in which each citizen was asked to question their own subjective consciousness, their place and meaning in the new society.</p>
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<p>If the 1960s was the decade of experimentation, the 1970s proved to be a problematic decade for Cuban culture generally. But while literature and theatre <a href="http://pardeeperiodical.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Microsoft-Word-Spring-2018-Jain.pdf">suffered from censorship</a> and the imprisonment or exile of a <a href="https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/the-cuban-exiles-of-echo-park">number of prominent artists</a>, cinema largely escaped the censors’ harsh cutting knife. Films with critical voices – such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HdH2wmXK0">Portrait of Teresa (1979)</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYnL3YjjYhA">One Day in November (1971)</a> – continued to be released due to the revolutionary nature of the filmmakers themselves, as well as the nature of the medium, which was often difficult to interrogate from a political point of view.</p>
<h2>Avant garde seriousness</h2>
<p>Cuban filmmakers avoided Hollywood’s frivolities and focused on re-writing the country’s history in films that tackled serious subjects in often avant garde ways. They dealt with the island’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073499/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_10">history of slavery</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075915/">gender and machismo</a> and more contemporary issues such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122700/fullcredits">housing</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103620/fullcredits">generational differences</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089472/">exile and emigration</a>.</p>
<p>As experimental cinema mostly has a limited audience, a more popular aesthetic was sought during the 1980s. Filmmakers tried to combine the seriousness of using cinema as an art form, and not simply for entertainment, with content that would speak to the average Cuban. Social satire became commonplace and films such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094993/">Plaf! Or Too Afraid of Life</a> (1988) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087387/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Up to a Certain Point</a> (1983) reached audiences of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/cuban-cinema">up to two million</a>, at a time when the island’s population <a href="http://www.one.cu/publicaciones/cepde/plegablecenso/Plegable%20Censo%20Sitio.pdf">was 9.7 million</a>.
The 1990s was a difficult decade for Cuba generally. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought to an end the economic and ideological support that had helped sustain the revolution for 30 years. Many predicted the end of the revolution itself, but it survived through what was euphemistically called the “<a href="http://www.cubahistory.org/en/special-period-a-recovery.html">Special Period in Peacetime</a>”. The Cuban film institute lived on too – but with some changes, mainly linked with the necessity for co-productions with foreign production companies. </p>
<p>Cuba’s colonial past and the Communist revolution have left a lasting imprint on the country’s society. Yet there is a tangible sense of change on the island again, since President Miguel Díaz Canel <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-new-president-what-to-expect-of-miguel-diaz-canel-95187">was elected in April 2018</a>. This has been reflected in the national cinema too. Cuba is moving into the digital age and film is one of the drivers of this progress. </p>
<p>Internet access is still limited but cheaper digital production methods have supported the efficacy and global reach of Cuban filmmakers. Their work, somewhat in lieu of adequate distribution and traditional screening facilities, is often disseminated via “flash” (USB memory sticks). This DIY attitude is typical of the resourcefulness of a people who have lived through years of economic challenges. </p>
<p>Taking advantage of the digital world, Cuban cinema today, while still having strong roots within the national film institute, is still a source of social criticism. Films do sometimes still <a href="https://havanatimes.org/?p=131942">suffer at the hands of the censors</a>, and there is the constant struggle between the government and the filmmakers to officially <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422017716026">allow independent production</a> on the island. But while all this goes on Cuba’s filmmakers keep on making and somehow – any how – distributing their films. Although today it is a different national cinema from 60 years ago, it is still revolutionary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Baron receives funding from The British Academy.</span></em></p>60 years ago a revolution began within the revolution for Cuba’s film industry.Guy Baron, Senior Lecturer in Spanish, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1083012018-12-10T11:41:57Z2018-12-10T11:41:57Z5 things to know about Guantanamo Bay on its 115th birthday<p>The naval base at Guantanamo Bay is quietly commemorating its 115th anniversary. </p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-useful-corner-of-the-world-guantnamo">Dec. 10, 1903</a>, the United States established its first overseas military base on 45 square miles of Cuban territory.</p>
<p>Today, the base at Guantanamo Bay is infamously associated with images of Muslim detainees wearing orange jumpsuits – alleged terrorists detained after the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks.</p>
<p>But there’s much more to this naval base than its use as an offshore prison, as I documented in my book, “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution</a>.” </p>
<p>Here are five things you probably don’t know about Guantanamo Bay.</p>
<h2>1. The U.S. won it as a spoil of war</h2>
<p>The United States intervened in Cuba’s decades-long battle for independence from Spain in 1898, waging a six-week military campaign that Secretary of State John Hay memorably described as a “<a href="https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/spanish-american-war-a-splendid-little-war.htm">splendid little war</a>.” </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-1898-United-History-Historiography-ebook/dp/B00ZVEJR1I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544069997&sr=8-1&keywords=War+of+1898+Louis+Perez">Spanish quickly surrendered</a>, signing the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/treaty.html">Treaty of Paris</a> and then handing over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249503/original/file-20181207-128202-1bkr0na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The military personnel at Guantanamo Bay is American, but most workers are from Jamaica and the Philippines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Cuba-The-Two-Guantanamos-Photo-Essay/43bde3e7df124a8b999b3d3040541e1d/41/0">AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve full independence, the U.S. required the Cuban government to <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1901platt.asp">amend</a> its new Constitution to allow the U.S. to “<a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1901platt.asp">sell or lease</a>” territory for a naval <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/mahan">base</a>. The Cubans did so grudgingly. </p>
<p>Unlike most leases, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leasing-Guantanamo-Praeger-Security-International/dp/0313377820/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544072077&sr=1-1&keywords=Michael+Strauss+guantanamo">this one has</a> no end date. The U.S. military <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/dip_cuba003.asp">may use the site indefinitely</a>.</p>
<p>The base in Guantanamo Bay has been a reminder of American imperialism in the Caribbean ever since. </p>
<p>Cuba wants the land returned. In his historic meeting with Barack Obama in 2016, President Raúl Castro <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/21/cuba-wants-back-the-illegally-occupied-base-at-guantanamo-the-u-s-isnt-budging/?utm_term=.e880b952cad3">cited the base</a> as a key obstacle in improving U.S.-Cuban relations. </p>
<h2>2. The Cuban revolution took place nearby</h2>
<p>When I tell people I study Guantanamo, they immediately imagine the military base. I’ve never set foot there. </p>
<p>My research is about the eastern Cuban city of Guantánamo, located some 15 miles inland from Guantanamo Bay. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249504/original/file-20181207-128214-84ivyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/CheyFidel.jpg">Alberto Korda/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Guantánamo, home to about 200,000 people, is an 18-hour bus ride from Havana in an eastern Cuban region called <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/60061">Oriente</a> – a stronghold of the Cuban Revolution. </p>
<p>Starting in December 1956, brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro and a small group of guerrillas began a military campaign in Oriente that would ultimately overthrow <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/07/archives/batista-excuban-dictator-dies-in-spain-unending-exile-succession-of.html">Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista</a>.</p>
<p>Cuban base workers at Guantanamo Bay aided the Castros’ insurgency by raising money on the base and pilfering supplies like gasoline. Evidence suggests that some U.S. military personnel <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2642-where-the-boys-are">secretly funneled arms</a> to the guerrillas. The <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809053414">sons of three American servicemen</a> even ran off to join the uprising in 1957.</p>
<p>The Cuban base workers generally escaped punishment, but at least one U.S. sailor faced a court martial for supporting the Castros’ revolution. </p>
<h2>3. Jamaicans and Filipinos are the main workforce</h2>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article208401179.html">6,000 people</a> live on the Guantanamo Bay naval base today, including American military personnel, their families and civilian staff. </p>
<p>Historically, most of the staff at Guantanamo Bay were <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Cubans</a> from the city of Guantánamo. The base offered steady jobs at wages far higher than those on local sugar plantations. </p>
<p>But in 1964 Fidel Castro cut off the base’s Cuban water supply in a diplomatic conflict with the United States. President Lyndon Johnson ordered most <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Cuban workers fired</a> to make the base more self-sufficient. </p>
<p>Jamaican and later Filipino guest laborers were brought in to take their place. Today, these guest workers live in <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article168273127.html">trailers and old barracks</a> on the base and do everything from <a href="https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2018/welcome-to-rasta-hill-at-guantanamo-bay/">construction and food services</a> to laundry. Many are paid <a href="https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2018/welcome-to-rasta-hill-at-guantanamo-bay/">less than the U.S. minimum wage</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Guantanamo Bay is a mostly Constitution-free zone</h2>
<p>The 1898 Guantanamo Bay lease agreement created a paradox over who has legal authority on the base by stipulating that Cuba retains “<a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/dip_cuba002.asp">ultimate sovereignty</a>” over the territory while the U.S. has “<a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/dip_cuba002.asp">complete jurisdiction</a>.”</p>
<p>Local Guantánamo journalist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Lino Lemes</a> wrote about the practical implications of this legal contradiction in the 1940s and 1950s. He observed that the working conditions of Cubans employed at Guantanamo Bay complied with neither Cuban nor American labor laws. </p>
<p>In 1954, U.S. officers on the base <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">jailed a Cuban employee for two weeks without trial</a> for allegedly stealing a couple hundred dollars in cigarettes from the naval exchange where he worked. </p>
<p>Leaders of the base workers’ union said that his detention violated due process. </p>
<p>“We could not conceive that in a naval establishment of the most powerful nation in the world, champion of democracy, things like this could happen,” they wrote.</p>
<p>More recently, in the 1990s, the Coast Guard intercepted thousands of <a href="https://gitmomemory.org/timeline/haitians-and-gtmo/">Haitians fleeing post-coup political unrest</a> in boats and brought them to Guantanamo Bay. Most were denied asylum and sent home.</p>
<p>But 205 HIV-positive refugees <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469626314/rightlessness/">were detained</a> at Guantanamo Bay for months. Though they had been granted asylum, immigration officials would not admit them into the United States because of their health status. </p>
<p>Human rights lawyers and <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Storming-the-Court/Brandt-Goldstein/9781416535157">law students took on their case</a>, charging that the base was a “<a href="http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2017/09/Law-Review-61.1-Koh.pdf">legal black hole</a>.” </p>
<p>A federal judge <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/09/nyregion/judge-orders-the-release-of-haitians.html">agreed</a>, writing in 1993 that the base had become “<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-turned-away-thousands-of-haitian-asylum-seekers-and-detained-hundreds-more-in-the-90s-98611">an HIV prison camp</a>.” He ordered all the Haitian asylum-seekers released and the Guantanamo Bay detention center closed. </p>
<p>The Haitians were admitted to the United States, but the unused facilities remained. And the base’s nebulous legal status – and therefore the question of whether the Constitution applies there – remained unresolved. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249497/original/file-20181207-128214-17aqzxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay: a thorn in Cuba’s side for 115 years and counting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Guantanamo-Planning-for-the-Future/ee87435c097f4b18b320f962204c431b/26/0">AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Dozens of people are still detained at Guantanamo Bay</h2>
<p>This set the stage for the Bush administration to transform Guantanamo Bay into a prison for alleged enemy combatants after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>The U.S. has held <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/current">780 men from more than 35 countries</a> at the base. Conditions there have included <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article1939250.html">imprisonment in cages</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/world/cia-torture-guantanamo-bay.html">sensory deprivation</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/politics/guantanamo-hunger-strikes-force-feeding.html">forced feedings</a> – treatment that many believe <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guantanamo-torture/u-n-expert-says-torture-persists-at-guantanamo-bay-u-s-denies-idUSKBN1E71QO">amounts to torture</a>. </p>
<p>Arguing that this was <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/23/remarks-president-plan-close-prison-guantanamo-bay">“contrary” to American values</a>, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html">close the detention center</a> in 2009 during his first days in office. Nearly 200 prisoners were released to their home countries or resettled elsewhere.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/current">40 people are still detained there</a>. The vast majority were never charged with a crime. </p>
<p>President Donald Trump has since <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/31/582033937/trump-signs-order-to-keep-prison-at-guantanamo-bay-open">ordered</a> the Guantanamo Bay military prison to remain open indefinitely. </p>
<p>The naval base in Guantanamo Bay will likely have many more anniversaries. Whether anyone celebrates is another matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Lipman has been an adviser to the Guantanamo Public Memory Project. She has also received the US Army Military History Institute's General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant. </span></em></p>On Dec. 10, 1903, the US military leased 45 square miles of Cuban territory to build a naval base. How did Guantanamo Bay become an infamous prison for alleged terrorists?Jana Lipman, Associate Professor of History, Tulane UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/987742018-06-27T13:55:47Z2018-06-27T13:55:47ZWhy Cuban doctors in Kenya don’t deserve the treatment they’re getting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224886/original/file-20180626-112614-1ttmssi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some of the 50 Cuban medical specialists who arrived in Kenya recently to work in under served rural areas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cuban medical missions abroad are perhaps one of the most <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8059287.stm">significant legacies </a> of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The programme involves Cuban doctors offering health care services in host countries, often in impoverished rural communities where there’s little access. </p>
<p>The programme stemmed from Cuba’s foreign policy objectives of anti-colonialism and humanitarianism in the 1960s. It became one way in which Cuba could avoid the isolation intended by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19583447">trade embargo</a> imposed by the US and its <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/about/offices_detail.asp?sCode=CUB">expulsion</a> from the Organisation of American States (OAS).</p>
<p><a href="http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-04-12/studying-medicine-in-cuba-an-option-for-international-youth">Well over</a> 131,993 Cuban doctors have taken part in international missions in 107 countries. Kenya is the latest.
<a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/article/2001283029/cuban-doctors-arrive-in-kenya-photos">The first</a> 50 specialists arrived in the country recently, with 50 more to follow. All are expected to work in under served rural areas.</p>
<p>But their arrival has been met with a storm of protest. Some Kenyan health professionals have <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/article/2001284756/cuban-doctors-free-to-work-in-kenya-cour">strongly opposed</a> their arrival on the grounds that they’ll be taking away local jobs. </p>
<p>My understanding of the work of Cuban doctors has been greatly influenced by the fact that I spent 7 years studying medicine in Cuba, one of thousands of <a href="http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-04-12/studying-medicine-in-cuba-an-option-for-international-yout">students from all over the globe</a> who have had the opportunity to study medicine on the island. The experience gave me a keen understanding of how the Cuban health system works. It also helped me understand what lies behind the medical missions programme. </p>
<p>I accept that the way the programme is implemented in countries like Kenya leaves a lot to be desired. But I would also argue that the services being provided by Cuban doctors is invaluable and the reasons for not wanting them in Kenya are not justified.</p>
<h2>The national benefit is paramount</h2>
<p>The current fears of the Kenyan medical fraternity are understandable. But their fears may be based on misinformation. <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/06/22/senators-accuse-state-of-being-vague-on-cuban-doctors-deal_c1776547">Prior consultations</a> between Kenyan government officials and the medical fraternity would have gone a long way to allaying these.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I believe that Kenyan doctors should focus on the national benefits of the programme. Cuban doctors are sent to rural, under-served areas – areas that local doctors often refuse to work in. In these communities, the mere presence of a doctor can make a tremendous difference in health outcomes. </p>
<p>In addition, the Cuban doctors being sent to Kenya are highly specialised in areas such as oncology and nephrology, areas of medicine which are in demand the world over. Their presence can only improve access to specialised medical care while reducing congestion in referral hospitals.</p>
<h2>Cuba’s healthcare missions</h2>
<p>Despite a level of <a href="https://www.ft.com/video/33cefce5-50d7-497f-9fc7-c9f345642d99?playlist-name=editors-picks&playlist-offset=1">economic stagnation</a>, Cuba has managed to maintain a universal health care system viewed as a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cubas-health-care-system-_b_5649968.html?guccounter=1">model</a> for other countries. Current data shows the doctor to patient ratio in Cuba is <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?locations=CU">well above</a> the United Nation’s target of 1:1000, at 7.5:1000 in 2014. By comparison, Kenya
has a ratio of <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?locations=KE">0.204 doctors per 1000 patients</a>.</p>
<p>Cuban trained doctors have been praised the world over for the level of service and compassion they offer. There are numerous examples of work that they’ve done. For example, Cuba were sent doctors to South Africa during a <a href="http://nuso.org/articulo/la-diplomacia-medica-cubana-recibe-una-pequena-ayuda-de-sus-amigos/">brain-drain in the post-apartheid era</a> as white medical doctors left that country in droves. </p>
<p>They also helped develop <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/HS.37.4.k">medical faculties</a> in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia and Haiti between 1963-2004. And they showed tremendous humanitarian spirit during the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cuban-medics-in-haiti-put-the-world-to-shame-2169415.html">Haitian Earthquake</a> in 2010, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/cuba-leads-fights-against-ebola-africa">Ebola outbreak</a> of 2014 and even offered the US assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The offer <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9311876/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/katrina-aid-cuba-no-thanks-says-us/">was rejected</a>. </p>
<p>The argument that Kenya should invest in its own citizens rather than sign a multi-million dollar deal with the Cuban government is a fair one and should be addressed. But I don’t believe that it’s simply a question of one or the other.</p>
<p>Studying medicine is costly and requires training for between six to seven years. This excludes specialisation. But what happens in the interim to sick, impoverished individuals in rural communities while doctors are being trained? Cuban doctors should be seen as a temporary reinforcement offering a level of service every Kenyan should demand.</p>
<h2>Why Cuban doctors?</h2>
<p>Is a Cuban doctor better than a Kenyan one? No. But Cuban doctors have specific expertise in dealing with tropical diseases such as malaria. This remains a major problem in Kenya even though it was <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/artandculture/Cuba-to-help-in-malaria-control/1222-890294-4a2f3ez/index.html">eradicated</a> in Cuba more than three decades ago. </p>
<p>It’s also important to keep some perspective when it comes to the numbers. Foreign physicians make up below 10% of all doctors in Kenya. There are 939 foreign doctors in the country’s register – but the <a href="https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/news/358-American-doctors-licensed-to-practise/539546-4565608-2qqb2j/index.html">majority (358) are from the US</a>. Only 100 are from Cuba. This is a tiny number.</p>
<p>The presence of these foreign doctors should be seen as a benefit to the country’s health care service. It offers the opportunity for Kenyan physicians to learn from the Cubans’ experiences working in a universal health care system with emphasis on preventative medicine. They could also learn from their integrated community medicine approach, how they’ve managed to eradicate various diseases as well as policies and guidelines in place in Cuba that could be implemented in Kenya. </p>
<p>Cuban physicians will also be able to learn from their Kenyan counterparts how their system operates, difficulties and challenges of working as a physician in Kenya as well as the cultural norms that Cuban physicians would have to consider when offering services to Kenyans.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the Kenyan health care system and its people will reap the rewards of the presence of Cuban doctors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rich Warner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cuban doctors have specific expertise in dealing with diseases like malaria which remains a major problem in Kenya.Rich Warner, PhD Candidate, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812422017-07-28T05:46:58Z2017-07-28T05:46:58ZCastro’s conundrum: finding a post-communist model Cuba can follow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179809/original/file-20170726-2676-1q8xnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Cuba, unlike in many Latin American countries, when you see children on the street, they're not begging; they're playing. And therein lies Castro's dilemma: how to reform Cuba's stagnant economy without losing what's working?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/HAaxKZ">Dan Lundberg/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When US President Donald Trump <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/politics/trump-cuba-policy/index.html">imposed new restrictions on Cuba</a> in June 2017, he professed his administration’s aim was to “encourage greater freedom for the Cuban people and economic interaction”.</p>
<p>Raúl Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, has been trying to <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-cuba-the-post-fidel-era-began-ten-years-ago-71720">figure out that last part for years</a>. In 2010, Castro spoke of the need to “<a href="http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/cuba-es/article139985523.html">update the economic model</a>”, but the world has regrettably few models for a communist country in transition can follow.</p>
<p>As Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban journal <a href="http://www.temas.cult.cu/">Temas</a>, informed America’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159466378/cuba-views-china-vietnam-as-economic-hope">National Public Radio</a> in 2012, “a new model for Cuba is still taking shape, but it would be foolish for the island to try copying China or Vietnam”. </p>
<p>In both of these countries, but particularly in China, the transition to a market economy in recent decades has created <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13945072">gross economic inequality</a> and come at a <a href="https://www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/three-gorges-dam">high social cost</a>. Such outcomes would be unacceptable in Cuba, where <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-donald-trump-change-cuba-79734">the revolutionary spirit of egalitarianism lives on</a>.</p>
<h2>Cuba’s <em>cuentapropistas</em></h2>
<p>In the meantime, Castro is giving Cuba’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/11/26/fidel-castros-economic-disaster-in-cuba/#563ca56f6b65">stagnant economy</a> a cash injection by pursuing a simple premise: maintain state control of the economy but give the private sector more room for manoeuvre. </p>
<p>At the March 2011 <a href="http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/documentos/2011/ing/l160711i.html">Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party</a>, Castro spearheaded the approval of 300 historic measures to unlock the country’s entrepreneurial spirit, including reducing public sector jobs, decentralising the state apparatus and encouraging self-employment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rickshaw drivers are among Cuba’s burgeoning self-employed class.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Castillo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a half-century of prohibition on where and how they could earn money, Cubans jumped at the opportunity to start their own small businesses. </p>
<p>Ramiro is one of them. “It was unbelievable, I took more than a hundred photos of Obama,” he told me on a crisp April afternoon while walking along the Malecón, the eight-kilometre esplanade along Havana’s north coast. </p>
<p>Barack Obama and his family landed at José Martí international airport in March 2016, the first US president to set foot on the island since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. </p>
<p>Ramiro, who sells <em>churros</em> in touristy Old Havana, is also a freelance photographer, and he followed the Obamas around the city, documenting their stay.</p>
<p>“Look at this one,” he said, showing me an image of the former president entering a restaurant with his wife and two daughters. “This is Obama when he went to have dinner at San Cristobal”, one of Cuba’s top-rated <em>paladares</em>, or private eateries. </p>
<p>“You should try the food there, you know Mick Jagger ate there, too?” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tourism is the engine that fuels Havana’s upscale private eateries, called <em>paladares</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">advencap/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The tourist engine</h2>
<p>Ramiro’s recommendation is tongue-in-cheek: I can’t afford San Cristobal and he knows it.</p>
<p>Happily, there are more affordable options among Havana’s 1,700 <em>paladares</em>. These in-home restaurants are part of the new economic model that encourages <em>cuentapropismo</em>, or self-employment, in Cuba. </p>
<p>By the end of 2016, there were more than 535,000 <em>cuentrapropistas</em> on the <a href="https://www.martinoticias.com/a/cuba-mas-medio-millon-cuentapropistas-cifras-oficiales/136867.html">island</a>. Self-employment now represents 26% of non-state employment, and it is projected to rise to 35%. </p>
<p>Other than owning a <em>paladar</em>, Cuban entrepreneurs may now legally engage in 202 other private activities, including being an electrician, animal trainer, gardener, hairdresser, street vendor and rickshaw driver.</p>
<p>Tourism is the engine of this change. According to Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism, more than <a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2017/07/12/ministro-del-turismo-cuba-proyecta-cerrar-el-ano-con-cuatro-millones-700-mil-turistas/#.WXe4jNOGNPM">4 million tourists are expected to land on the island in 2017</a>.</p>
<p>US tourism has long been banned here, even under Barack Obama, so Americans must seek one of 12 specific licences to avoid <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/cuba.aspx">violating US sanctions against Cuba</a>.</p>
<p>Lester and Laura, a Catholic couple in their 60s, told me that they “came in under the religious activities” license, citing one reason Americans can <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/how-to-travel-to-cuba_n_6489024">get authorisation to travel Cuba</a>.</p>
<p>Both schoolteachers, Lester and Laura were staying in an affordable <em>casa particular</em> (private home) on Old Havana’s Plaza Vieja. Like the <em>paladares</em>, these bed and breakfast-style accommodations are part of the <em>cuentapropista</em> economic plan.</p>
<p>The average host makes US$250 per booking, <a href="http://fortune.com/cuba-havana-airbnb/">according to Fortune magazine</a> – good money in a country where the average monthly salary is US$23. Business is clearly booming.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"872035360896933888"}"></div></p>
<p>Jaime and Mario, the owners of the <em>casa particular</em> hosting Lester and Laura, have impeccably renovated the fourth floor of their six-floor apartment building, splitting it into two self-contained bedrooms. </p>
<p>They’d like to add a third, they told me, but navigating Cuban bureaucracy is as slow as dancing <em>merengue</em>. Approval to expand will take months.</p>
<h2>An equitable society</h2>
<p>Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 at the age of 90, remains a revered figure among Cubans. He is buried 800 kilometres from Havana, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/fidel-castro-funeral-ashes-interred-cuba-cemetery">the Santa Ifigenia cemetery</a> in Santiago de Cuba, the birthplace of the Cuban revolution.</p>
<p>Don Raúl, a <em>Santiagueño</em> engineer who drives an unpainted 1954 Chevrolet, met me at the cemetery on one of those steamy, scorching Santiago mornings. He directed me to Fidel’s tomb (“Walk to the entry and then turn left”). </p>
<p>Fidel’s ashes are encased under a bulky granite boulder bearing a minimalist dark plaque engraved with just his first name. To pay respects to the legendary <em>comandante</em>, just as with so many things in Cuba from buying coffee to accessing the internet, one must queue.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fidel Castro remains a hero for many Cubans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Castillo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Without Fidel we are heading to an unequal society,” Don Raúl told me. He is suspicious of <em>cuentapropismo</em>, which enriches some and leaves others out. “It’s not good.” </p>
<p>He doesn’t consider himself an entrepreneur. “I’m just a driver,” he said. </p>
<p>Don Raul, who still gets emotional when he speaks of Fidel, worries that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-castro-diaz-canel-idUSKBN13P0FC">Miguel Díaz-Canel</a>, Raúl Castro’s designated successor, will push Cuba to become a “US-style country” when he takes the reins in 2018. </p>
<p>A girl, perhaps ten years old, leaves a bunch of red roses at Fidel’s tomb. </p>
<p>“He was a friend,” she told me. “He fought for the country and for the education of children.” </p>
<p>She’s onto something. Unlike elsewhere in Latin America, kids in Cuba don’t beg or sell candy on the streets. Education levels <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/world-bank-cuba-has-the-b_b_5925864.html">rival those of the developed world</a> and <a href="https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_Children_-_No._4.pdf">childhood malnutrition</a> is almost nonexistent. </p>
<p>These are key indicators of human development. Even in bad times, Cuba has been an equitable society. And herein lies the existential dilemma facing Castro (and, soon enough, Díaz-Canal): Cuba is poor, but it has also avoided many of the maladies facing its neighbours. </p>
<p>Raul Castro has described his vision for the country as “prosperous and sustainable socialism”. Now he just has to figure out what that looks like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Antonio Castillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cuba won’t tolerate the high social costs paid by China and Vietnam in their shift to market capitalism, but its economy desperately needs a reboot.Dr Antonio Castillo, Director, Centre for Communication, Politics and Culture, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700992016-12-12T10:04:45Z2016-12-12T10:04:45ZThe public and private faces of the friendship between Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez<p>Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is one of the most widely read Latin American authors in the world. His novels <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/12/gabriel-garcia-marquez-one-hundred-years-of-solitude-history">One Hundred Years of Solitude</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/aug/19/summer-readings-love-time-of-cholera">Love in the Time of Cholera</a> are among many people’s favourite books. But, despite loving his books, many of his readers have found it difficult to understand his political views – especially his support and friendship for the recently deceased former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro.</p>
<p>The relationship between the two Latin American legends makes for compelling reading. It began a few years before the triumph of the Revolution, when Garcia Marquez (“Gabo”) met the Cuban poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Guillen">Nicolas Guillén</a> in Paris. Guillén, who told him about a young law student, Fidel Castro, who might be the person capable of overthrowing Fulgencio Batista’s regime. Gabo met Castro for the first time in 1959 after the “triumph” of the revolution – when the Cuban leader invited journalists from around the world to cover “Operación Verdad” – his plan to prosecute Batista’s former collaborators. They exchanged a few sentences at that time but not much more.</p>
<p>The triumph of the revolution and the implementation of a socialist society corresponded to Garcia Marquez’s hopes for a better future for Latin America, and he joined other Latin American intellectuals offering public support to Castro’s revolution. But this romantic journey was interrupted in 1968 by the outbreak of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/oct/14/guardianobituaries.cuba">Padilla Affair</a>, which represented the end of the freedom of expression and opinion in Cuba. The arrest and show trial of Heberto Padilla, a poet who had been critical of Castro’s revolution, was greeted by dismay by many of Castro’s formerly steadfast supporters – including the Peruvian Nobel Prize-winning writer <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/">Mario Vargas Llosa</a> – himself at that time a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/books/29marq.html">close friend of Garcia Marquez</a>. Gabo himself however, continued to support Castro – to the surprise of many.</p>
<p>At this stage García Márquez was not particularly close to Castro – he had yet to convince the Cuban leader of his commitment towards the revolution. And, despite several unsuccessful attempts to get to know Castro in person, it wasn’t until 1977 – after reading several articles written by Garcia Marquez about Cuba – that Castro decided to approach the Colombian writer in person.</p>
<p>Castro was due to give interviews to journalists from Agence France Press and Reuters, but instead he suddenly appeared at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba – where Gabo was staying – and asked to talk to him. They first discussed Garcia Marquez’s latest trip to Angola and issues related to his stay in the African country – such as the food – Gabo later said he had never met anyone that knew more about seafood than Castro. This first personal encounter between the two achieved an instant connection. Castro’s interview with the waiting journalists was cancelled and Castro instead accompanied Gabo to Havana airport to see him off. </p>
<h2>Pen pals</h2>
<p>Over the years, this first encounter developed into a true friendship. Garcia Marquez always said it was a friendship based on their common interest in literature. Gabo spent prolonged periods in Havana with his wife Mercedes – and Castro was a frequent visitor at his house in Havana (which was a gift from Castro) and would appear at any time of the day or night. He described Castro as an <a href="http://www.granma.cu/cultura/2014-04-17/el-fidel-castro-que-yo-conozco">avid reader</a>, who would begin a book in the evening and comment on it on the following day. </p>
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<p>The author said he never understood how Castro managed to find the time to read so much and so thoroughly. One day, discussing Garcia Marquez’s book <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/56216/the-story-of-a-shipwrecked-sailor/">The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor</a>, Castro said that there was a miscalculation in the speed of a boat. The Cuban leader’s eye for detail lead to Gabo asking Castro to read his manuscripts before submitting them – and there were several instances where Castro’s observations led to factual corrections in Garcia Marquez’s books. Gabo even said that he wouldn’t publish a book anymore without having had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kFQXqYpeIU">Fidel</a> proofread it. </p>
<p>At the same time, Gabo also had some measure of influence on the Cuban leader. Critics point to the fact that Garcia Marquez never publicly talked negatively about the way Castro was governing Cuba. However, it has to be noted that several of his close friends we talked to when researching for <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60598-058-4">our book</a>: Fidel and Gabo: A portrait of the legendary friendship between Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, all said the same – if there was one person that wasn’t afraid to criticise Castro, it was Garcia Marquez. </p>
<p>It seemed the author preferred to discuss any criticisms of Castro with the Cuban leader himself. We were told of some profound differences of opinion – for example in the case of <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article1967653.html">former Cuban general Arnaldo Ochoa</a> and colonel Tony de la Guardia, who were executed for drug smuggling and treason in 1989. The general’s daughter told us Garcia Marquez tried to intervene to change Castro’s mind, but to no avail. The author’s influence was important, however, in the decision to free several high-profile political prisoners, including Padilla, Norberto Fuentes and Armando Valladares.</p>
<h2>An enduring friendship</h2>
<p>On April 17 2014 – on the day of Garcia Marquez’s death – the Cuban newspaper Granma published an article by the author about Castro in which one is immediately struck by Gabo’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/12/comment.cuba">affection</a> towards his lifelong friend. As he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the Fidel Castro that I believe I know. A man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education of cautious words and subdued tones, and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many commented on the fact that Fidel didn’t say anything publicly about Garcia Marquez’s passing – but only sent a wreath with the words “<a href="http://en.escambray.cu/2014/fidel-castro-sends-wreath-to-gabo-in-mexican-homage/">to my endearing friend</a>”. He could as easily have called him an enduring friend – a fitting reference to a close relationship that lasted nearly four decades and informed both of their lives and their work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Cuban leader even acted as an unofficial editor for the Nobel Prize-winning author.Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696652016-12-01T11:00:44Z2016-12-01T11:00:44ZFidel in Africa: how the Cuban leader played a key role in taking on apartheid<p>Immediately after the death of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/fidel-castro-14114">Fidel Castro</a>, and even before his burial, arguments erupted over whether he was a dictator or a progressive force. All the buried chests of propaganda were exhumed on both sides – their contents used to fuel one-dimensional debate.</p>
<p>Certainly South Africa’s Jacob Zuma was glad to use Castro’s funeral as an excuse to escape the mounting pressure at home. A furious closed-doors debate has been raging within his own party, the ANC, culminating in a failed attempt to <a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-lives-to-fight-another-day-but-fallout-from-latest-revolt-will-live-on-69587">oust him as leader</a>.</p>
<p>Fidel’s death was a welcome and fitting distraction. Without the Cuban leader’s very brave foreign policy there would be no majority rule in South Africa today. The ANC would still be exiled in Lusaka and Nelson Mandela would have died in prison. That this was not the case was due to the Cuban interventions in the quarrels of Southern Africa. The ANC did not win military victory. In Angola, the Cubans did.</p>
<p>Most African countries gained independence in the 1960s but, as late as the 1970s, it was not only Rhodesia and South Africa who were resisting Harold Macmillan’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/3/newsid_2714000/2714525.stm">“wind of change”</a>. The Portuguese refused to surrender their colonial rule over Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Angola. Armed resistance broke out in all these territories. It took the Portuguese coup d’etat in 1974, led by young officers overthrowing the fascist dictatorship of Salazar, to permit majority rule in the African territories – but it was a contested majority rule in Angola.</p>
<p>The African wars were costing Portugal up to 40% of its budget. Conscripts were coming home in body bags for no obvious gain. Portugal was then the most underdeveloped country in Europe. One of the first things the young officers of what became known as the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/25/newsid_4754000/4754581.stm">Carnation Revolution</a> did was to announce independence for the African territories. Angola became independent in November 1975.</p>
<p>But, in Angola, three separate liberation movements contested the right to form the new government. Each had support, in the complex manoeuvres of the Cold War, from different superpowers. When it seemed that the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Popular-Movement-for-the-Liberation-of-Angola">MPLA</a> – the Marxist faction aligned with the Soviet Union – might win power, the West panicked. So did South Africa. The apartheid regime sent in its army, spearheaded by columns of tanks, to prevent a militarised Marxist government from forming. The last thing Pretoria wanted was this kind of inspiration for its own restless masses.</p>
<p>The South Africans were confident they would roll back the MPLA forces. But Fidel Castro, with financing from Moscow, dispatched an army that eventually numbered 25,000 men. The two sides met in one of the great conventional clashes of modern African history.</p>
<p>Reports differ as to how the battles played out, but certainly it seems the Cubans outmanoeuvred the South Africans, who withdrew from Angola. The Cubans stayed.</p>
<p>Throughout Southern Africa, the news of the Cuban “victory” was met with jubilation. At last there was evidence that the mighty apartheid juggernaut could be met in open field and stopped in its tracks. The morale boost to liberation movements in other countries was incalculable.</p>
<p>In the wake of the Portuguese withdrawal from Angola and Mozambique, efforts intensified to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Rhodesia. The guerrilla armies there were intensifying their efforts and beginning to deny ground to the white government’s forces. In the end, a combination of military attrition and diplomacy allowed independence for Zimbabwe and the advent of Robert Mugabe in 1980.</p>
<p>The response of South Africa was to devise a military doctrine called Total Strategy, in which different forms of pressure were to be applied to each country in the region. Against Angola, it was to be support for a dissident guerrilla group led by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/25/guardianobituaries.victoriabrittain">Jonas Savimbi</a>; capture of the south of the country as a buffer zone for South Africa and its own “colony” of South West Africa (now Namibia); and conventional war led by armoured tank columns.</p>
<p>The region, and Angola within it, took a pounding. In 1987, thinking the moment was ripe, the South Africans thought they could secure all of southern Angola as a client state under Savimbi. The objective was to capture the largest city in the region, Cuito Cuanavale, for Savimbi to use as a capital.</p>
<p>The battle for <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/battle-cuito-cuanavale-1988">Cuito Cuanavale</a> lasted well into 1988. Gorbachev sent a squadron of latest-generation aircraft, with Soviet pilots, to bolster the MPLA and Cuban positions. Again, a war of manoeuvre broke out and the South Africans, under huge pressure from the near encirclement of their positions, withdrew.</p>
<h2>Lasting legacy</h2>
<p>It was an immense Cuban victory. In its wake, the Nationalist apartheid government went through a palace revolution; F.W. de Klerk emerged as its new president; Chester Crocker, the US assistant secretary of state, led a brilliant diplomacy that brought peace to the region and independence to Namibia; de Klerk and Zambia’s President <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-29/news/mn-1209_1_south-african">Kenneth Kaunda</a> began talks in 1989 that led to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. None of this would have been possible without the Cuban stand.</p>
<p>So, although Fidel has a mixed record at home – one of authoritarian, sometimes brutal rule, tempered by huge cultural investment and immense strides in health care – his African reputation is as a man who changed history.</p>
<p>Without a countervailing military force to the US-supported state-of-the-art South African military machine, the African liberation armies by themselves could not have succeeded. Fidel sent tanks and thousands of soldiers. The Soviets sent warplanes.</p>
<p>It is natural that nations take as much credit as possible for their own liberation. But, at this moment, it might be satisfactory at least to acknowledge a strange man with a beard who had enough troubles of his own at home – a CIA invasion, the risk of nuclear war, sanctions, attempted assassinations, restlessness amongst an economically dispirited population – but who still reached out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A brave foreign policy changed history in Angola and South Africa.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696592016-12-01T08:21:16Z2016-12-01T08:21:16ZFidel Castro and the revolution that (almost) wasn’t<p>Sixty years ago, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/fidel-castro-dead-revolutionary-history">Fidel Castro</a> launched an audacious bid to liberate Cuba from the dictatorship of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/peopleevents/p_batista.html">Fulgencio Batista</a> – the American-backed strongman whose repressive regime was characterised by corruption and economic and social inequality. At the time, though, this effort appeared destined to be little more than a footnote in the history of the 20th century.</p>
<p>In the early hours of Sunday November 25, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granma_(yacht)">Granma</a>, a creaking, twin-engine leisure yacht left Tuxpan, in Mexico, headed for Cuba. At 58 feet long, and with just four small cabins, the Granma was designed to accommodate about two dozen people. Packed aboard that night, however, were 82 men, all members of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/26th-of-July-Movement">26th of July Movement</a>, a vanguard organisation committed to ending the rule of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.</p>
<p>Their leader was Fidel Castro, an enigmatic 30-year-old lawyer and professional revolutionary. Squeezed in among the compañeros (who counted Fidel’s younger brother, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12700491">Raúl</a>, and a young Argentine doctor, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/guevara_che.shtml">Ernesto “Che” Guevara</a> among their number) was a substantial arsenal including two anti-tank guns, a small quantity of food and medical supplies, and 2,000 gallons of fuel stored in metal cans on deck.</p>
<p>A combination of rough seas and the poor state of the Granma itself soon threatened total disaster. Almost the entire crew was afflicted by dreadful seasickness and the boat came perilously close to sinking when the bilge pumps failed. Fidel had originally planned to land at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niquero">Niquero</a>, on the south-east of the island, on November 30 to coincide with a planned uprising in the nearby city of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Cuba">Santiago de Cuba</a>. But the boat’s badly worn gears meant that the journey itself was painfully slow – and they were still at sea when the <a href="http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6746/674650.html">city rose up without them</a>. The rebellion, however, was brutally crushed after a couple of days.</p>
<p>The Granma eventually hit the Cuban coast as dawn began to break on December 2. Rather than landing at <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba/niquero/introduction">Niquero</a>, where allies were waiting with supplies and trucks, the Granma ran aground ten miles south of the agreed rendezvous. They could hardly have picked a worse spot. </p>
<h2>It was ‘hell’</h2>
<p>Forced to abandon most of their equipment, the compañeros – proudly wearing their new drab-olive fatigues and boots and carrying rifles and knapsacks – waded ashore through muddy salt water, only to find themselves faced with seemingly endless mangrove swamps, whose thick mass of roots proved nearly impossible to penetrate. In the words of Raúl Castro, it was “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uGw9CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT297&dq=raul+castro+hell&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=raul%20castro%20hell&f=false">hell</a>”. They struggled on for several hours before finally reaching dry land, exhausted and hungry, and caked in mud.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148126/original/image-20161130-17065-i8drq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and his wife Marta in 1958, the year before they fled the revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Batistas private photographer - Museo de la Revolución,</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rebels’ only hope now was to reach the relative sanctuary of the <a href="http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/funfacts/maestra.htm">Sierra Maestra</a> mountains to the east. But by the morning of December 5, malnourished, desperately thirsty and suffering from fungal infections and painful open blisters, they were, as Che Guevara later recalled, “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ierlWAqZ_8cC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=che+guevara+%22an+army+of+shadows,+ghosts%22&source=bl&ots=XO9CEKhSfG&sig=iK2aoVgxC2QP6gEZBuDTuKcpA-Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVuYC_4MjQAhVeOMAKHZ93Bt4Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=che%20guevara%20%22an%20army%20of%20shadows%2C%20ghosts%22&f=false">an army of shadows, ghosts</a>”. </p>
<p>There was no choice but to stop. They had reached <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba/alegria-del-pio/introduction">Alegría de Pío</a> (meaning “Joy of the Pious”), a grove of trees that bordered a sugarcane field on one side. Most of the men stretched out, and slept.</p>
<p>Later that afternoon Che was leaning against a tree, munching on a couple of crackers, when the first shot rang out. Betrayed by a guide, who had left the camp earlier in the day, the compañeros were <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1963/reminiscences/ch01.htm">under attack from Batista’s troops</a>. As fighter jets swooped low over the woods an infantry unit opened fire. In the confusion, several revolutionaries were killed; others scrabbled desperately for cover. Wounded in the neck, Guevera returned fire with his rifle, before dragging himself into the relative safety of an adjoining field. Ten days after leaving Mexico, Castro’s “army” had been routed.</p>
<h2>Suicide mission</h2>
<p>In mid-December 1956, nobody – with the possible exception of Fidel Castro – thought that the little band of rebels would prove victorious. Indeed, Castro’s attempt to launch a revolution was widely dismissed by journalists as “<a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,808909,00.html">quixotic</a>”, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1956/12/04/archives/the-violent-cubans.html">pathetic</a>” and even “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uGw9CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT302&dq=widely+dismissed+by+journalists+quixotic&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">suicidal</a>”. </p>
<p>Rumours abounded that Castro had been killed. The respected news bureau, United Press International, as well as the New York Times, <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A0DE1DF163AE23ABC4B53DFB467838D649EDE">reported his death, and that of his brother Raúl, as “fact”</a>. Having noted Castro’s arrival in Cuba in its leader column on December 4, The Times of London confidently swatted aside its significance. Noting that Batista was a “veteran of many revolutions”, it <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uGw9CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT302&lpg=PT302&dq=%E2%80%9Cit+is+unlikely+that+the+latest+will+shake+his+position%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=guDs95hrWq&sig=6gKxORpIITNy9RKID3WBTPB--1A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ45y_5cjQAhXiCcAKHTDwC3EQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=">predicted that</a>: “it is unlikely that the latest will shake his position”.</p>
<p>With many of the Granma’s landing party either killed or captured, and the remaining 20 or so survivors scattered, their prospects in early December certainly looked pretty bleak. For several days Castro himself commanded the grand total of two men (Universo Sánchez, a peasant who served as Fidel’s bodyguard, and Faustino Pérez, a pharmacist). Slowly, though, the rebels began to regroup in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, nearing Mt. Caracas, 4,000 feet above sea level, by year’s end. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148090/original/image-20161130-16998-1rremc7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Triumphal march into Havana, January 8, 1959.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was from here that Castro launched a remarkable military campaign, which – with the support of the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Cuban-Revolution-Castro-Underground-ebook/dp/B002OEBO2I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480248427&sr=8-1&keywords=sweig+inside+the+cuban">urban-based opposition</a>, the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-History-Cuban-Revolution-Guerillas-ebook/dp/1583675817/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480501779&sr=8-1&keywords=cushion+hidden+history">labour movement</a> and others – <a href="https://archive.org/details/1959-01-05_Castro_Triumphs">culminated in his triumphant march into Havana</a> on January 8, 1959, following <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/1/newsid_3413000/3413749.stm">Batista’s flight nine days earlier</a>, on New Year’s Eve.</p>
<h2>Shockwaves</h2>
<p>The Cuban revolution would reverberate far beyond the Caribbean, and not just because for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2012/oct/14/cuban-missile-crisis-50-archive-1962">13 days in October 1962</a> the world teetered on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Revolutionary Cuba, under Castro’s leadership, helped to promote socialism <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/fidel-may-be-gone-but-his-legacy-lives-on-in-latin-america/2016/11/26/d25e670e-b3ef-11e6-bc2d-19b3d759cfe7_story.html">throughout Latin America</a> and also played a major role in the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/fidel-castro-anti-colonialist-legacy-201433103015396232.html">global struggles against imperialism, racism, and capitalism</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148095/original/image-20161130-17040-1xf8cwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Castro, left, and Che Guevara marching in Havana, May 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museo Che Guevara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Castro provided military support to leftist revolutionaries in Algeria and Angola, and sent tens of thousands of Cuban health workers and physicians to the third world. In the late 1950s and early 1960s <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls/vol1no2/vol1num2art1.pdf">many black Americans, too, were inspired</a> by Castro’s commitment to racial equality. During a visit to New York in September 1960 to address the UN General Assembly, Castro, enraged by demands that his delegation pay their bill upfront, and in cash, famously stormed out of the Shelburne Hotel in Manhattan’s Midtown and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/131793/castro-came-harlem">took up residence at the Hotel Theresa, in the heart of Harlem</a>.</p>
<p>There, he was afforded a rapturous reception by the black population, and entertained a slew of world leaders – including Nikita Khrushchev, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. A bitter critic of apartheid, Castro also <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/06/nelson-mandela-castro_n_4400212.html">provided consistent support to the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>Although its lustre would eventually fade, not least because of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/cuba-fidel-castros-record-repression">Castro’s dreadful human rights record</a>, the Cuban revolution also re-energised leftist movements across Europe and in the United States – many of which had struggled to find their moorings in the aftermath of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/26/russia.theobserver">Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/nov/10/1956-hungarian-revolution-in-pictures">Soviet invasion of Hungary</a>. Castro, and – above all – Che Guevara, became revolutionary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/jun/03/art.art">icons for a generation of sixties radicals</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/1956-World-Revolt-Simon-Hall/dp/0571312330/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480441024&sr=1-1&keywords=1956+the+world+in+revolt">1956</a>, Castro’s bold claim that: “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YAbBSNGmc9gC&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=fidel+castro+%22we+will+be+free+or+we+will+be+martyrs%22&source=bl&ots=RodcA3Oog4&sig=wxCWXqlXrMun357BqL3Hfim6asI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl3byu6sjQAhUJLMAKHcuZAl0Q6AEIIDAB">we will be free or we will be martyrs</a>” resonated with the times. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/09/1956-the-world-in-revolt-simon-hall-same-issues-2016">The year</a> also saw African American activists in Montgomery, Alabama, achieve a historic victory following their year-long boycott of the city’s segregated buses, tens of thousands of South African women take to the streets of Pretoria to denounce apartheid, independence for the Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and the Gold Coast (Ghana), and a popular uprising against Stalinist rule in Hungary. </p>
<p>Sixty years on, however, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/fidel-castro-obituary">Castro’s death</a> serves as a coda to a year in which <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/02/europe-right-wing-nationalism-populist-revolt-trump-putin-524119.html">the forces of history</a> appear to be marching to a very different beat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69659/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At first, the Cuban revolution seemed doomed to fail.Simon Hall, Professor of Modern History, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.