African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
230 p., For almost five decades, the United States has maintained a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba. U.S.-based travel to the island is severely restricted, and most financial and commercial transactions with Cuba are illegal for U.S. citizens. In the 1990s the United States tightened the embargo further, seeking to promote change in Cuba by depriving the Castro government of hard currency revenues. And yet the stalemate remains. This book argues that the embargo has not been particularly effective in achieving its primary goal. The United States has not only been unable to stifle the flow of foreign investment into Cuba but has actually contributed to the recovery of the Cuban economy, particularly from the deep recession it entered following the demise of the Soviet Union.
"In eight urbanized areas Hispanic groups were highly segregated from Blacks, less from non-Hispanic Whites (an exception being northeastern Puerto Ricans, less segregated from Blacks than from Whites); less concentrated within central cities than Blacks; and with much segregation among themselves (significantly related to socioeconomic and nativity status)." (Author)
Reviews several books on Cuban history before 1959. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934, by César Ayala; Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer; Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, by Rosalie Schwartz.;
"This essay aims to provide a systematic analysis of Cuban slave prices in the vital period of plantation growth in the mid-nineteenth century. The analysis also measures price differentials between male and female slaves and between African-- and native-born (creole) slaves with different occupations." (authors)
Although discussions of race disappeared from Cuban literature after the revolution of 1959, they reappeared as a result of Cuba's difficult economic situation in the 1980's
Reviews books on Latin American slavery. Includes Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru, by Peter Blanchard; Slave Women in Caribbean Society, ,1650-1838, by Barbara Bush; Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, edited by Barbara L. Solow.;
After Soviet aid and trade ended Cuba was forced to reintegrate into the capitalist world economy. Needing hard currency, the government transformed the diaspora into a dollar attaining strategy, by facilitating and tacitly encouraging remittance-sending. Ordinary Cubans themselves wanted remittances to finance a lifestyle they could not otherwise afford. Despite their shared interest in remittances, the government increasingly appropriated remittances at recipients' expense.
