African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
270 p, Contents: 1898 : hispanismo y guerra / Arcadio Díaz Quiñones -- 1898 : a new beginning or historical continuity / Reinhard R. Doerries -- American expansion : from Jeffersonianism to Wilsonianism / Ralph Dietl -- Columbus, the Spanish-Cuban-American War, and the advance of U.S. liberal capitalism in the Caribbean and Pacific region / Thomas Schoonover -- The German challenge to American hegemony in the Caribbean : the Venezuela crisis of 1902-03 / Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase -- La crítica martiana del concepto del panamericanismo de James G. Blaine / Josef Opatrný -- Los trabajadores urbanos y la política colonial española en Cuba desde la Paz de Zanjón hasta la Guerra de Independencia (1878-1898) / Joan Casanovas Codina -- Cuba en el período intersecular : continuidad y cambio / Elena Hernández Sandoica -- The year 1898 in Puerto Rico : caesura, change, continuation? / Ute Guthunz -- Miles & more : 1898 and "caballeros líricos" : Luis Muñoz Rivera and José de Diego / Wolfgang Binder -- Fin de siglo en Colombia : la Guerra de los mil días y el contexto internacional / Thomas Fischer -- 1898 y Panamá : cesura, cambio o continuidad? / Alfredo Figueroa Navarro -- La inclusión de un estado caribeño en la doctrina de la "western hemisphere" : el caso de Haiti / Walther L. Bernecke
Argues that the bedrock of U.S. policy is an ideology of benevolent domination. Created at the time of the Spanish-American War, President Theodore Roosevelt captured this ideology perfectly in 1907 when he explained, "I am seeking the very minimum of interference necessary to make them good," and it is seen today in the 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. Adapted from the source document.
At the recent Summit of the Americas, President [Barack Obama] suggested that the U.S. could learn a lesson of goodwill from Cuba. In 1998, Cuba's government began programs to send large-scale medical assistance to poor populations affected by natural disasters. Each year some 2,000 young people enroll at the school, which operates from a former naval base in a suburb of Havana. Cuba's 21 medical faculties all train young people of poor families from throughout the Americas, as well as hundreds of African, Arab, Asian and European students. The country sends teams of doctors all over the world to respond to natural disasters. Cuban doctors have provided medical services to the underserved in Africa for over a decade. Blacks' views of relations with Cuba differ vastly from those of most Cuban immigrants and Cuban-Americans. The former lily-white upper crust of Cuban society wield political clout in Florida and are dead set against normalizing relations with Cuba's government. Consequently most politicians have chosen to adopt Cuban-American views. From 1960 to 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began new lives in the US. Most of these Cuban Americans came were from educated upper and middle classes and form the backbone of the anti-[Fidel Castro] movement. Cuban Americans are America's fifth-largest Hispanic group and the largest Spanish-speaking group of white descent.
HAVANA - A group of US lawmakers is working at easing dialogue between Washington and Havana, as President Barack Obama's administration weighs plans to drop its decades-old strategy of isolating communist Cuba. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican Richard Lugar, who in February said decades of US sanctions on Havana had failed, wrote to Obama in a March 30 letter that: "additional (US) measures are needed... to recast a policy that has not only failed to promote human rights and democracy, but also undermines our broader security and political interests." U.S. Congressman [Bobby Rush], left, and Rep. [Barbara Lee], D-Calif, second from right, attend a ceremony in front of Martin Luther King monument in Havana, Saturday, April 4, 2009. Seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus arrived in Cuba last Friday to discuss improving relations with the communist government amid speculation that Washington could ease travel restrictions to the island.
Lopez-Levy,Arturo (Author) and Lopez,Lilla R. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2011
Published:
Washington, DC: New American Foundation
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
19 p., Explores the historic reform process currently underway in Cuba. It looks first at the political context in which the VI Cuban Communist Party Congress took place, including the Cuban government's decision to release a significant number of political prisoners as part of a new dialogue with the Cuban Catholic Church. It then analyzes Cuba's nascent processes of economic reform and political liberalization. To conclude, it discusses the challenges and opportunities these processes pose for U.S policy toward Cuba.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, have been taking it on the chin in some quarters for a fact-finding trip to Havana, Cuba, to meet with that nation's president. Since the Kennedy administration in the 1960s in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the tiny island 90 miles off the coast of the U.S. has been embargoed and isolated.
Shunning warnings that Cuban Pres Fidel Castro was using them for propaganda purposes, eight US residents have taken Castro up on his offer to grant them free medical education, provided they return to poor communities in the US. On Apr 4, 2001, the eight African-American students took part in welcoming ceremonies hosted by Cuba's Latin American School of Medical Sciences.
A trade accord spearheaded by the NAACP worth $1.5 billion between the Cuban government and black farmers was heralded on Nov 17, 2002 by the Rev Al Sampson, who called the accord an "international window of opportunity" for African Americans. Sampson, who works with African American farmers, said this agreement gives black farmers an "international window" through Cuba into the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
178 p., By acknowledging that competing national identities, perceptions, and ideas play a major role in foreign policies, Perceptions of Cuba makes a significant contribution to our understanding of international relations. Contents: The exceptionalist and the Cuban other -- The independent international citizen and the other Cuba -- Exploring Cuba policy in tandem.
Since 1959, when Fidel Castro overturned the corrupt, proAmerican government of Fulgencio Batista and declared Cuba a communist nation, the American policy has been one of not just opposing the Cuban government, but of isolating Cuba and its citizens from all economic and social interaction with the United States. The reality is that allowing trade and travel does not eliminate our ability to address Cuba's human rights problems. In fact, one could argue - as even some conservatives did when we participated in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing - that such interaction gives greater voice to questions of human rights in Cuba. Our policy against Cuba has largely been shaped by the politics of Florida, where anti-Castro Cuban immigrants have long been a powerful economic and political force. But even that is changing; younger Americans of Cuban origin are becoming increasingly more likely to support travel to, and trade with, Cuba.
