Batur-Vanderlippe,Pinar (Author) and Feagin,Joe R. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
1999
Published:
Stamford, CT: JAI Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
394 p, Includes Enid Logan's "El apóstol y el comandante en jefe: dialectics of racial discourse and racial practice in cuba, 1890-1999" and Mimi Sheller's "Resistance and struggle: The 'Haytian fear': racial projects and competing reactions to the first Black republic"
"The rise of the Afro-Cuban musical genre commonly known as son is representative
of Cuban society’s ability to affirm through art its primary cultural influences: Europe and Africa. Despite the successful transculturation within the music, however, the events surrounding the creation and acceptance of son reiterate the struggle between Cuban elites and the masses to define lo cubano. In this essay, I will show how the social and political conditions under which son became a representation of popular culture in Cuba served as a catalyst for the affirmation
of Cuba’s African roots, despite attempts on the part of the elite to exclude Afro-Cubans from establishing any connection to Cuban national identity." --The Author
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
159 p, Discusses the importance of the role played by the Caribbean mother in her Latina daughters' negotiation of a hybrid identity as seen through the works of Julia Álvarez, Cristina García, and Esmeralda Santiago
7 p., The 2008-09 balance of payments crisis and a succession of errors in economic policies have resulted in new monetary and financial complications in the Cuban economy, to be added to the costs and distortions of currency duality.
Index number: AMR 25/007/2012, 18 p., Criticism of the government is not tolerated in Cuba, and it is routinely punished with arbitrary and short-term detentions, intimidation, harassment, and politically motivated criminal prosecutions. Amnesty International makes recommendations to the Cuban government aimed at ensuring greater respect for the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, and movement.
Index number: AMR 25/005/2010, 35 p., In Cuba the state has a virtual monopoly of press and broadcast media and tight restrictions apply to the internet. Anyone who expresses views critical of the government runs the risk of harassment, arbitrary detention, and criminal prosecution. With dozens of prisoners of conscience continuing to serve long prison sentences in Cuba for exercising freedom of expression, Amnesty International calls on the authorities to stop the harassment and intimidation of dissidents, release prisoners of conscience, amend repressive legislation, and enable greater exchange of information through the internet and other media. Tables.
In Apr 2009, shortly after taking office, Pres Barack Obama signaled that he was open to a new dialogue with Cuba. At remarks delivered at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the President said that the US seeks a new beginning with Cuba. Earlier that year, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had welcomed an offer for talks from Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over duties from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in 2006 and subsequently was elected president by the Cuban National Assembly in 2008. Castro reportedly said that he was willing "discuss anything" with the US Government. Here, the US-Cuba policy is discussed. Adapted from the source document.
'Environmental justice' refers to the human right to a healthy and safe environment, a fair share of natural resources, access to environmental information and participation in environmental decision-making. Some analysts have argued that environmental justice is undermined by the political economy of capitalism. This paper builds on this analysis by evaluating the environmental justice situation in Cuba, a country where there is little capitalist influence. Evidence is based on participant observation and interviews in Cuba, as well as secondary quantitative data. The research findings suggest that Cuba fares relatively well in terms of environmental justice, but still faces a number of challenges regarding the quality of its environment and some aspects of the environmental decision-making process. However, many of its ongoing problems can be attributed to global capitalist pressures.
Beszterczey,Dora (Author), Fernandez,Damian J. (Author), and Gomez,Andy S. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
Aug 2010
Published:
Washington, DC: Latin America Initiative at Brookings
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
5 p., Last year, President Obama delivered the first step in his promise to reach out to the Cuban people and support their desire for freedom and self-determination. Premised on the belief that Cuban Americans are the best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba, the Obama administration lifted restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans; however, if US policy is to be truly forward looking it must further expand its focus from the Castro government to the well-being of the Cuban people. Tables.
Examines the voting behavior of Cubans and non-Cuban Hispanics in two Florida counties. The group position thesis holds that status inequalities and perceived discrimination yield out-group hostilities that can influence political behavior. In Miami, where Cubans are dominant, we expect non-Cuban Latinos to report greater pan-Latino competition and that anti-Cuban attitudes will influence non-Cuban Hispanic voting. In Tampa, where non-Cuban Latinos live in communities where Cubans are not dominant, we expect lower levels of perceived competition and Cuban-related attitudes to be inconsequential to the vote. The results confirm that power relations in the local arena constitute an important influence on the political behavior of Latino immigrants.
Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
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.
Initiatives in the field of sexology and sex education in prerevolutionary Cuba are barely known, as continuity between those experiences and the work carried out during the years following the 1959 revolution have not been researched. The founding of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), however, must be considered the product of a long process of political maturity on the part of Cuban women during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the broader context of the FMC, the developments in the fields of sexology and sex education over the past fifty years also must be considered. Drawing on FMC archival holdings, this article sets out a periodization of the four main stages of the revolutionary period of institutionalizing sex education in Cuba, as well as its main challenges.
Reforms proposed at the Sixth Communist Party Congress represent a new, third phase of social policy in post-revolutionary Cuba. This new stage has the potential to strengthen social equity in Cuba, improve the socio-economic situation of disparate social groups, and overcome the old limitations of social policy. Yet it could also increase inequality, and at least in the short term, its predicted impacts will be contradictory and ambivalent.
To many in the West, the League of Nations was to establish political peace between nations. To the Cuban sugar-producing elite of the 1920s and 1930s, however, the League was an important socioeconomic institution used to augment many of Cuba's first modern state institutions. This article explores how and why Cuban delegates were the principals behind the 1937 International Sugar Agreement.
Don Fitz explains why quality health care does not have to be based on unending expansion of expensive medical technology. Adapted from the source document.
Demonstrate how the priority of education in Cuban social policy, from its outset after the 1959 revolution, has privileged women. Statistics chart the rapid increase in educational level and attainment over the decades and the high degree of feminization of higher education and thus the skilled labor force; and today Cuba ranks among the countries with the highest indicators in the United Nations' Millennium Goals with respect to education and gender equity.
Cubans are wildly optimistic about the transformations that will occur once the United States lifts its long-standing embargo on Cuba. Overlooked in these discussions, however, is how Cuba's health-care industry may be harmed by any serious easing of trade and travel restrictions between the two countries.
The urban and territorial changes caused by tourism are well-studied topics in contemporary scientific literature. This article uses an integrative approach that lies between the scientific traditions in urban geography and the geography of tourism to present a case study of a socialist city. Tourism is a strategic economic activity in Cuba, and the country's most popular sun and sand tourist destination is Varadero. At first consideration, its tourism model is not very different from those of other areas in the region (Dominican Republic, Riviera Maya, etc.), but the uniqueness of the Cuban government and emphasis on planning introduce several distinguishing features. The combined analysis of the development of tourism in the city and the recent history of territorial planning leads to conclusions regarding the role of tourism in urban development, which has resulted in the creation of a dual-city model, and the role land planning is playing.
53 p., Since 1996, Congress has appropriated 205 million dollars to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State (State) to support democracy assistance for Cuba. Because of Cuban government restrictions, conditions in Cuba pose security risks to the implementing partners -- primarily nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) -- and subpartners that provide US assistance. GAO (1) identified current assistance, implementing partners, subpartners, and beneficiaries; (2) reviewed USAID's and State's efforts to implement the program in accordance with US laws and regulations and to address program risks; and (3) examined USAID's and State's monitoring of the use of program funds. Tables, Figures, Appendixes.
200 p., For Cuba's supporters, health is the most commonly cited evidence of the socialist system's success. Even critics often concede that this is the country's saving grace. Cuba's health statistics are indeed extraordinary. This small island outperforms virtually all of its neighboring countries and all countries of the same level of economic development. Some of its health statistics rival wealthy industrialized countries. Moreover, these health outcomes have resulted against all odds. This study of the Cuban health system finds that the country possesses an unusually high level of popular participation and cooperation in the implementation of health policy. This has been achieved with the help of a longstanding government that prioritizes public health, and has enough political influence to compel the rest of the community to do the same. On the other hand, popular participation in decision-making regarding health policy is minimal, which contrasts with the image of popular participation often promoted. Political elites design and impose health policy, allowing little room for other health sector groups to meaningfully contribute to or protest official decisions. This is a problem because aspects of health care that are important to those who use the system or work within it can be neglected if they do not fit within official priorities. The country's preventive arrangements, its collective prioritization of key health areas, the improvements in public access to health services through the expansion of health facilities and the provision of free universal care are among the accomplishments that set it apart. The sustainability and progress of these achievements, however, must involve open recognition and public discussion of weaker aspects of the health system.
This article discusses different views about sustainable development, emphasizing -- on the basis of a survey conducted in Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba -- the role of rural women in food production and natural resource management, the strength of the rural women's movement in the conquest of rights, and the decisive participation of women in defining proposals for public policies that guarantee gender equality in rural areas. A brief comparative analysis leads us to conclude that the development model in the three countries still prioritizes the male figure in relation to land tenure, access to credit and purchase of equipment or other material resources, it is suggested that both in Cuba, a socialist country, and in Mexico and Brazil, capitalist counties, the assumptions of social policies directed to rural female workers should take into account the basic needs of rural women to guarantee a more humane and sustainable development. Adapted from the source document.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
320 p., While most writing on Cuba seeks to analyse the island's socialist experiment from the perspective of either its internal dynamics or international relations, this book attempts to understand the revolutionary process as part of a counter-current against neoliberal globalisation. Now that neoliberalism is in crisis, Cuba's promotion of socialist values is finding a renewed relevance.
Campaigning in 2007, Barack Obama promised to end restrictions on remittances and family travel to Cuba, resume "people-to-people" contracts, and engage Cuba on issues of mutual interest. As President, Obama has declared his desire to forge a new "equal partnership" with Latin America. Two months later, the 39th General Assembly of the Organization of American States voted to repeal the 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba fro its ranks.
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.
With stark income inequalities rooted in its dual currency economy, Cuba is taxing down high and unearned incomes, while trying to raise national productivity and official salaries through performance-related pay and labor restructuring. Such measures are portrayed as an abandonment of socialism, but in Cuba are discussed in terms of historic socialist debates about distribution and the balance of moral and material incentives at work, in a society still characterized by common ownership, social protection, and collective debate.
Case studies demonstrate how countries in the same region can develop health care policies that represent different biomedical and sociocultural outcomes. For example, Cuba's policies result in the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the Caribbean, whereas Belize experiences the second highest rates.
Discusses the importance of education for any nation and for Cuba in particular, examining its political, pedagogical and sociological foundations, and portraying its accomplishments over the last 50 years. The principles underlying the educational policy of the Cuban government are explained, as they underpin the mission of the National Education System (NES) to carry forward educational work in the country.
A range of economic dimensions is examined, including trade in goods and services (notably tourism), direct foreign investment, international migration, and development assistance. Following a brief review of the evolving relationship from 1959 to 1990, the nature of the economic relationship between Canada and Cuba is analyzed in more detail for the 1990 to 2009 era.
5 p., During most of the last half century, discussions aimed at normalizing relations with Cuba have been rare and mainly unproductive. Due to Obama's optimism for political change toward Cuba during his presidential campaign, there was considerable hope that policy would be altered in a more constructive direction, but after a year, it is argued that "change" in Latin America policy has been more in reverse than in fast-forward. Tables.
Romeu,Rafael (Author), Perez-Lopez,Jorge F. (Author), Mesa-Lago,Carmelo (Author), and Perales,Jose Raul (Editor)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
July 2011
Published:
Washington, DC: Latin American Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
91 p., This publication examines the contemporary state of Cuba's economy at a time of great transformation. Using econometric and other macroeconomic analysis tools, its authors have taken advantage of the recent availability of official economic statistics to offer new insights into longstanding questions about Cuba's economic behavior. Tables, Figures, References.
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.
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.
Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
39 p., Restrictions on travel to Cuba have been a key and often contentious component in US efforts to isolate Cuba's communist government since the early 1960s. Under the George W. Bush Administration, restrictions on travel and on private remittances to Cuba were tightened. Congress took action in March 2009 by including two provisions in the FY2009 omnibus appropriations measure (P.L. 111-8) that eased restrictions on family travel and travel related to marketing and sale of agricultural and medical goods to Cuba -- Subsequently, in April 2009, President Obama announced that his Administration would go further and allow unlimited family travel and remittances. Tables.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
202 p, "The Quest for the Cuban Christ, the most recent work of Miguel A. De La Torre, is an exceptionally concise exploration of the ways in which Cubans have both conceived and perceived religion in general and Jesus Christ in particular, over the last five centuries. Specifically, the author examines religion and spirituality from the point of view of both subaltern and dominant groups throughout the history of Cuba. The real focus, however, is on the role of faith in the formation of the identity of Cubans resident and in exile that have been historically subordinated to the interests of hegemonic powers like Spain, the United States, and successive Cuban (including revolutionary) governments." (Jason M. Yaremko, H-LatAm [October, 2003]))
