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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For women writers of the Caribbean as well as for larger marginalized communities, the relationship between oral traditions and written texts is a part of the defining thread of Caribbean historiography. This article draws on Waugh and Hutcheon to examine the use of such texts by women writers of the Hispanophone Caribbean in order to highlight narrative strategies of historically marginalized groups to contest hegemonic constructions of the nation.
The article discusses the oral histories of the Arará people in Perico and Agramonte, Cuba, and their roots in African cultural practices. The spiritual Arará religion is discussed. Emphasis is placed on similarities between African and Arará dances, social memory, and communication with the dead. Various Arará deities and religious objects are discussed. Many practitioners of the religion believe such objects came from Africa. Many of the oral stories revolve around the experiences of both African slaves and freed people at the España sugar refinery. It is believed the Arará people are descended from the African Ewe and Fon people, and therefore are strongly influenced by their religious customs.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
This chapter concentrates on rhythm in danced, sung, and drummed practices of Cuban Santería. Musicians and dancers sing, drum, and dance the sequenced rhythms of the ancestors and provide opportunities for others to experience and learn. Many versions of ritual prose and poetry have been conserved, first by the continuous input of arriving Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 16th to the late 19th century. Codified gestures and movements display specific patterns in accelerating and intensifying tempi. In predetermined rhythmic, tonal, and intervallic relationships, ritual musicians display the buried mathematics of a dance and music liturgy. In order to facilitate human dancing and suprahuman transformation, worshipers have relied and continue to rely on rhythmic remembrances.
In this article, I analyse patterns of classifications and naming of African "nations" in colonial Cuba. Based on parish records, I suggest possible interpretations of African patterns of classification, identities and social arrangements during the formation of Cuban plantations over the course of the eighteenth century. I discuss some of the methodological implications that can be explored regarding marriages of enslaved people in Cuba based on ecclesiastical sources, chiefly in the case of Guanabacoa. I have furthered the social/demographic analysis of "nations" in Cuba, underscoring how Africans could have been the agents of networks and alliances through organizational strategies and the formation of identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
Discusses representations of the 'Afro-Cuban-occupied house' in Cuban-American autobiographical narratives of a 1990s return to Cuba. A trope in which island Afro-Cubans inhabit houses once owned or lived in by white Cuban-Americans, the Afro-Cuban-occupied house appears repeatedly in Cuban-American literary and film texts during the period. The article argues that the trope, more than another example of 'literary Afro-Cubanness,' discloses Cuban-American whiteness and its constitutive element, privilege, thus inviting Cuban-American literary and cultural studies to engage in conversations along the lines of a critical Latino whiteness studies.
