Welcome to Cuban Studies

A Special Wedding in the “Special Period”

Like all weddings, this one involved meticulous planning. Unlike similar celebrations across Latin America, it also reflected the unique realities of Cuba’s Special Period. When the Soviet Union vanished several years earlier, all commercial products disappeared from government rations. Once barely stocked with basic household goods such as towels and pots, the shelves of state […]

The Street Sign as Historic Witness

Of the four signs legible to passersby on Calle Belascoaín, a main thoroughfare of Centro Habana, when I took this picture in 1995, only one advertised for a still-functioning business: the rest (including a flower shop and record store) had been shuttered decades earlier when Fidel Castro decreed the nationalization of all remaining small, privately […]

The Missing Eagle

When the adoption of socialism elevated the Cuban Communist Party to the pinnacle of power in 1961, its leaders acted to remap the landscape of memory and history in Havana by removing, defacing, or destroying its most iconic, Republic-era monuments in record time: most sources say that “the operation” happened overnight. No target was more […]

Ex-Libris

Dr. Jennifer Lambe, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, reads excerpts from the third chapter in her latest book, The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba.

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Conversatorio Cubano

Dr. Jennifer Lambe, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, discusses her latest book, The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba.

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Gems of the Archive

Launched for a three-year run in 1962, “Basic Schools of Revolutionary Instruction” were designed to teach the principles of Marxist-Leninism to legions of Cuban workers who were enthusiastic supporters of Fidel Castro’s Revolution but knew next to nothing about Communism—including how or even why the government was supposed to own and plan the national economy. Hoping to boost productivity among all workers, officials relied on the EIBRs to develop cuadros (awkwardly translated from the Soviet word “cadre”).

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