Welcome to Cuban Studies

The End of the Endless Movie

For decades, elderly island Cubans have joked that they want to live long enough “to see the end of this endless movie”, referring to the dictatorship Fidel Castro built. This political cartoon, published by independent journalists whom the Cuban regime recently forced into exile, riffs on exactly that view. As two citizens walk past Havana’s […]

“Miguel Díaz-Canel, Get Out of Cuba”

In March 2024, Yasmary González Martínez covered the front of her house with graffiti protesting the Cuban government and calling for its downfall. She also posted this picture of it on her Facebook page and resisted the demands of Cuban state security that she paint over the signs. In addition to demanding that President Díaz-Canel […]

“We are happy here!”

To my shock, the Cuban state recently revived the slogan that it launched in 1980 to discredit the political reasons that nearly 125,000 mostly young, working-class Cubans cited for fleeing Communism in the Mariel Boatlift. While occasionally this slogan peppered signs at rallies organized by the state since then, it never acquired the official standing […]

Voices from the tombs?

One can only wonder what Cuba’s revolutionaries of the first half of the 20th Century might think of those who have ruled the island for the last (nearly) seventy years. Not just a tomb but a monument to the democratic, anti-communist and pro-labor Cuba that might have been in the 1930s if the United States […]

Ex-Libris

Because the year 2026 marks the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth and ten years since his death at the age of ninety in November 2016, Elio Piedra, owner and director of Tu Fiesta Radio 95.7 FM, and I launched a series of discussions that explore the lessons and legacy of Cuba’s sixty-seven years of one-party rule through the history of Fidel Castro, its principal dictator.

Read more "“No evil lasts 100 years”: Lessons from Cuba’s Dictatorship"
Listen now

Conversatorio Cubano

In this special edition of Conversatorio Cubano, Dr. Lillian Guerra interviews the Series Editorial board of the Journal of Cuban Studies

Read more "Conversation Cubano with Dr. Michael Bustamante, Dr. Jennifer Lambe, & Dr. Daniel Fernández Guevara"
Watch the video

Gems of the Archive

Printed in thousands of copies, this open letter denounced Fidel Castro and the nature of Communist society that his policies created at a time when their myth remained globally ascendant. The appeal of that myth rested on Fidel Castro’s ability to convince foreign audiences that his “socialist path” was more just than any liberal democracy, especially as the United States continued to support military dictatorships in the decolonizing Third World and economic models in Latin America that served only a rich minority.

Read more "“Fidel Castro is a cancer on history” (1979)"
Read more