Cuban Studies

Like most of the decisions made by the Communist government, the logic behind why an array of life-size bronze statues suddenly started to appear across Old Havana in the 2010s was never made clear. At the eighteenth-century Plaza San Francisco, ...

Until they were reportedly banned from doing so, a handful of young performance artists began to comment on the irony and arbitrariness local Cubans associated with the sudden installation of a number of life-size bronze figures across tourist hotspots in ...

Built in a baroque style in the early twentieth century, this spectacular hotel had once provided Kosher meals and friendly refuge for the many Jewish immigrants, tourists, and merchants who visited or lived in Havana. Empty and closed for decades, ...

Like most Cuban peasants, my uncle Tiki had little or no experience visiting Havana, let alone taking a vacation. For him, who grew up on an isolated farm and lived in a very small town, the capital still seemed imposing, ...

Unlike the 1990s, when Cuban citizens were legally banned from entering state-owned retail establishments that sold goods and services in foreign currency, the government under Raúl Castro’s leadership (2006-2018) officially opened their doors to all. So long as Cuban nationals ...

Most foreigners would be surprised to see how little merchandise Cuban government stores selling in moneda nacional have available, despite leaders’ false claims to prioritize the needs of citizens. This is as much the case today ...

Given the general absence of air conditioning (and sometimes electricity), one of the most precious objects you can have in a sweltering Cuban summer is a well-made, old-fashioned lady’s fan. This store, located near the old port of Havana, houses ...

In the first years after Raúl Castro assumed power permanently from his brother Fidel (2009), entrepreneurialism in Cuba blossomed as never before and in ways unrestrained by the state. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: ...

Until the 1990s, the Cuban government provided a generous ration of nationally made cigarettes to all adults. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: Cuba steps toward … and then away from a new future with ...

Recently remodeled, the Hotel Lincoln was in its heyday a pinnacle of the apparent prosperity Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship had brought to Cuba. As part of his government’s campaign to convince the international public that this was true, Batista hosted ...

October 28th is the official feast day of one of Catholicism’s most revered saints, Jude Thaddeus, believed to have been a first cousin or even brother of Jesus Christ. Perhaps because Cubans have suffered great traumas in the last five ...

Most travelers of the Caribbean will be familiar with El Yunque National Forest in the US colonial territory of Puerto Rico. Cuba’s El Yunque is massive by comparison. Part of a protected biosphere only ten ...

This national monument is located in an obliquely mapped spot on the eastern shore near Baracoa. It marks the spot where three of Cuba’s greatest national leaders and military officers landed in April 1895 to launch Cuba’s final war for ...

Perhaps no other part of Cuba is as well known for its hospitality than the mountains of Oriente province. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: Cuba steps toward … and then away from a new ...

As this excellent display explains to visitors, Cuba’s slaves and free Blacks organized themselves by the ethnic group of their African origins into societies. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: Cuba steps toward … ...

One of the most disturbing exhibits in the Bacardí Museum of Santiago de Cuba features different instruments for brutalizing enslaved workers. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: Cuba steps toward … and then away from ...

One of the most striking aspects of Havana’s most important colonial era museums and memory markers is the shocking erasure of slavery and the enslaved from virtually all narratives. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio [Change without ...

At the end of Cuba’s third war for independence, when the United States’ military intervention and occupation ended patriots’ dream of national sovereignty, Emilio Bacardí forged a clear path of redemption by doing what few of his class peers even ...

The intellectual love child of Emilio Bacardí, one of the two brothers credited with developing and running Cuba’s oldest rum company (founded in 1862), this museum in Santiago de Cuba remains a landmark of national identity, memory and freedom struggles.

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During the post-Fidel Castro age, emboldened Cubans began painting unusual, often beautiful graffiti as seen in earlier posts I have made to Fotodiario. Like other examples, painting any image on a public space without authorization (usually signaled by the zone ...

For many Cuban islanders, hummingbirds are a sacred animal, both a sign of good luck and of the presence of the Divine. No wonder Rafael Guerra, then a UF history major (and no relation to me) was shocked when he ...

In 2008, the Cuban state finally ended the ban on the ability of Cuban nationals to stay in their own country’s hotels. From the series, “Cambio sin cambio ”: Cuba steps toward … and then away ...

From 2016-2018, Dean Judith Russell and I collaborated with Dr. Adela Dworkin, the President of El Patronato Synagogue and Jewish Life Center in Havana, to preserve, digitize and make public the tens of thousands of unique items in the Patronato’s ...

In contrast with the Plaza Vieja, whose restoration I detail above in the “Special Period” section of Fotodiario, this fountain, located in what had once been the heart of Havana’s financial and commercial center, was never fenced to keep Cubans ...

To most foreign eyes and surely many local ones, the sight of hand-painted graffiti is unwelcome. Yet, in Cuba, where Communist law bans all public displays of signs without prior government authorization and approval, the sudden appearance of brightly colored, ...

One of Cuba’s most unique national treasures are the many old-fashioned drug stores from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century that decorate the landscapes of many cities. In Havana, many visiting Americans feel a special bond with the Johnson ...

Between 2012 and 2016, the University of Florida’s Smathers Library, under the leadership of Dean Russell, specialists of Cuba in our doctoral program in History, and the Center for Latin American Studies created unprecedented academic and intellectual exchanges with the ...

On 15 October 2012, I happened to have stopped by Cuba’s Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba in order to thank my colleagues in the Cuban bibliographic division for their help in 2005 conducting months of research on the post-1959 press. The ...

The survival of historical wreckage from Cuba’s past all around the island can sometimes make for startling experiences, especially when their irony is difficult to convey in words. Walking down a Havana street in the fall of 2012, I encountered ...

Across Havana, Cuba’s apartment buildings and once opulent mansions bear witness to the extremes of history. Enormous trees like the ceiba could be seen growing from the roof and side of a still-inhabited building steps away from El Floridita, one ...