Cuban Studies

Because we hail from a world shaped by consumerism and the cheap, invisible labor that makes our “lifestyle” possible, most visitors to Cuba are consistently astonished by both the sheer age of many of the objects on which Cubans rely ...

Possibly one of the most surprising first acts of Raúl Castro’s time in office was to put up a massive metal sculpture of Camilo Cienfuegos on the façade of the Ministry of Communications in the Plaza of the Revolution. It ...

When asked what the greatest evidence of an emerging economic recovery might be, one thoughtful Cuban observer told me, “The return of the mamey and the health of our puppies.” Similar to the Catalina avocado in its fiber-free texture but ...

Under the leadership of historian Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, Cuba’s National Library went from being a sleeping giant whose quality of service and accessibility of holdings were infamously bad to becoming the world-class institution it was meant to be when ...

President (and soon-to-be dictator) Gerardo Machado built El Capitolio in 1929 as part of a massive program of public works that temporarily addressed the chronic underemployment created by Cuba’s monocultural dependence on sugar. Although a clear neocolonial homage to the ...

Almost as soon as Raúl Castro expanded the legal categories for self-employment and the hiring of personnel by small businesses in 2009-2011, entrepreneurial Cubans took quick advantage. Charging what most Cubans considered a pittance, young gym instructors and retired athletes ...

One splashy new billboard announces the city of Cienfuegos’s faith in Fidel and Raúl Castro “has never failed” from the side of the road near the entrance to that city. Another pro-government sign made by a local Committee for the ...

Since the mid-1990s, Black Cuban musicians had begun re-engineering the African American genre of hip-hop and rap in ways no-one expected. In contrast with earlier generations of musicians who performed and recorded during the first three decades of Communist rule, ...

Perhaps nothing is more more emblematic of Cuban entrepreneurs’ ingenuity and persistence than the now 70+-year-old American cars that drivers have rebuilt and maintained using hand-made and “cannibalized” parts from Soviet-made trucks, tractors, or even a rare Korean or Japanese ...

For the hundreds of thousands of habaneros who continue to live in neighborhoods riddled with corner garbage dumps, the fact that they can do nothing to increase the government’s once-a-month trash pick-ups is a source of daily indignation. In light ...

To the great delight of Cubans living abroad who returned as tourists to visit family on the island, Raúl Castro dismantled several of the state prohibitions on Cuban nationals’ ability to partake or enjoy the country’s tourist facilities and services. ...

A pioneering scholar of Cuban environmental history, Dr. Funes represented one of several historians who visited UF as a result of a convenio or mutual agreement between the Fundación Antonio Nuñez Jiménez and UF’s Center for Latin American Studies. Here ...

Established in the first two decades after the Spanish arrival in the New World, Trinidad de Cuba is an ancient jewel. Its every facet mirrors both the unimaginable human pain of hundreds of thousands of slaves who were worked to ...

Enabled for the first time to hire middle men and other intermediaries who in turn increased internal trade on the island, many government licensed entrepreneurs quickly built on their already solid reputation as reliable, top-quality purveyors of services and goods. ...

Communist law made the fishing, sale and consumption of lobsters outside of government-owned vessels and venues strictly illegal in the early 1960s. From the 1970s to virtually today, Cuba imports fish (usually juvenile merluza of a type normally used for ...

Located on San Miguel Street in Centro Habana, this historic, three-story mansion stands next door to Cuba’s internationally famous pre-1959 music recording studio (known as EGREM after its nationalization in 1961). A couple for more than twenty years, Alberto, a ...