CRI-UPF Cuba Studies Series

In cooperation with the University Press of Florida, the Cuban Research Institute (CRI) is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Cuba Studies Series. Designed to highlight the scholarship of Florida International University's Cuban and Cuban-American Studies faculty and other scholars associated with the CRI, the series will feature cutting-edge work by the nation's top scholars of Cuba and Cuban-American issues. The first two titles of the series are Cuba Transnational, edited by CRI Director Damián Fernández, and Cuba's Aborted Reform: Socioeconomic Effects, International Comparisons, and Transition Policies by Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López.

Cuba Transnational

"A most significant contribution to the growing body of writing that treats Cuban cultural production in general, and the theme of transnationalism in particular. . . . Fernández's global and eclectic approach is both timely and imperative.”

--Andrea O'Reilly Herrera, University of Colorado

Edited by CRI Director Damián Fernández, this collection creates a picture of society in Cuba that is fully engaged in the exchange of international cultural currents. Though scholars, policymakers, the public, and the media often portray the nation as suspended outside space and time, the authors argue that the island is insular merely in physical geography and that its influence on global actors and forces in the 21st century is complex and significant.

The myth of isolation has served as an excuse for political actions on both sides of the Florida Straits. But transnational norms, capital, identities, and mass culture have not stopped short of Cuban shores. These articles, based on grassroots fieldwork in Cuba as well as in Little Havana (Miami), South Miami Beach, and other locations, demonstrate patterns of connections that challenge the standard discourse on Cuban distinctiveness. The authors expand the dimensions of the study of Cuba's international relationships by including aspects of life that are not solely the consequence of state action, conceptualizing transnationalism as an exchange across borders by nonstate actors, individuals, organizations, and networks. While addressing the subject of migration—including immigration to the United States in the century before Castro—they also examine social and cultural encounters in areas such as music, tourism, gay life, religion, and literature.

Cuba's Aborted Reform:

Socioeconomic Effects, International Comparisons, and Transition Policies

by Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López

“Mesa-Lago and Pérez-López have achieved the rarest of feats: they have given us a dispassionate, data-rich, comparative, provocative, and policy-oriented analysis of Cuba's aborted economic reforms of the last decade.”

—Ted Henken, Baruch College, CUNY

This volume analyzes Cuban socioeconomic policies and evaluates their performance since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. It provides a brief historical background to the crisis and analyzes in detail the deterioration and incomplete recovery since 1990. Comparing Cuba 's performance with that of other Latin American and former socialist countries, it summarizes the views of noted Cuban economists and proposes policies that architects of the Cuban transition might wish to put in place after the passing of Castro.

Focusing on economic and social policies and performance during the “Special Period in Time of Peace” (1990-2004), the authors draw on an impressive array of statistics (synthesized in 28 tables) to show that in 2005 Cuba has yet to return to economic levels of the late 1980s, and the access and quality of many of the highly touted social services--education, health care, social security, housing--also have not been restored to the levels achieved prior to the economic crisis triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, they argue, poverty has expanded and unequal access to foreign remittances combined with expanding income differences have exacerbated social inequalities and widened the consumption gap between those with access to hard currency and those without.

The authors demonstrate that governmental concerns about a strengthening private sector resulting in loss of political control finally prompted the Cuban leadership to prioritize political over economic ends. It aborted the modest market-oriented reforms of 1993-1996 and actually reversed them in 2003-2004, recentralized the economy, drastically reduced the limited spaces for private economic activity, exerted increasing control over hard currency, prohibited the circulation of the dollar, and stepped up repressive measures on peaceful dissidents. Centralized economic control has been fully restored, even though it will undoubtedly result in further deterioration of economic conditions and declining standards of living.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago is distinguished professor emeritus of economics and Latin American studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His most recent books include Market, Socialist and Mixed Economies: Comparative Policy and Performance-- Chile, Cuba, and Costa Rica and Las Reformas de Pensiones en America Latina y su Impacto en los Principios de la Seguridad Social. Jorge Pérez-López is an international economist whose most recent books include Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba and Cuba's Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage.

To order Cuba Transnational or Cuba's Aborted Reform please visit http://www.upf.com.

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