Worldwide, Cuba’s tropical forests and maritime areas are recognized as rich storehouses of biodiversity. Historically, these treasures have not enjoyed any type of significant societal and governmental commitment aimed at habitat conservation. Furthermore, since 1960, they have suffered from further degradation as a result of a failed Soviet-style approach to economic development. Based on a […]

One of the main questions raised by the ongoing trade negotiations between the United States and five countries of Central America—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua—is why these very small economies have decided to negotiate a free trade agreement (the Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA) with the biggest and most […]

Notes1 Cuba’s economic transformation in the 1990s cannot be considered the solution to the formidable challenge of substantially modifying the current productive structure of the economy in order to achieve development. Despite the changes, the reconstruction of the Cuban economy is an incipient process with a high level of indeterminacy. To put it simply, it […]

For more than 40 years, longer than many people can remember, the U.S. and Cuban governments have not had diplomatic and trade relationships (for a chronology of the U.S. embargo see Kaufman Purcell and Rothkopf, 2000, Appendix A). During most of that time this anomalous state of affairs did not attract much controversy, for it […]