THE THREAT Cuba is 700 miles long, has 5400 miles of coastline, and is surrounded by 3700 islands or keys. Located close to southern Florida, it thrusts from the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico. Starting with the British attempt to monopolize trade with their American colonies, Cuba became a base for smuggling rum, slaves, […]

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. —Aldous Huxley The 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution offers an opportune moment to revisit the two erroneous narratives about Cuba’s late republican era that continue to inform the contemporary “conventional wisdom” of many scholars and journalists. One of these narratives argues that U.S. direct […]

Notes1 In the political economy literature as applied to development, there is a tendency to view democracy in onedimensional terms. In this essay we move away from this one-dimensional characterization. This broadening of the concept leads to a re-examination of the literature on the relation between long-term growth or development and democracy. With these two […]

Notes1 Many journalistic articles and a few academic ones have been published on the occasion of the half century of the Cuban revolution comparing that nation’s economic and social situation in 1958 and 2008. Such exercise is complicated by serious methodological problems that have not been properly analyzed. This essay summarizes the swings of economic […]