Tourism has become an attribute of central importance within Havana’s urban environments and landscapes. Throughout the “Special Period,” tourism development has played a crucial role in transforming the city’s main functions and its urban environmental, economic, and social conditions. The rapid increase of tourist inflows and tourism-oriented facilities is testing Havana’s dilapidated urban infrastructural network, […]

Notes1 In this paper I explore what I take to be important similarities as well as significant differences between two dictatorial regimes separated by the Atlantic Ocean in space and a generation in time: Franco’s Spain and Castro’s Cuba. Located at opposite ends of the conventional left-right ideological spectrum, founded by men very different in […]

It is appropriate to assess the 1980 Mariel Cuban migratory experience as we approach the 25 year-mark of these immigrant’s first arrival in the United States. Marielitos, as they are commonly known, have contributed greatly to the cultural and economic development of South Florida. Their contributions extend to the arts, literature, academic, and entrepreneurial domains. […]

Notes1 Since the early 1990s, Cuba has experienced serious economic problems that resulted from the demise of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the economic and financial system in which the island was inserted. At end of the 1980s, some 81% of Cuba’s external commercial relations were […]

One of the most important means within the control of Cuba’s current government to obtain foreign capital is to promote foreign direct investment (“FDI”) in the country. Even though firmly adhering to a socialist political and economic framework, Cuba has taken a series of measures in the last decade to promote FDI as a way […]