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 […]
The Internationalization of Collective Behavior: Lessons From Elian
Despite the enormous economic crisis experienced by Cuba in the aftermath of the 1989 disappearance of the Soviet Union, the systems of social control in the island have been very effective in minimizing the number of people who participate in political protests, the number and variety of places in the society in which these overt […]
Culture of Opposition in Cuba
The recent attention in the social sciences to social movement organizations as actors in the drama of social change, needs to be modified to make cultures of opposition the more inclusive topic of analysis and theorizing in comparative studies of change in political systems. The paper identifies ten attributes of cultures of opposition (CO) in […]
Are Cuba’s Educational Statistics Reliable?
One of the consequences of the recent collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc has been a renewed appreciation of the lack of correspondence between the ideology and the practice of socialist revolutionary states. Not surprisingly, this lack of correspondence between the two is nowadays the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of […]
A Skeptical View of the Announced Demise of Castrism
One of the frustrating things in life is the lack of information regarding things as they are. Oftentimes, even when we desire to let our dreams be tested through external means, we ponder in ignorance of very important things for ourselves and the lives of nations. And so it is with Cuba. Ever since the […]