It has been thirteen years since the majority of Central and Eastern Europe’s centrally planned economies began a transition to a capitalist system. In that time, several alternative paths to a market economy have been pursued in different countries, with varying degrees of success. As a result, there is no one commonly agreed approach to […]

Notes1 La patria es dicha de todos, y dolor de todos, y cielo para todos, y no feudo o capellanía de nadie. — José Martí Cuba: Colón la llamó “la tierra más bella que ojos humanos han visto,” para Juan Bosch era “la isla fascinante,” generalmente es conocida como “la perla de las Antillas,” la […]

Uno de los aspectos que más resalta la propaganda del régimen castrista como un gran logro, junto con la educación y la salud pública, es la erradicación del desempleo masivo prevaleciente hasta 1959. “Ya se señaló que el desarrollo social ha sido acaso el mayor logro de las últimas décadas de Cuba … El índice […]

More than a decade after the collapse of central planning in most former communist countries and the disintegration of the USSR, Cuba remains an “island of socialism” in the Caribbean sea, 90 miles from the United States. All along, and in spite of massive economic difficulties, the survival, of “socialism“ has been the authorities’ explicit […]

Notes1 Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Cuba—FAR) have undergone over the years a dynamic change in their role and doctrine as a defense institution, from their genesis of the Rebel Army who fought the Batista dictatorship. Army General Raúl Castro has called the FAR a “vanguard of the state,”2 ready to defend […]