Prior to the Castro Administration takeover in 1959, foreign investment in agriculture was a major factor in Cuba’s economy. In the sugar sector, which was the keystone of the economy, approximately 40 percent of the production resulted from U.S. investment capital. In addition, there were investments by U.S. and other foreign investors in the production […]

My recollection of Pazos’ views on Cuba and economic development will focus on two relatively unknown pieces of his work: a book on employment and poverty in the Dominican Republic and the lecture he delivered in Washington in December 1990 to the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. Some reference will also be […]

In this brief paper a very general outline will be presented of the author’s view in regard to the strategies to be followed in the processes of reconstruction, development and desocialization in post-Castro Cuba, and of concurrent state action to that effect.1 In the first place, it is extremely important to understand that the social […]

It seems that about every thirty years Cuba’s economy has been buffeted by an economic cataclysm. The War of Independence in the late 1890s devastated the economy and decimated its population. The Great Depression affected Cuba deeply in the 1930s. The Socialist Revolution created massive economic upheaval in the 1960s. Then the dissolution of the […]

Notes1 “Para Cuba que sufre, la primera palabra.” —José Martí Pérez The recent fainting spell that Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, suffered during a speech he was making at a mass rally in Havana has renewed the interest in studying a post-Castro scenario. Castro’s mortality, a taboo topic in Cuba, as well as the course […]