More than 15 years ago, something very important began to take shape. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR) began to restructure their industries and services. Such changes became to be known as perfeccionamiento empresarial (managerial improvement). No one paid too much attention to this development at the time despite of its tremendous importance. Nowadays, and especially […]

A model is a simplification of reality by which specific characteristics are taken out of their context for analytical purposes. Globalization is a recent process that is linking societies beyond the nation-state’s limits through massive ways of consumption, communications, capital and credit management that supersede former borders and pervade political, social and cultural spheres. At […]

Notes1 It’s good the competence this has brought. It’s good that these markets and self-employment have taught people a little bit of capitalism…But we have to think of how to do things correctly…Some [of these selfemployed] earn more in a day than our honored teachers earn in a month. —Fidel Castro (Peters 1997: 5) [I]nformality […]

Notes1 Cuba’s livestock industry has undergone dramatic change from the time when Fidel Castro took control of the country’s government in 1959. At the time of the revolution, cattle was the most important component of the livestock and poultry industry. Today, the cattle population in Cuba is less than at the time of the revolution. […]

Labor laws supposedly designed to safeguard the interests of Cuban workers has been one of the bulwarks of the political mythology of the Castro Revolution since the early 1960s. Such a mythification has served several purposes: (1) denigrate or deny any accomplishments of the Cuban Republics that predated the 1959 Revolution; (2) re-write Cuban history […]