Looking Forward

Contents

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Foreword

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pp. ix-xiii

Few countries have been the subject of so much controversy, debate, and probing in the past four decades as much as Cuba. Some forty-six years after the Revolution, Cuba continues to be a symbolic force far beyond its small size and weak economy. Interest in Cuban affairs is once again rising, yet the reason is no longer the Revolution as a role model for building new societies under the nose of the world’s largest capitalist power. The issue now is the...

Acknowledgments

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pp. xv-xix

“Always say thank you,”my grandmother used to say. Politeness aside, in this case, it is essential to acknowledge the institutions and many individuals who made the publication of Looking Forward possible. This collection has four institutional sponsors: the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Foundation...

Acronyms

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pp. xix-xx

Introduction

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pp. 1-16

The world still awaits. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many observers expected a political transformation in Cuba as well. The Cuban regime might have collapsed as did those of Central and Eastern Europe after Mikhail Gorbachev announced that Soviet troops would never again be used to keep Communist regimes in...

Looking Forward

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pp. 17-46

A democratic Cuba is not yet in the offing, and conditions favoring a transition may not emerge for the foreseeable future. Yet only democracy can be a credible conduit for the island’s citizens to express their diversity and thus promote the greater good. How...

Cuba's Civil-Military Relations in Comparative Perspective

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pp. 47-71

Comparable sentences cannot be written about the armed forces of Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico on the eve of their respective moments of political regime change, nor about those of communist Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Bulgaria at a similar juncture. In the last third of the twentieth century, none of the Latin American...

The Cuban Constitution and the Future Democratic Transition

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pp. 72-95

Almost two decades after the implosion of the Soviet Bloc and the commencement of the democratic transitions of Central and Eastern Europe, when or how Cuba will follow a similar path remains uncertain.While Cuba did make an effort to respond to a new world order through notable—if carefully targeted and managed—...

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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pp. 96-118

The story of civil society in transitions to democracy is the story of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Cuba will likely be no exception. Cuban civil society will face similar challenges and opportunities as its counterparts have confronted elsewhere, albeit with its own national peculiarities....

Gender Equality in Transition Policies

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pp. 119-137

Revolutionary Cuba upholds some of the world’s most progressive policies for gender equality. Women and men enjoy equal rights; abortion is free, legal, and safe; divorce is easy to obtain; the family code requires that men and women share in childrearing and other domestic tasks; maternity leave is generous; and the state sponsors a network of affordable day care facilities for working mothers...

Race, Culture, and Politics

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pp. 138-162

“Five of us were fired from our jobs. The manager of the company did not hide to declare that he did not want black people there,” a fifty-five- year-old black woman from Havana explained when she took her case to the district attorney of her municipality in 1997. She had been working in one of Havana’s shopping centers that operate...

Strategy for a Cuban Economic Transition

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pp. 163-186

In the early 1990s, Cuba’s economy collapsed. For nearly three decades, the island’s economy had depended on the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe for trade, credits, and aid. With the end of socialism in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the socialist economic bloc,...

Social Policy and Social Welfare

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pp. 187-211

Social policy involves the provision of social services—health care, education, social insurance pensions, social assistance, and poverty reduction—as well as the promotion of employment and a fair income distribution. Social policies that are conducted in a financially sustainable manner promote social welfare....

Escaping the Corruption Curse

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pp. 212-239

Corruption poses an insidious challenge to political legitimacy and economic growth in countries across the world. In many new democracies, the transition away from authoritarian rule has failed to end corrupt practices and even created new opportunities to harness public resources for private enrichment. Similarly, Cuba’s...

The Emigre Community and Cuba's Future

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pp. 240-261

The life and death of Jorge Mas Canosa provide a fitting symbol for the relationship between Cuban �migr�s and their homeland. For nearly two decades, until his death in 1997, Mas Canosa was the most influential �migr� leader, attaining a political stature that had no precedent and thus far has not been replicated in the exile community. He transformed...

Ideology, Culture, and Memory

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pp. 262-279

Any approach to the history of contemporary Cuban culture must consider the great transformation produced by the revolutionary triumph of 1959 and the subsequent establishment of a Marxist- Leninist regime. That change produced not only a new social order and a new set of practices, values, discourses, and customs, it also marked a break with the island’s intellectual framework, creating...

Cuba's Future Relations with the United States

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pp. 280-308

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s relations with the rest of the world have changed dramatically. The disappearance of the socialist bloc meant that Cuba lost not only its military allies but also its principal trade partners and source of foreign assistance. Since then, Cuba’s top foreign policy priority has been to reorient its international economic relations to new trade partners, principally in Europe and Latin America.Cuban troops have come home...

Bibliography

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pp. 309-315

Contributors

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pp. 316-318

Index

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pp. 319-332