Introduction

INTRODUCTION K. Lynn Stoner and Alfredo Prieto The Cuban Revolution has prevailed. For fifty years the revolutionary government has survived overt and covert operations launched by the United States and its allies. Too, Cubans and their leaders have to come to terms with internal contradictions in political ideology, the “errors” the leadership has admitted making, and internal divisions that have sent over one million Cubans into exile. Pressure from within and from without has molded a government, a society, and an economy such that the Revolution is quite different from the one announced on July 26, 1953 or even January 9th , 1959. It also differs from the its old prototype Soviet model of Marxist Leninist revolution. It might surprise some US audiences that the Revolution has survived precisely because of its flexibility and adaptability and not solely because of recalcitrance or repression. Political versatility has required that Cuban governance and social order be designed by Cubans, and it has evolved through several political cycles. Today Cuba faces dramatic shifts in political and economic power that the rest of the world must also address: an undetermined international balance of power, a larger and more competitive global economy, and the deconstruction of Cold War ideologies. Domestically, Raul Castro has taken over from his brother Fidel. New and different rules now apply to rural production, private farming for profit, and private and public enterprises once banished from Cuba’s socialist credo. Cuba’s revolutionary generation is slowly relinquishing power, leaving younger nationalist intellectuals to sort out the next set of transformations that will both meet the challenges of a new world and preserve nationalist values deeply rooted in Cuban history. The United States also has a new leader who may alter the hostile diplomacy so central to US policy since 1960. American entrepreneurs are pushing for new markets close to home, and all but the most ardent conservative ideologues and more than half of Cuban Americans favor restored and respectful relations. Further, the United States is no longer the dominant world power it was at the beginning of the twenty-first millennium, falling as it has on its own sword of global capitalism. From now on, the US will have to share power and entertain partnerships with nations entirely different from its own. It can no longer control Latin America and Cuba by using bilateral pressures to favor US interests. Cuba and the United States stand at a threshold of global reorientation. The Latin American has invited scholars from Cuba, Canada, and the United States to put together an issue that addresses this historic moment . Therefore, this volume will focus on Cuba’s past and its rapid and C  2009 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 3 The Latin Americanist, September 2009 formative changes over 110 years, 50 of which have been under socialist directives. One major focus of the work is on the effects of rapid, radical change on the island nation. A second is on suggestions for new diplomatic principles in both the US and Cuba, as the national leaders redesign their domestic and foreign policies. Scholars trained in history, economics, psychology, political science, cultural studies, and the history of religion have written across disciplinary lines. They have also used both Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives to interpret the past and make suggestions about the future. Thus, a wide range of approaches and views will inform the readership in a coherent argument: Cubans have always been agents in constructing their national identity and they will continue to be. Contrary to propaganda in the US that presents Cubans as incapable of self rule and necessary subjects of superpower dominance, all essays point out that an intelligentsia has always thought deeply about the Cuban condition, and they have treated the political circumstances with seriousness, disagreement, and sometimes with humor. While many intellectuals throughout the twentieth century have blamed the United States for hindering national development and self rule, it is also true that Cubans have looked to themselves and their cultural complexity to explain a century of political transition. Thus they accept responsibility for the trajectory of the Revolution. Another point of agreement is that Cuba and the United...