The International Journal of Cuban Studies最新文献

{"title":"Policy of Empowerment: Pope Francis in Cuba","authors":"Petra Kuivala","doi":"10.13169/intejcubastud.9.1.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.1.0019","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionPope Francis spent four days on Cuban soil in September 2015. During these days, he visited three cities: Havana, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba. I participated in the visit as an observer invited by the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Cuba(Conferencia de Obispos Catolicos de Cuba). In Havana, I joined the delegation of the Conference and participated in the events in the same manner as the Catholic invitees such as foreign bishops, Cuban clergy and religious, and diplomatic representatives. This included both events open to the public as well as events for a selected audience. In Holguin and Santiago de Cuba, I focused on observing the visit among the Cubans participating in the public events, with a concentration on interpreting the responses of the audience and commentaries of the audience to the events.During and following the visit, I conducted interviews with Cuban bishops, clergy, members of the religious orders present in Cuba as well as Cubans both Catholic and non-Catholic who either participated in the events of the papal visit or chose not to participate in them. In this article, apart from my own reflections and analysis as a participant in the visit, I refer to those interviews as anonymous sources. From this perspective, I analyse the expectations, interpretations and outcomes of the papal visit, focusing on the dynamics of the apostolic journey as well as reactions and responses of the Catholic Church in Cuba and Cuban Catholics to Pope Francis's message and the purpose of the visit.Cuba and the Holy SeeIn the books of the Holy See,1 Cuba has occupied a particular chapter ever since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959. The Catholic Church, rooted in Cuba during the Colonial era, has existed within the socialist system for the past six decades. The coexistence of the Catholic Church and the Cuban revolutionary regime has nevertheless been characterised by mutual tension, conflict and confrontation.The confrontation between the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Cuban revolution experienced its most tense stages in the 1960s. The cultural, collective memory of the Cuban Catholics still recalls the experience of alienation and marginalisation in the Cuban society and public life. The living memory still accounts for suspicion and, at times, hostility, among the older generations of Cuban Catholics both on the island and in exile. The institutional church has, however, reached a renewed position and newly gained visibility in the Cuban public sphere in the twenty-first century. From the confrontation of the 1960s and the decade of marginalised silence and introspection of the 1970s, the church reorganised itself in order to provide for internal revival in the 1980s and reemerge in the Cuban society in the 1990s in order to fill the void of ideological and existential searching among Cubans, caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Special Period2 and the removal of the atheist ideal from the Cuban constitution, all occur","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122453462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Minority Report: Cuban Gays in the International Media","authors":"E. Kirk","doi":"10.13169/intejcubastud.9.1.0117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.1.0117","url":null,"abstract":"All media exists to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.- Marshall McLuhan (1964)Revolutionary Cuba has been a fixture in the international media for decades. Topics that made headlines around the globe have included Fidel Castro's death, US-Cuba relations, visits to Havana by the Pope, Cuba's international medical missions, and economic changes under Raul Castro. One topic, however, which has been crucial to human development in contemporary Cuba, has received comparatively little media attention - sexual diversity1 (LGBT) rights.Sexual diversity rights has been a topic of increasing importance in contemporary Cuba, although this has not always been the case. For example, probably one of the largest stains on the history of revolutionary Cuba was the treatment of homosexual men in the 1960s and 1970s. From forced attendance in the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) labour camps, to imprisonment, and struggles under discriminatory legislation, the first decades of the Revolution were fraught with prejudice and homophobia (Madero 2016; Roque Guerra 2011). While homosexuality was officially decriminalised in 1979, and some changes occurred through the 1980s and 1990s, it was not until some years later that attention to sexual diversity rights would be prioritised within the revolutionary framework. Yet despite the significant shifts from these earlier events, very little media attention has been given to this topic.Significant changes began in 2007, with the first celebrations for the International Day Against Homophobia (17 May). Following this, sweeping national programmes and campaigns emerged focusing on the normalisation of sexual diversity and the importance of respect (rather than tolerance or acceptance) (Kirk 2011). For example, the National Program for Sexual Education and Sexual Health (ProNess) was re-written between 2012 and 2013 to include themes of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities, and the New Family Code, including rights for non-heteronormative families, was presented to the National Assembly in 2012 (Kirk 2015). Although there are ongoing issues associated with machismo and discrimination (particularly in the more rural provinces), sexual diversity has largely been normalised throughout the island - a considerable achievement given Cuba's extensive homophobic past and the deep-rooted machismo. Nonetheless, these events have largely been ignored in the international media.The most important element to this normalisation process, which has received equally little attention, has undoubtedly been the Ministry of Public Health's (MINSAP) National Centre of Sexual Education (CENESEX) (Castro Espin 2013). The Centre, directed by Mariela Castro Espin, has employed a unique health-based approach to normalise sexual diversity. The approach focuses on the discrimination-health link, which asserts that discrimination is detrimental to individual and national health. Based on this approach, CE","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"25 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123855062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Western Bias Against Cuba","authors":"D. Baden","doi":"10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.9.1.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.9.1.0016","url":null,"abstract":"The media merry-go-round following the death of Fidel Castro has now come to a halt, and so, six months after his death, it is perhaps a good time to reflect on the Western portrayal of one of the longest serving political leaders in history. Naturally, bearing in mind the history of the imperialist US attitude towards Cuba, and the nationalisation of US property by the Castro government shortly after the revolution, the hostility between the two is perhaps understandable. Yet what surprised me greatly was the response of the UK media following Castro's death. In Britain, the overwhelmingly negative views of a few Miami emigres, who celebrated his passing, was given massive prominence, while the millions of mourners who had lost their leader were overlooked.I came to do research in Cuba for the first time in 2014 and knew little about the island until that point. On that journey, I was struck by story after story from Cubans about how they saw Fidel as a father figure - brave, heroic, larger than life and mostly beloved. So it was shocking for me to hear Fidel repeatedly described as a brutal dictator in the UK media following his death. This is not to say that all Cubans were uncritical of Fidel, far from it, but for a leader who had been in power for that long, the regard which most Cubans felt for him was remarkable.Following Castro's death, the news channel BBC 24 invited me in to talk about my experience of doing research in Cuba and what I had learned about Fidel. I was taken aback to find myself bombarded with anti-Castro questions from the interviewer, based not on any evidence, but on misinformation that had been uncritically repeated so often that it had begun to be taken as fact. It seemed to me that little interest was displayed in obtaining a genuine understanding of the Cuban experience.The fact that the BBC, of all media outlets, was happy, even keen, to repeat such one-sided and inaccurate material was revelatory. Clearly, I was not alone in being dismayed as my interview was recorded and went viral with more than three million views on YouTube. The media watchdog organisation, Media Lens, deconstructed the interview to highlight the extent of the BBC's bias and, as a consequence, I received hundreds of emails, comments, cards and letters from Cubans, or from those who had visited Cuba, and even a human rights lawyer thanking me for trying to present a more balanced perspective.1Yet it is not only the mass media who demonstrate anti-Cuba bias. It was after my second visit to Cuba in 2015, that I began to appreciate the difficulties in telling any kind of balanced story about the island. The aim of the research trip was to talk to top managers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector to discuss the secret of Cuba's success, for example, as having produced the first lung cancer vaccine. I was told that their success reflected their strategy which was based on the speech given by Fidel Castro in 1960 known as the Declaration of","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117015309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reporting the Cuban Revolution: How Castro Manipulated American Journalists","authors":"D. Grantham","doi":"10.5860/choice.196444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.196444","url":null,"abstract":"Leonard Ray Teel, Reporting the Cuban Revolution: How Castro Manipulated American Journalists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015) hb 264pp. ISBN: 978-0-8071-6092-3The release of Leonard Ray Teel's latest treatise, Reporting the Cuban Revolution, comes at a period of increased scepticism toward journalists as, according to a September 2016 Gallup poll, only 32% of Americans trust the mass media to report news accurately and fairly. This registered as the lowest approval rating for the media in the history of Gallup polling. Apparently, consumers, by and large, do not trust the media to follow through on its claims of objectivity. The work of 13 correspondents who covered the Cuban Revolution suggests that impartiality was an issue long before Americans considered it a problem.Famed journalist Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz studied the New York Times reporting on the Russian Revolution from 1917 to 1920 and concluded it was 'nothing short of disaster . . . seeing not what was, but what men wished to see' (35). This characterization reflects Teel's overall argument concerning the coverage of the Cuban Revolution. Teel surveys 'this cohort of thirteen' to find that adventure reporting rather than impartiality once again dominated coverage of events in another country. Reporting from a foreign land when meshed with 'timeliness, prominence, conflict, proximity and human interest', - what Teel tongue-and-cheek calls journalism's 'tests' for news value - came together to create a narrative of news.This cohort and their abandonment of the code of impartiality in a war zone 'served Castro's purpose' (5). Teel goes on in Chapters One and Two to describe how that code began in 1923 with the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who formalized a national journalistic ethos, prizing objectivity and impartiality. This code of objectivity lost its way once reporters left the US. Echoing media critic Herbert Altschull, Teel concludes that 'ideal of objectivity evidently applied to American journalists \"only within the geographic limits of the United States\"' (5).In Chapters Three and Four, Teel walks through the media competition that inspired the first four correspondents to risk much at a chance with Castro who was holed up deep inside the Sierra Maestra Mountains of southeast Cuba. By 1957, Herbert Matthews, Jules Dubois, Robert Taber, and Wendell Hoffman had 'projected a positive image of [Castro]' as the 'freedom-loving young attorney' who sacrificed comforts for the cause of democracy and free elections. Teel argues that the four helped glamorise Castro for the marketplace by 'basically reporting straight from Castro's script' (68).In Chapters Five and Six, Teel recounts how journalist Andrew St. George was lured by the adventure saga, the novelty and shock of the first four journalists. Intoxicated by the thought of similar exploits, St. George ended up with everything he needed for adventure, other than impartial reporting. …","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114611977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Latin American School of Medicine (Elam): Admissions, Academics and Attitudes","authors":"A. Jiwa","doi":"10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.9.1.0142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.9.1.0142","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionCuba's health status has grown in the last few decades following the expansion of their acclaimed medical schools, to welcome a growing number of international students. In 1999, the Latin American School of Medicine (Spanish - Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM)) was founded by the Cuban government to train international students in the field of medicine (Castro 1999). It now has 10,000 students from 124 countries (Porter 2012), primarily those from Latin America and the Caribbean, with smaller numbers from Africa and Asia. With all students at the school on full scholarships, inclusive of room, board, and a small monthly stipend, admission to the school is widely viewed as a prestigious opportunity to learn in one of the most innovative and sophisticated healthcare systems in the world (Tandon et al. 2000). In particular, Cuba's approach to healthcare is famed for its medical internationalism and its public health strategies which have resulted in health statistics paralleling those in the developed world. With such a heavy focus on health governance, the underlying processes in creating these doctors have often been overlooked. This article examines the available literature to describe and analyse the teaching methods, curriculum structure and student experience at ELAM.BackgroundUnder General Batista's rule (1952-59), pre-revolutionary healthcare in Cuba was private, with a fee-for-service system in place. This catered mainly for the elite and was neither universal nor equally accessible. While charity hospitals were available to those who could not afford private healthcare, there was still a significant number of Cubans who were unable to access healthcare or whom were denied care (Choonara 2010). A significant number of Cubans lived in rural communities, whereas most hospitals and doctors were located in the capital, Havana (Keck and Reed 2012). Wages differed according to location, and with lower wages in rural areas, doctors in these areas were usually less qualified or experienced than those in the cities (Choonara 2010). As a result, infant mortality in the area was as high as 100 per 1,000 births - statistics that paint today's picture of Mali or Somalia (World Health Organization 2016b).Following the revolution in 1959, Che Guevara outlined his aims for healthcare in Cuba, in his speech on Revolutionary Medicine. The speech declared,The work that today is entrusted to the Ministry of Health and similar organisations is to provide public health services to the greatest possible number of persons, institute a program of preventative medicine and orient the public to the performance of hygienic practices. (Guevara 1960 in Guevara 1971)Acting on these words, Fidel Castro, Cuba's new leader, began a programme of reform which involved the construction of new hospitals, decentralised the Cuban healthcare system, and began a programme of nationalisation and regionalisadon. The medical school in Havana, which had been close","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130362219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas' Victory","authors":"G. Prevost","doi":"10.5860/choice.198112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.198112","url":null,"abstract":"Steve Cushion, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas' Victory (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2016) pb 272 pp. ISBN: 9781583675816Reviewed by Gary PrevostLondon-based trade union activist Steve Cushion has written an invaluable contribution to our understanding of victory of the Cuban revolutionary forces in 1959 by focusing on the role of organized labor in the defeat of the Batista dictatorship. Leaning heavily on the labor archives of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana and interviews with participants in the struggles, Cushion fashions a well-written and well-researched account of the role of the working class struggles and their interplay with the rural guerrilla army and the armed urban underground. The latter two movements have been previously well documented and generally credited with the success of the revolution, but Cushion argues that these studies combined with the official narrative of the leaders of the Cuban revolution from Fidel Castro on down have tended to underestimate the role of organized labor. Rather than just a two-front war against Batista, he argues that the interaction of all three elements are necessary to understand the defeat of Batista and equally important in understanding the pro-working class trajectory that the revolution took from 1959 forward.Cushion successfully documents a myriad of working class organizing, especially in Eastern Cuba, that occurred in the wake of Batista's coup in 1952 and the attack on the living standards of Cuban workers in the ensuing years made worse by the complicity with Batista of the existing trade union leadership under Eusebio Mujal. Cushion documents a lively picture of working class activism in 1950s Cuba ranging from those employed in the dominant sugar sector to those in shops, department stores, and white-collar workers in the offices and banks. The activism, carried out under harsh government repression, took multiple forms from slowdowns and walkouts to sabotage and the formation of clandestine cells that would form the workers' section of the guerrilla movement. Documented is the development of the tactic of railway workers of 'trade unionism on a war footing' which combined mass action with acts of sabotage that burned sugar fields and derailed trains. Cushion documents a textile workers' strike in Matanzas leading to a complete shutdown of the city with female workers in the Woolworth's department store helping to enforce the citywide general strike in defiance of efforts by state security forces to reopen the store. …","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129531404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962","authors":"D. Baden","doi":"10.5860/choice.196495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.196495","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"27 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131860027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana","authors":"Steve Ludlam","doi":"10.1093/jahist/jav436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav436","url":null,"abstract":"William M. Leogrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015) pb 560pp. ISBN: 978-1-4696-2660-4Reviewed by Steve LudlamWhen Cuban resistance finally produced Obama's abandonment of over half a century of violent US hostility to the Revolution, the obvious question arose as to why this had taken so long? What this book demonstrates is that, despite the decades of relations characterised by Cuba's revolutionary internationalism and US aggression through invasion, terrorism, assassination attempts against Cuban leaders, economic strangulation, and unending projects of internal subversion, there were repeated behind-the-scenes talks seeking to normalise those relations. The authors make the important point that, post-Cold War, the ending of US security concerns actually lowered its incentive to act. Domestic politics became more important, and, after all, US opposition to the Revolution's antiimperialism both preceded and survived Cuba's Soviet alignment.Written by two of the US's leading Cuba scholars, this monumental history is based on the major US and presidential archives, on an extensive secondary literature, and on nearly seventy interviews with leading political actors, including Fidel Castro and James Carter. It is also a culmination of years of excavation by the Cuba Documentation Project of the National Security Archive, which Peter Kornbluh directs.The book begins with Fidel's 'unofficial' visit to the US in April 1959, when he (and the US Ambassador in Cuba) assumed positive relations were possible. Eisenhower snubbed Fidel, preferring the golf course, prompting the famous photograph of Fidel and Che playing golf, taken, according to Fidel, to satirise Eisenhower's behaviour (p. 17). Nixon, in his stead, hectored Fidel on communist threats. A meeting with the CIA produced agreement to establish a back channel that was never opened. Within weeks the Revolution's agrarian reform accelerated the process of US counter-revolutionary policy that culminated in the full trade embargo and increasingly violent aggression. By the summer of 1959, the CIA was planning a counter-revolution.Yet, as this book makes clear, back channels remained open as the revolution radicalised, even through terrorist incidents like the La Coubre explosion in Havana. The secrecy surrounding such dialogue reflects Cold War constraints and the violence, sometimes murderous, of right-wing Cuban-American groups against 'dialogistas'. On the Cuban side, of course, suspicion and stubborn defence of sovereignty prevailed. Inevitably, then, some of the 'back' channels discussed throughout are not so much non-diplomatic channels as diplomatic channels rendered exceptionally clandestine by the historical sensitivity of USCuba relations.The book takes us in fascinating detail through such channels, and an extensive dramatis personae of officials, diplo","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114946939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La Influencia del Culto a Los Orishas En la Patrimonialización del Central Méjico (Matanzas)","authors":"Maxime Toutain","doi":"10.13169/intejcubastud.8.2.0329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.8.2.0329","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"267 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115666952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Methodological Considerations on the Experience of Undertaking Doctoral Research in the Agricultural Sector in Cuba during the Special Period (1998-2000)","authors":"Julia E. Wright","doi":"10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.8.2.0296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13169/INTEJCUBASTUD.8.2.0296","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionIt was in about 1992 that I first became interested in Cuba from a professional perspective; rumour had it that Cuba was 'going organic' owing to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was working in international agricultural development and had from the outset aligned with organic farming approaches. If a whole nation were practising organic farming, this would clearly have major implications for the rest of the world's farming and food systems and especially in terms of food security, sustainable agriculture and human health. If this was not happening in Cuba, then begged the question 'Why not?' From that point of first interest, and notwithstanding the supposed interest of the global agricultural sector in sustainability, it took 6 years to secure the funding to undertake doctoral research in Cuba, finally receiving support through the EU Marie Curie Training and Mobility of Researchers Awards.2 My overall research objective was to evaluate the implications for both the agricultural sector and the food system, of the impact of a widespread reduction in the petroleum-based inputs that Cuban agriculture was dependent on, drawing from the Cuban experience.3This article aims to describe the methodological challenges encountered in attempting to undertake research in Cuba, and the often serendipitous ways in which these challenges were overcome. Along the way, I encountered the struggles of numerous Cuban researchers who were attempting to continue their work during the resource-poor Special Period. Some Cuban colleagues have informally, and politely, contested my interpretation of the 'snapshot' of the farming and food systems that I documented, and each of them has a different perspective of 'the real situation'. Nevertheless, the book that emerged as an adaptation of my doctoral thesis4 has become a seminal text not only for students but also for civil society groups working for change toward more sustainable systems that are less dependent on fossil fuels.Methodological Considerations of a Cautious Doctoral StudentAny attempt to evaluate the farming and food system over a whole country is ambitious, especially when the country is relatively secluded and reticent, as was the case for this research. Notwithstanding the extensive research planning that took place, the final research design developed as an emergent product of the research process, rather than through rigid adherence to a fixed framework. In particular, it was governed in practice by the opportunities encountered in the field, which in turn affected not only the methodology but also the development of the analytical framework, which in turn was influenced by the author's background in applied development research and her university research department's focus on Innovation, Communication and Knowledge Systems (at Wageningen University).Much secondary information was unavailable to the author pre-field, given the 2 to 5 year time lag of publications coming out of Cuba, and ","PeriodicalId":254309,"journal":{"name":"The International Journal of Cuban Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123922102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}