Cuba: between reform and revolution

461 Pages·2006·3.352 MB·English

by  Pérez, Louis A

CUBA
LATIN AMERICAN HISTORIES
Thomas E. Skidmore, Series Editor
James R. Scobie Argentina:A City and a Nation
second edition
Franklin W. Knight The Caribbean:The Genesis of a Fragmented
Nationalism
second edition
Herbert S. Klein Bolivia:The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society
second edition
Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba:Between Reform and Revolution
third edition
Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. Central America:ANation Divided
third edition
Thomas E. Skidmore Brazil:Five Centuries of Change
Peter Flindell Klarén Peru:Society and Nationhood in the Andes
Brian Loveman Chile:The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism
third edition
Frank Safford and Colombia:Fragmented Land, Divided Society
Marco Palacios
CUBA
BETWEEN REFORM AND REVOLUTION
THIRD EDITION
Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
2006
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pérez,Louis A.,1943–
Cuba :between reform and revolution / by Louis A.Pérez,Jr.— 3rd ed.
p.cm.— (Latin American histories)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-19-517911-8 — ISBN-13:978-0-19-517912-5 (pbk.)
ISBN 0-19-517911-0 — ISBN 0-19-517912-9 (pbk.)
1.Cuba—History.2.Nationalism—Cuba—History. I.Title. II.Series.
F1776.P46 2005
972.91—dc22 2004065477
Printing number:9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To the friends who gather at Café Don José:
For all the years of Friday afternoons
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Contents
preface to the third edition ix
preface to the second edition xi
preface to the first edition xii
1 Geography and Pre-Columbian Peoples 1
2 Colony and Society 15
3 Out from the Shadows 38
4 Transformation and Transition 54
5 Reform and Revolution in the Colony 77
6 Between Wars 97
7 Revolution and Intervention 118
8 The Structure of the Republic 145
9 Reform and Revolution in the Republic 173
10 The Eclipse of Old Cuba 210
11 Between the Old and the New 237
12 Socialist Cuba 257
13 Cuba in the Post–Cold War World 291
political chronology 331
selective guide to the literature 347
index 427
vii
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Preface to the Third Edition
Post–Cold War adaptations continue to have far-reaching repercussions in Cuba.
The world in which the Cuban revolution was formed suddenly disappeared,
replaced by a new world order in which the ideological configurations that had
previously defined the international system were replaced by the centrifugal
forces of ethnic and religious conflict and the centripetal momentum of global-
ization. Socialism has survived in Cuba, more or less, but at costs that remain
yet to be counted. Changes introduced in the aftermath of the collapse of the
Soviet Union during the 1990s,mostly in the form of improvised and pragmatic
responses to the immediacy of the crisis, have cast a long shadow and have pro-
duced, in turn, outcomes that are themselves portents of problems to come.
These were the years of the “special period”(período especial), and will no
doubt be remembered as one of those temporal divides by which people expe-
rience the momentous transitions of a historical epoch. The período especial has
served to demarcate the life of a generation, to persist hereafter as the reference
point by which people often make those profoundly personal distinctions about
their lives as “before”and “after.”
The most substantive changes in the third edition of Cuba: Between Reform
and Revolutionare thus to be found in the last chapter, that is, the material deal-
ing with facets of the most recent Cuban past.But prudence also requires aware-
ness that excursions into the realms of recent history are not without hazards.
The changes that have overtaken Cuba in the last ten years have originated from
many sources and assumed many forms.Change often arrived in ways that were
unexpected, sometimes with effects that were dramatic and apparent immedi-
ately. On other occasions change was wrought gradually, almost imperceptibly,
from sources that were unseen and with consequences that will not reveal them-
selves until many years from now. It is often difficult to employ useful analyti-
cal frameworks for events whose consequences are far from apparent. Nor is it
any less difficult to take measure of the long-term impact of an event or set of
events—and especially those sensational events—that often consume public
attention in a manner that may later prove to be well out of proportion to its
importance. How then to assess the saga of Elián González, for example, that
for the better part of six months during late 1998 and early 1999 aroused pow-
erful passions,deepened hostility between Cuba and the United States,and pro-
duced mass mobilizations in Havana and street riots in Miami? Do these events
warrant the status of a watershed moment, or are they to be relegated to the
obscurity of a passing footnote?
ix