Why Cuba? Why now?

• The Cuban 'social experience' is approaching a major change with a generational shift at the top. There is enormous speculation in the West, indeed worldwide, as to how this change will develop and what forces will be brought to bear, both internally and externally.
  
  
• In the wider global context, Cuba also presents critical questions concerning globalisation, especially but not only in Latin America.
  
  
• The Cuban revolution has largely been viewed in the West as a mixture of old style Communism and totalitarian dictatorship, but neither of these views adequately describe it complexities nor explain its exceptionalism.
  
  
• Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of at least old-style communism as an alternative political and economic system, there has been an assumption that free market capitalism has to be the only game in town. However, many are asking whether the survival, recovery and successes of the Cuban system, despite considerable external pressures, might present an alternative model of development. Could it represent a fecund third way?
  
  
• The Cuban authorities have been criticised for excessive pressures on citizens, private companies, non-governmental institutions and the domestic and international media. This is an issue upon which there are polarised views and which requires rigorous study to provide evidence on which an objective debate can be furthered.
  
  
• Whatever the realities of the political system that has developed in often embattled Cuba, the outcomes - in terms of health care, education, welfare service, technological advances, sports prowess and sustainable development - are remarkable and far too little recognised in the wider world. They outstrip many of the achievements in these dimensions in countries that have adopted either the free market or the communist systems.
  
  

Our central question, then as now, is this:

"What lessons can Western and other societies learn from interrogating and analysing the Cuban social experience?"

Currently, governmental policies towards Cuba on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be, to differing degrees, predicated on the assumption that the Cuban Revolution will be transformed dramatically and move further towards free market capitalism once its chief architect, Fidel Castro, is no longer on the scene. There is apparently no planning for the possibility that the Cuban regime might not essentially change - or that it might become more radically socialist.

Persisting U.S. antagonism towards socialism in Cuba and other parts of Latin America is potentially a source of instability and even conflict in the region. Cuba demands attention in its own right as a key element in this context. With Cuba now enjoying the benefits of a close alliance with oil-rich Venezuela and a deepening trade and investment relationship with a booming China, there is every prospect that the Cuban economy might continue its fast growth of recent years, possibly making a political change towards liberalism in the island less, rather than more, likely.

There is the need for a deeper and better-focused study of these factors, to help inform policy makers and the business community in the coming decade about Cuba's position and its implications for the Caribbean and Latin America. It is our view that this study requires a holistic approach, which can only be undertaken within an academic centre beyond the confines of the US-Cuba divide and with the rigour of truly objective academic enquiry. We also recognise that the response of many to the central question and thus the raison d'être of the IISC's rationale may be:

"No. There are no important or replicable lessons to be learnt from the Cuban experience. It is a unique and idiosyncratic event in world history and its achievements, for what they were, must be seen as transient at best, non transferable and unsustainable."

Why the journal? Why now?

We believe that the question Why Cuba? Why Now? holds as much relevance to Cuba as to the rest of the developed and developing world as we all face the challenges of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The International Journal of Cuban Studies is one of the academic vehicles through which this open analysis and discussion will occur. Our editorial and advisory boards are international in composition, with representatives from Europe and the Americas, including Cuban academics. The editorial board reflects the wide scope of the journal and already our deliberations are proving to be an iterative and reflective process as we each discuss and debate from our own perspective on the Cuba we all purport to know.

Professor Patrick Pietroni is Director of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba.

Copyright for this work is held jointly between Patrick Pietroni and the International Journal of Cuban Studies under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative 3.0 Licence
IJCS Volume 1 Issue 1 June 2008