Cuba fieldcourse 2010


Wednesday: Flights & Orientation



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Wednesday: Flights & Orientation


If the flights are on time, we should arrive in Havana in the early evening. In order to get used to the time difference between Cuba and the UK, you need to stay up until at least 10pm.

Thursday: Old Havana


Convene in the hotel lobby at 9.00am. Today, you will be spending most of the day in Old and Central Havana. We will walk to Old Havana along the Malécon and you should spend any spare time you have in Old Havana and Centro.

10.30am-12.00 Talk on restoration activities and tour of main sites by Pablo Fornet, Havana Historical Office. Meeting at Pablo’s office (Plan Maestro, Empedrado Street # 151, just in Cathedral Square - yellow, two-storeys, 18th century house known as Casa del Conde Lombillo). Walk back through Central Havana. For activities during the day see Handbook.

6pm Tutorial Meetings.



Friday: Vedado


Convene in the hotel lobby at 9.00am. Today will be spent in Vedado.

You will need to walk up to the University, Revolution Square, Colon cemetery and then back to Vedado via Calle 23. For activities during the day see Handbook. 6pm Meeting with Staff.

Saturday: Outside Havana

All day coach trip out of Havana, leaving from the Hotel at 9 am. Over the course of the day we will examine a variety of physical and social environments outside of the city. These will enable you to put what you see and find in Havana in context, and to get a sense of Cuban life beyond the capital. Details to follow.

Make sure that you make good use of your time today – while we are on the coach, we will have an English speaking tour guide so think about the kinds of questions that you might want to ask. You can also use the travel time to discuss what you have found over the previous two days, and to think about how you might incorporate it into the projects.

Sunday: Project Day


Today is dedicated to project and tour preparation. You may have access to a translator (Lisa) during the day should you need her services. 6pm Meeting with Staff.

Monday: Tour Preparation and Playas Del Este


Morning: Visit to the American Special Interests Section. Assemble in hotel lobby at 10am WITH YOUR PASSPORT. Afternoon coach trip to the coast to examine recent developments in tourism. Timings to follow.

Tuesday: Tours & Assessment


Tours will start at 9am and 2pm. You will be required to meet staff after the final tour to negotiate final marks for the tour you are assessing.

Reminder, your tour should be:



  • Three to six sites of interest (carefully chosen)

  • Length - 1½-2 hours and not more than 3 miles from tour starting point


Wednesday: Free Time & Return

You will have Wednesday morning free for final sightseeing and shopping. Please make sure you arrive in plenty of time for departure to the airport.


Brief information about each location is found later in this handbook along with some preliminary questions about each site. These questions should get you started but are not intended to be an exhaustive list.
Each day, we want you to start at 8-9am – when it is relatively cool. Take a long lunch break (from 12-2pm) to avoid the midday sun. We will meet up most evenings to discuss the research you have done during the day.

Aims:


  • To develop a critical understanding of the geographies of socialist & post-colonial Cuba

  • To develop an understanding of geographical concepts, ideas and approaches in human geography particularly in socio-cultural, political ecology and economic geography

  • To encourage critical reflection, independent study and thought about geographical and real-world issues

  • To introduce a range of research skills in geography and to develop an enquiring, critical and organised approach to specialist research

  • To develop communication, teamwork, fieldwork and interpersonal skills.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the fieldcourse, you should be able to:


  • Display an understanding of theories and ideas in geography that help us to explain the ‘real world’ particularly in the context of Cuba;

  • Demonstrate a critical awareness of the distinctiveness of places and the ways in which such distinctiveness is constituted

  • Design and undertake a piece of original research based on fieldwork undertaken in Cuba

  • Demonstrate a range of skills including critical thinking, problem posing, analysis, independent learning, team work and communication skills.


Learning Styles:

Like all fieldcourses, the fieldcourse to Cuba offers you the opportunity to learn in a ‘real world’ environment. Havana offers a stimulating and exciting environment within which to work. Much of what you see and do will be very different to anything you have experienced before. Cuba is a very ‘different’ place given its continued engagement with socialism, its location relative to the US, recent revolution and relative poverty. There will be lots of opportunities for discussing what you see in Cuba both with us and your colleagues.


One of main aims of this fieldcourse is to encourage you to learn actively and to engage in critical discussion and debate about the place you are in. In other words, we want you to do more than just looking at what is around you. You will need to think about why things are different, what kinds of structures operate to make Cuba different, how is place constituted? You will need to be able to think on your feet and to analyse what you are seeing. You will need to be able to make links to similar (or very different) observations in the academic literature.
Organisation:

You will be working in teams during the sessions before we travel and while we are in Cuba. You will need to think about the relative strengths of people in your group and, thereby, devise ways of working effectively as a team. You should have developed a research project before we arrive in Havana. Your project should be based on research questions that emerge from the academic literature. You need to think about similar projects that have been undertaken either in Cuba or in other parts of the world. What were their findings? How did they go about the project? You will need to decide on your methodology. If you speak Spanish, you may want to talk to people in Havana (although see Health and Safety Information). Alternatively, you may want to use more qualitative observational techniques and will need to read about these methods in advance.


The real world doesn’t always necessarily work out and you may need to adapt you project on arrival in Havana. The fieldcourse staff will be there to discuss any ideas you have but this is your project and you need to ensure that your group have undertaken sufficient preparatory work to make appropriate adjustments. The more you read about Havana and Cuba in advance the less you are likely to have to change your project. However, if your reading has been very focussed around one particular topic then you may find that you are not adequately prepared for an alternative.
While we are in Havana, we will meet you most evenings for discussions. Everyone will be expected to participate fully in group discussions. This is your opportunity to explore what other people have seen and how they have analysed what they have seen. You may agree or disagree with these ideas but discussion is a good way to ensure your ideas are clear. Similarly, you should use staff as a resource to explore some issues and discuss your ideas. At the end of the fieldcourse, you will be asked as a group to lead one or two members of staff and one other group on a tour of selected locations within the city. We will not necessarily expect everyone in the ‘team’ to lead the tour – you need to assign roles so that each team member participates fully by working on the area that most clearly reflects their own strengths.


ORIENTATIONS
Orientation: The Hotel is located in Vedado (close to Nacional de Cuba Hotel on the map). The heart of Vedado is Calle 23 (also known as La Rampa). Vedado is linked to Habana Vieja via the Malecón (Sea wall), a road along the seafront. If you walk from the hotel towards the seafront you will reach the Malecón. Central and Old Havana are to the right while Mirimar is to the left (as you are facing the sea).
Centro Habana: As you walk along the Malecón from Vedado, you will first reach Centro Habana, which extends from Padre Varela (Vedado) to Ave de las Misiones (Old Havana). This area is the commercial area of the city and houses important locations within the city including the Capitolio Building, Parque Central and Museo de la Revolución. As you walk towards Old Havana, turn right and walk towards the Capitolio Building along Paseo de Marti. From here, you can walk into the centre of Havana Vieja via Calle Obispo.
Havana Vieja: This is the area of the city where the influence of Spanish colonialism is most obvious. Many of the buildings date from the 16th century and, although a relatively small area, the neighbourhood is home to 70,000 Cubans.
Plaza de la Revolución: This square is found some way to the north of the hotel and is the area in which Soviet influence is most obvious. It remains the area of government within the city. When you come out of the hotel, walk away from the Malecón towards the University and then along Avenue de la Independencia.



Google Earth is a useful resource for getting a sense of the city before we travel.

FIELDCOURSE THEMES
This fieldcourse explores the socio-cultural, political ecology and economic geographies of Cuba. It provides an opportunity for you to explore issues of post-colonialism, globalisation, socialism and development in the field.
The fieldcourse is centred around a number of themes that inform the visits to different locations within and outside Havana including

  • Socialism under challenge?

  • Globalisation or Dislocation?

  • Cultural Identity and Post-colonial legacies

  • Social Control in Cuba

  • Urban ecologies: green Havana?

  • Environmental histories: legacies of sugar, tobacco, tourism and biotech


Socialism under challenge?

Despite the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe almost 20 years ago, Cuba nominally remains a socialist country. This fieldcourse will explore the lasting impacts of socialism on Havana in a range of areas including the economy, housing, health and education. We will also look for evidence of the ‘marketisation’ of some aspects of Cuban life since the early 1990s and consider the extent to which this represents real change to the dominant socialist system.


Globalisation or dislocation?

For the neoliberal orthodoxy, disengagement from the global economy will inevitably stifle growth. For the Cuban leadership, the global economy is an extremely uneven playing field that holds many dangers for small, developing countries. We will explore these tensions through reflecting on the various dimensions and geographies of Cuba's external relations including: the ongoing US trade embargo; historical links to the Soviet bloc and their virtual collapse since 1989; fluctuating exports of primary commodities; imports of oil and manufactured goods; and inward investment in tourism and other growth industries. Exploring these connections allows us to interpret Cuba’s position in the global system with respect to key regional economies such as North America, Latin America and the EU.


Cultural identity and post colonial legacies:

Cuba has multiple histories, each of which have left their mark on its people and landscapes, and which give Cuba an identity distinct from its Caribbean neighbours. For example, the are ‘visual’ legacies in Old Havana from the Spanish colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries, US ‘colonists’ whose legacy is found particularly in Vedado and Soviet Influences around Revolution Square. We will examine these ‘visual’ legacies of past colonists and more subtle legacies evident in the social, political, cultural and economic landscapes of Cuba. You will explore the ways in which diverse cultural identities are expressed in Havana and the ways in which the geographical and social location of Cuba have influenced the cultural fusion and identity of the nation and its people.


Social control in Cuba: regulating the body

Our bodies are regulated in a number of ways that result in our compliance with social norms, traditions and customs. At times, such regulation is formalised through laws, statutes and regulations but, equally, we regulate our own bodies because of the sanctions of criticism, shame and social exclusion. Such regulation is considered as a form of social control that is perpetuated through discourses that have a normalising and regulatory function. As such, dominant discourses create and disseminate ‘truths’ about the world and about society but often such discourse reflects the uneven power relations within a particular society.


Urban ecologies: green Havana?

We normally think of cities as spaces that are separate from nature. Yet urban areas are intimately connected to the environment: cities are constituted through flows of materials (water, food, energy, wastes) while the city’s morphology and infrastructure influence its impact on the environment. Havana is a good place to explore this way of thinking about the contemporary city in ecological terms. While official socialist policy championed rational (environmental) planning over the inefficiencies and failures of the market, there is plenty of evidence in and around Havana that Cuba has not escaped pollution and environmental degradation. Fossil fuel shortages, limited imports and a general lack of purchasing power, however, have driven several innovative approaches to transportation, recycling and agriculture within the city, particularly since the ‘special period’ of austerity caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today some of the ‘green’ practices developed in Havana are heralded as models to which other cities might look when planning for a post-oil, carbon-aware future.


Environmental histories: legacies of sugar, tobacco, tourism and biotech

Like many tropical economies, Cuban history is punctuated by a series of resource booms as different aspects of its tropical ecology (plants, soils, climate) became valued as commercial resources. The incorporation of Cuba into the world economy from the colonial period onwards– and its partial isolation since the 1950s – has driven several waves of landscape change, each associated with the production of a different tropical commodity: deforestation for timber, the spread of sugar and then tobacco plantations, the development of coastal tourism, and more recently biotechnology. These booms not only transformed the rural hinterlands of the island; the wealth and power they produced also re-configured the urban landscapes of Havana. The fieldcourse will try to interpret the built landscape of Havana as an historical process of ordering and re-ordering natures near and far.


DOING’ URBAN RESEARCH


Introduction: In Cuba, you are going to spend much of time undertaking urban research using a range of qualitative methods. It is easy to end up simply looking at the landscape and the landmarks of Havana describing what you see without developing any ‘insights’. In order to develop such ‘insights’, you need to think more generally about how geographers do urban research and remember than all your analysis should be theoretically informed that is, you need to do more than ‘look-see’. It is important to develop your ideas by reading and interpreting the literature in a critical way. In your tour, you will need to justify your interpretations and be able to answer questions about ‘methods’ as well as ‘content’.
Qualitative Methods in Human Geography: Although often understated, qualitative methods have a long history in urban research. Through the ethnographic work of the Chicago School in the 1920s and the radical wave in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the most recent post-modern turn in the 1990s, geographers have been sensitive to the ‘making’ of geography – that is, how geographers produce geography.
Qualitative techniques have allowed geographers to draw upon people’s everyday experiences to theorise the city. Or, put another way, non-statistical methods and, in particular, semi-structured interviews, have been used to re-think the way the city is organised and how it is undergoing a series of transitions. This attention to methodological detail has been most clearly noted in the last twenty years. Here, increased intellectual effort has been devoted to the honing of how urban knowledge is produced, by whom, and for what purposes. Involving a range of actors – the socially included and excluded – in the production of their own geographies is one of the aims of contemporary research in and of the city. In order to do research in the city, the researcher needs to be sensitive to a range of qualitative techniques. Here we outline three, giving you a brief insight into how to do urban research. We deliberately move beyond the semi-structured interview, which most of you will be familiar with, and instead want to introduce alternative ways for you to think about the production of geography.
Reading the city: Textual analyses of landscape have a long history in geography. Recent attention in the discipline to textual deconstruction and the importance of language in structuring the urban environment has extended our concern to making sense of place through readings of landscapes. Urban geographers have been to the fore of this development. Recently, work has focused on how cities can be ‘read’. This technique involves interpreting the built environment in terms of the values, views, attitudes and power embodied in the physical infrastructure so, Jacobs (1993) talks about the ‘representational city’. She outlines how new ways of thinking about and interpreting the city have accompanied changes in the organisation of cities. This deconstructionist technique - it literally demands we move beyond the superficial and take apart structure and consider meanings - of analysing social relations in a city through its many landscapes is, according to Low (2000), one that binds together anthropologists, ethnographers, geographers and sociologists.
When we are in Cuba, one of the main ways in which we will ask you to think about the city is as a text. In particular, you will be asked to reflect on how buildings, spaces, places and monuments can be ‘read’ in order to develop an understanding of culture, politics, power and geographies of Havana. You will need to think about the multiple and contested ways that we can read the city and to offer informed interpretations of your readings of the landscape.
Consider, for example, some of the ways that cultural geographers ‘read’ the landscape:

  • Landscape is a clue to culture: Changes in the landscape will equate with changes in culture and vice verse. A major transformation in the cultural look of a landscape is indicative of a major change in culture (beliefs, principles, practices, values etc.).

  • Cultural landscape equality: As geographers, we can look at all kinds of features of the landscape and no one is necessarily more or less important than another e.g. we are interested in homes, shops as much as iconic buildings – everyday landscapes can tell us a lot about everyday culture.

  • History and landscape: To read a landscape ‘properly’ a researcher needs to know something of the history of a place

  • Geographic context: A landscape (natural or built) can only be understood with reference to surrounding places and landscapes.

  • Landscape obscurity: A landscape does not ‘speak’ to us very clearly – we need to ask the right questions and to look the right way.

  • Landscape silences: The silences of landscape (what is absent) can be as important as the texts of a landscape. Silences may be an integral part of culture and reflective of power relations within culture and society.


Ethnographic takes on the city: As part of the turn towards more qualitative techniques, from the-mid 1980s onwards, ethnographic research enjoyed a renaissance in social geography. In a review paper, Peter Jackson (1985: 157) set out how the traditional methods of the ethnographer were being used by others in the social sciences, as a means of understanding the everyday practices of urban residents. Ethnography relies on the analysis of everyday lives of individuals. In order to use this technique to explore change in the organisation of the city, geographers have inserted this attention to the ‘local’ within its broader context. This means, situating the material generated through the observations of interaction, negotiation, dispute etc within changes in the layout of cities, the political-economic context, etc.. So, the question is what techniques should geographers use in order to ‘read’ the city, or to study it ethnographically?
Thinking …

In general:

  • What/whose values are embodied in the contemporary built environment?

  • How have they changed, and what wider changes in culture, politics, economy and society do they reflect?

  • Do the same values dominate across Havana, or can we see the built environment differ between blocks or areas? For example, what kinds of cultural and social values are inscribed in the landscapes of Central and Old Havana? Have certain values take precedent over others in the evolution of Havana?

  • Reading the landscape as a text – what does Havana tell us about Cuba’s colonial past? How can the city of Havana be ‘read’ as text that speaks of Cuba’s turbulent history? What values are inscribed or written into Havana’s different urban landscapes? How have they changed over time?

  • What does the Havana landscape reveal about the (changing) nature of Cuba's economy?

  • How can political change be detected in the city today?

  • Think about the organisation of space within Havana – look at the ways in which public and private space are organised and examine the way Cubans use the space of the city.


People and Places:

  • How do different groups (economic, social, cultural, ethnic etc.) use the city? How do the different uses of the city overlap? Do they co-exist or are there tensions?

  • How are various groups of Cubans be seen to be 'making a living' in the different parts of Havana?

  • How do Cuban bodies ‘perform’ within that landscape – e.g. ritualised walking in the squares of Old Havana and along the Malecon (Centro Habana)? How do people ‘behave’ in particular places – what is appropriate/inappropriate behaviour?

  • How is place important in consolidating people’s identities? How do people construct places and how do places construct people? In what ways do people and places derive their identities from each other?

  • How does history impact upon Habanero’s everyday lives?

  • How is the place different (think about sounds, smells, different parts of the city etc.)?


References:

Hubbard, P. (2006) The City (London: Routledge)

Jackson P (1985) Urban ethnography. Progress in Human Geography 9: 157-177.

Jacobs J (1993) The city unbound: Qualitative approaches to the city. Urban Studies 30: 827-848.



Low S (2000) ‘Introduction: Theorizing the city’ in Low S (ed.) Theorizing the city: The new urban anthropology reader. Rutgers University Press: London.


CULTURE, HISTORY AND PEOPLE



CUBAN TIMELINE


3500BC

First humans arrive in Cuba, followed by the arrival of people from South American in 250BC and Taino Indians in 1250AD

1492

Columbus sights Cuba

1514

First settlements established. Santiago de Cuba named as colonial capital in 1515. Havana established at present site in 1519

1607

Havana declared capital of Cuba

1700

Tobacco becomes the main export from Cuba

1728

University of Havana established

1762

British capture Cuba but trade it for Florida in 1763

1790

Mass importation of African slaves

1800

Sugar becomes the main export

1820

Slave trade effectively abolished

1848

US tries to buy Cuba from Spain (and again tries in 1854)

1868-1878

First war of independence

1895-1898

Second war of independence

1898-1902

Americans land at Santiago de Cuba, US military government in control

1902

Cuba achieves independence

1903

US takes Guantánamo naval base

1906, 1917

US military intervention

1925

First communist party founded

August 13, 1926

Fidel Castro is born in Mayari, Cuba

1933

Machado dictatorship overthrown

1952

Batista military coup

July 26, 1953

Castro leads attack on Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Mission fails, Castro is arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

1955

Castro released in a general amnesty for political prisoners. He goes into exile in Mexico where he forms 26th of July movement with his brother Raul and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

December 1956

Castro's rebel movement launches guerrilla war from Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains

1958

The United States withdraws military aid to the Batista government

January 1, 1959

Castro leads a 9,000-strong guerrilla army into Havana, Batista flees. Castro becomes prime minister, brother Raul, becomes deputy and Guevara becomes third in command. Agrarian law reform passed.

1960

All U.S businesses in Cuba are nationalized. U.S. breaks off diplomatic relations with Cuba. US partial trade embargo imposed on Cuba.

April 17, 1961

U.S. back failed invasion by Cuban exiles at Bay of Pigs. Castro proclaims Cuba a communist state and begins to strengthen ties with USSR.

October 16-28, 1962

Cuban Missile crisis

1963

Second Agrarian Reform law passed

1965

Refounding of Communist Party

1967

Che Guevara killed in Bolivia

1976

Troops sent to aid Angolan pro-communist rebels (withdrawn 1988) The action undermines efforts to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations.

1980

Castro permits 125,000 Cubans to leave the island for US. The flood of refugees - known as the Mariel Boatlift - overwhelms Florida officials.

1991

Soviet military advisers leave Cuba following the collapse of the USSR.

1993

Cubans allowed to hold US dollars

1994

Cuba signs an agreement with the US, in which America agrees to admit 20,000 Cubans a year and Cuba pledges to halt the exodus of refugees.

1995

Direct Foreign Investment allowed. Tourism main money earner.

1996

U.S. trade embargo made permanent in response to Cuba's shooting down of two U.S. aircraft operated by Miami-based Cuban exiles.

Helms Burton law passed in USA to extend trade embargo against Cuba to third parties.



January 1998

Pope John Paul II makes landmark visit to Cuba.

1999

Elian Gonzalez (age 6) is picked up off the Florida coast (November) after his mother, step-father and others drown when the boat they used to flee Cuba capsises. Elian’s uncle in Miami is given temporary custody before a court case which resulted in his return to his father in Cuba (June 2000). Castro launches law and order crackdown.

October 2000

President Clinton signs bill permitting sales of food and medicine to Cuba for the first time since 1962

December 2000

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Cuba to bolster diplomatic ties and discuss Cuban debt (accumulated 1961-1991)

November 2001

US exports food to Cuba to help the country cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Michelle. The aid shipment was the first in more than 40 years.

January 2002

Fighters taken prisoner during U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan are brought to Guantánamo Bay for interrogation as al Qaeda suspects

January 2002

Russia closes last military base (in Lourdes) in Cuba marking the end of four decades of Russian military presence in Cuba.

May 2002

US Under-Secretary of State John Bolton accuses Cuba of trying to develop biological weapons and adds Cuba to Washington's list of "axis of evil" countries. Former President Jimmy Carter makes landmark goodwill visit (first U.S. president to visit since 1928). He tours scientific centres, in response to recent U.S. allegations about biological weapons.

June 2002

Cuban lawmakers approve reforms to constitution, making the country's socialist system "irrevocable" following a referendum on the issue.

March-April 2003

Crackdown on dissidents draws international condemnation. Seventy-five people are jailed for terms of up to 28 years; three men who hijacked a ferry in an attempt to reach Florida were executed by firing squad: four others sentenced to life imprisonment, and one to a 30 year jail term.

May 2003

14 Cuban diplomats expelled from the US in retaliation to the above crackdown on dissidents. The Varela Project is delivered to the Cuban National Assembly with more than 11,000 signatures calling for free speech, electoral reforms, and amnesty for 250 political prisoners.

October 2003

US President George W Bush announces moves to tighten US travel embargo to Cuba as part of package of measures intended to hasten end of communist rule. October 24. The U.S. Senate votes (59 to 36) in favor of lifting the ban on travel to Cuba. The result is similar to a vote at the House of Representatives last month. This is a major "rebuff" of President Bush's policy towards Cuba. (The travel ban was introduced by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.)

February 2004

U.S. President Bush signs Presidential Proclamation 7757, which bans vessels from traveling to Cuban ports from U.S. ports.

May 2004

President Bush announces tougher sanctions on Cuba (starting on June 30) including limits on family visits by Cuban-Americans to once every 3 years (reduced from once per year); maintains a $1,200-a-year limit on what Cuban-Americans can send to their families; restricts gift parcels to immediate family members only, and lowers the authorized daily amount for a family visit to $50 (from $164).

May 2004

Cuba freezes most U.S. dollar sales until further notice, excluding food, gasoline and personal hygiene products. An estimated 1 million people march through Havana to protest against recently announced U.S. sanctions. Fidel Castro leads the march.

June 2004

Due to Cuba’s worst drought in history (affecting 4 million people), a state of alert is declared in 4 provinces: Camaguey, Las Tunas, Holguin and Guantanamo.

July 2004

U.S. House of Representatives oppose the Bush administration's recent sanctions on Cuba

September 2004

Hurricane Ivan sweeps across the tobacco-growing region of SW Cuba (including Pinar del Rio). In anticipation of the Category 5 storm, Cubans had evacuated 1.5 million people.

October 2004

Cuba shuts down 118 factories in power crisis. President Castro announces ban on transactions in US dollars, and imposes 10% tax on dollar-peso conversions.

December 2004

Cuba begins a military exercise called "Bastion 2004," which includes thousands of troops and civilians. Defense Minister Raul Castro leads the drill.

July 2005

Hurricane Dennis causes widespread destruction and leaves 16 people dead.

February 2006

Propaganda war in Havana as President Castro unveils a monument which blocks the view of illuminated messages - some of them about human rights - displayed on the US Special Interests Section Building. Castro Hospitalised.

July 2006

President Fidel Castro undergoes gastric surgery and temporarily hands over control of the government to his brother, Raul.

February 2008

Although elected a member of the Parliament Fidel Castro announces that he will not take up positions of President of the State Council or Commander in Chief. Raul Castro elected to position of President of the State Council and he appoints 78-year-old Machado Ventura, one of the original leaders of Cuba's communist revolution, as first vice-president.


FIDEL CASTRO & CONTEMPORARY HISTORIES OF CUBA
Fidel Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 in Oriente province of Cuba, where his family lived on a 23,000-acre plantation having emigrated from Spain. Castro attended two Jesuit (Catholic) schools in Santiago before entering the Colegio Belen, a Jesuit preparatory school in Havana in 1942. In 1945, Castro began studying law at the University of Havana and, having earned a degree, went into practice in 1950 in Havana with two partners. As a lawyer he devoted himself to helping the poor.
In 1952, Castro decided to move into politics by campaigning for a parliamentary seat in the election but when General Batista overthrew the government of President Carlos Prio Socarras in a coup d'état, he also cancelled the election. Castro went to court and charged the dictator with violating the constitution but the court rejected his petition. With no legal recourse left, Castro organized an armed attack by 165 men on the Moncada Barracks in Oriente province on July 26, 1953. That attack, and the one on Bayamo garrison, failed with half the attackers being killed and Castro and his brother Raul being taken prisoner and sentenced to 15 years in prison. They were released in a general amnesty on May 15, 1955.
Having tried unsuccessfully to oppose the military dictatorship by peaceful means, Castro went into exile in Mexico and organized Cuban exiles into another fighting force called the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. The group of 82 men, including Raul and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, launched an attack on the north coast of Oriente province on December 2, 1956 but again, the attempt met defeat and only 12 of the original attackers survived. Nevertheless, the 12 retreated to the Sierra Maestra mountains and from their mountain stronghold waged continuous guerrilla warfare against the Batista government. The movement grew and scored victory after victory. A defeated Batista fled Cuba on New Year's Day 1959 as Castro led a 9,000-strong guerrilla army into Havana.
The United States recognized the new government on January 7, 1959. Castro assumed the position of premier in February while his brother, Raul, became his deputy and Che Guevara was appointed to third in command. Soon, however, friction occurred between Castro and the US when the new Cuban government began expropriating American-owned properties for inadequate compensation. In February 1960, Cuba became friendly with the USSR, and made an agreement to buy Russian oil. After Cuba had seized nearly all U.S.-owned properties in Cuba and made further agreements with other communist governments, the United States broke diplomatic relations with the Castro government.
Cuba and the US were brought into confrontation on two occasions soon after Castro had taken power. The United States made an unsuccessful attempt to destabilize the Castro government. On April 17, 1961, a force of 1,300 Cuban exiles, supported by the CIA, made an unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba at a southern coastal area called the Bay of Pigs. The assumption was that the invasion would inspire the Cuban population to rise up and overthrow Castro but it was a miscalculation; the Cuban population supported him. Instead, Castro and his government declared the revolution to be socialist and proceeded to nationalize industry, confiscate property owned by non-Cubans, collectivise agriculture, and enact policies to benefit labourers and peasants. Many of the middle-class fled the country, some establishing a large, active anti-Castro community in Miami, Florida.
In October 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when the U.S. government discovered the USSR was setting up long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba which were perceived by the United States as a threat (Cuba is 90 miles off the Florida coastline). President Kennedy instituted a naval blockade of Cuba that lasted until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles. Since then U.S.-Cuban relations have remained mutually hostile and have recently worsened when, post September 11th, President Bush named Cuba as part of the ‘Axis of Evil’.

On July 31, 2006, Castro temporarily delegated his duties as President of the Council of state, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and the post of commander in chief of the armed forces to his brother Raúl Castro as he recovered from surgery due to an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding". The transfer of duties was announced in a proclamation that transferred to Raul the functions as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Comandante of the Armed Forces, President of the Council of State and of the Government of the Republic of Cuba. It transferred other functions to José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, José Ramón Machado Ventura, Esteban Lazo Hernández and Carlos Lage Dávila.


On December 2nd, 2006, Castro was too ill to attend the nationwide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Granma boat landing, which also became his belated 80th birthday celebrations. Castro's non-appearance fueled reports that he has terminal pancreatic cancer and was refusing treatment, but on December 17, 2006 Cuban officials stated that Castro has no terminal illness and will eventually return to his public duties. In February 2007, the Associated Press reported that Acting President Raul Castro had said that Fidel Castro's health was improving and he was taking part in all important issues facing the government. In February 2008, although elected a member of the Parliament Fidel Castro announces that he will not take up positions of President of the State Council or Commander in Chief.
In November 2008, Democrat Barack Obama was elected US president. During his presidential campaign, Obama told Cuba exiles that he would seek direct diplomacy with the Cuban government and although maintaining the embargo that he would lift restrictions on travel and sending money to Cuba. Recent polls have suggested that a majority of Cuban Americans living in Miami now oppose the embargo on Cuba and want the restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2004 lifted. Cuba has welcomed some of Obama’s proposals and Raul Castro has offered to free some political dissidents in exchange for the release of the Cuban Five as a gesture to the incoming president.
Many commentators argue that the current time provides a real opportunity for change in the relationship between Cuba and the US particularly because of the devastating hurricane season, the worldwide economic downturn and a drop in oil prices (which impacts upon the support available to Cuba from Venezuela) and the change in leadership within Cuba itself.
Message from the Commander in Chief

Dear compatriots:

Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message.

The moment has come to nominate and elect the State Council, its President, its Vice-Presidents and Secretary.

For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people.

There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition.

It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply.

Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs. Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery "was not without risks."

My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s all I can offer.

To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief.

In short letters addressed to Randy Alonso, Director of the Round Table National TV Program, --letters which at my request were made public-- I discreetly introduced elements of this message I am writing today, when not even the addressee of such letters was aware of my intention. I trusted Randy, whom I knew very well from his days as a student of Journalism. In those days I met almost on a weekly basis with the main representatives of the University students from the provinces at the library of the large house in Kohly where they lived. Today, the entire country is an immense University.

Following are some paragraphs chosen from the letter addressed to Randy on December 17, 2007:

"I strongly believe that the answers to the current problems facing Cuban society, which has, as an average, a twelfth grade of education, almost a million university graduates, and a real possibility for all its citizens to become educated without their being in any way discriminated against, require more variables for each concrete problem than those contained in a chess game. We cannot ignore one single detail; this is not an easy path to take, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society is to prevail over instinct.

"My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.

"Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end."

Letter from January 8, 2008:

"…I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen."

And I reiterated in that letter that "…I never forget that ‘all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn."

Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama.

Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution.

The path will always be difficult and require from everyone’s intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century.

This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel.’ It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful.

Thanks.



Fidel Castro Ruz

February 18, 2008

CUBAN FIVE
One of the key issues that you will become aware of while we are in Cuba is the case of the ‘Cuban Five’. The five men (three born in Cuba and two in the US) were arrested in Miami on 12th September 1998. One member of the group, Gerardo Hernández, is accused by the US government of sending information to Cuba that led to two civilian planes being shot down. The remaining four were accused of trying to infiltrate the US Southern Command (one of 10 Combatant Commands in the US Department of Defense) and sending 2000 pages of unclassified information obtained from US military bases to Cuba. The men were indicted by the US government on 26 different counts which include charges of false identification, espionage and conspiracy to commit murder.
The five convicted men claim that they were in Miami to monitor anti-Castro Cuban exile groups that work out of the city and which, they claim, were engaging in terrorist activities against Cuba.
After the arrests, defence lawyers for the Cuban Five asked for a change of venue for the trail (from Miami where there are strong anti-Castro sentiments) but were refused. The jury did not include any Cuban-Americans but 16 of the 160 members of the jury pool ‘knew the victims of the shoot-down or knew trial witnesses who had flown with them’. The trail went on for seven months and jury deliberations last four days. In June 2001, the group were convicted of all 26 counts and in December 2001, the members of the group were sentenced to varying prison terms. Hernández was sentenced to two life terms to be served consecutively, Guerrero and Labañino were given life sentences, Fernando Gonzáles was sentenced to 19 years and René Gonzáles to 15 years.
On August 9th, 2005, a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Atlanta unanimously overturned the convictions and sentences of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trail outside of Miami claiming that the Cuban exile community and publicity around the trail made it prejudicial to the defendants. In October, 2005, however, the ruling for a new trial was reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeal. In June 2008, the same court upheld the convictions of the five but called for resentencing in district court the sentences of Guerrero, Fernando Gonzáles and Labañino. The court affirmed the sentences of Hernández and René Gonzáles.
KEY FIGURES IN CUBA’S CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL HISTORY
JOSE MARTI (1853-1895)

José Martí was born on January 28th 1853 and lived in 314 Calle Leonor Pérez - near Havana’s harbour. He developed an interest in politics at an early age and published his first newspaper (La Patria Libre) when he was sixteen years old. His political views came to the attention of the authorities when he wrote a letter critical of a friend who had attended a pro-Spanish rally. The letter was judged to be treasonous and Martí was sentenced to six years hard labour in a stone quarry. At seventeen, he was exiled to Spain for his opposition to colonial rule. While there, he published a pamphlet exposing the horrors of political imprisonment in Cuba, which he himself had experienced. He attended university in Spain, gained a degree in law and became involved in the Cuban independence movement. Upon graduating he moved to Mexico City, where he began his literary career while retaining his strong political views. His objection to a regime installed by a military coup led him to depart for Guatemala before returning to Cuba in 1878 under a general amnesty. Despite his return to Cuba, he continued to conspire against the Spanish authorities and was once again was banished. In exile, Martí went first to Spain and then to New York before moving to Venezuela, where he hoped to settle, but yet another dictatorship forced him to depart. Martí went back to New York where he lived from 1881 to 1895, using his position as a journalist to advance his cause. Martí became a leader of Cuban exiles and returned to Cuba in 1895 to lead rebels in the War of Independence, which he had helped organized. There, he died in one of its first skirmishes. Martí’s death provided the Independence Movement with its first martyr. Martí was not socialist but had a clear vision for Cuba that went beyond independence from Spain. Martí envisioned that Cuba would never be truly free without economic, racial and sexual equality.


Jose Martí is considered one of the great writers of the Hispanic world. He devoted his life to ending colonial rule in Cuba and to preventing the island from falling under the control of any country whose political ideologies were contrary to the principles he held. With those goals, and with the conviction that the freedom of the Caribbean was crucial to Latin American security and to the balance of power in the world, he devoted his talents to the forging of a nation. The importance of Martí within Cuban identity cannot be under-estimated. A bust of him stands in front of every primary school in Cuba.

ERNESTO 'CHE' GUEVARA (1928 - 1967)

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was born on 14 June 1928 in Argentina, into a relatively upper-middle class family. His father worked as a construction engineer and Che was the first of five children. Guevara received his primary education at home, from his mother, during which time he read some of the works of Marx, Engels and Freud, which were all available in his father's library. In 1947, Guevara went to Buenos Aires University to study medicine. He was heavily influenced by the long series of squalid political crises in Argentina, which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship of Juan Peron. Guevara’s parents were anti-Peronist activists and, although Che showed little interest in student politics whilst at University, he had developed contempt for parliamentary democracy, military politicians, the U.S. dollar and imperialism.


As a student, Guevara travelled extensively in Argentina where he came into contact with the very poor and the remnants of the indigenous Indian tribes. In 1951, he travelled through the Andes into Chile, Peru, Columbia and Venezuela. The diary Che kept during this time has been published as: The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America. By the time Guevara returned university to take his final examinations, he had already decided that he did not want to become a middle-class GP. On qualifying in 1953, Guevara went to Bolivia, Guatemala and then in September of 1954, Guevara moved to Mexico City where he met the Castro brothers, then political emigres, and realized that in Fidel he had found the leader he was seeking.
In 1955, Guevara joined other Castro followers exiled in Mexico to be trained in guerrilla warfare by the Spanish Republican Army captain, Alberto Bayo. The training attracted police attention and all the Cubans and Che were arrested. They were released after a month later when they travelled to Cuba on the "yacht" Granma, initating a three-year guerrilla war against the dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Che was initially included for his medical expertise but soon became Commandante of the Revolutionary Army of Barbutos. The revolutionaries succeed in overthrowing the Batista regime in January of 1959.
At the triumph of the Revolution, Guevara became part of the new government of Cuba and was the man chiefly responsible for moving Castro towards communism. Guevara was heavily influenced by Mao and the communism of China rather than Moscow. He believed that the countryside must bring the revolution to the town in predominately peasant countries: ‘Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity’. Che organized a number of changes in Cuba law. As Director of the Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria, he administered the new agrarian laws expropriating the large land holders. He also ran the Department of Industries and, in February 1960, Guevara signed a trade pact with the USSR, which freed the Cuban sugar industry from dependence on the US market. He was also appointed President of the National Bank of Cuba.
Castro informally removed Guevara from office in 1965 as their ideas for the future of Cuba became increasingly divergent, as Guevara, for example, advocated nuclear confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Guevara left Cuba and, for some months, his whereabouts were a secret and his death was widely rumoured. Guevara spent this time in various African countries, notably the Congo, surveying the possibilities of turning the Kinshasa rebellion into a Communist revolution by Cuban-style guerrilla tactics. He returned to Cuba to train volunteers for that project, and took a force of 120 Cubans to the Congo. His men fought well, but the Kinshasa rebels did not, they were useless against the Belgian mercenaries and by autumn 1965 Che had to advise Castro to withdraw Cuban aid.
Che's final revolutionary adventure was in Bolivia but, there, he grossly misjudged the revolutionary potential of that country with disastrous consequences. The revolutionaries had many casualties and were cornered by a Bolivian battalion (which had been trained by US Special Forces in anti-guerrilla warfare) in a gorge on October 8 1967. Guevara was captured by a Bolivian army unit and taken to the nearby town of La Higuera. He refused all attempts at interrogation by CIA and Bolivian officials and the Bolivian president, General Rene Barrientos, ordered Guevara’s execution. On 9 October 1967, six or more shots are fired into Guevara's torso. One version of his reported last words were: ‘Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere’. After his death, a death mask was made and his hands were cut off to ensure identification and his body was buried in a secret grave. He was 39 years old. In June 1997, a team of Cuban and Argentinean scientists recovered the skeleton, missing both hands, in the town of Vallegrande, Bolivia. The bones have since been ‘repatriated’ to Cuba.



LIVING IN CUBA:

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