Cuba: Can the Past Last?

Abstract

In June 2018 we were two of twenty-one educators who spent four days visiting Cuba. During our visit we visited factories, farms, restaurants, and private businesses. We met with an American journalist who lives and works in Cuba, a lawyer, tobacco farmer, urban planner/architect/professor, attorney turned party planner, several business owners, and University of Havana economist.

In the next five to ten years the Cuban leadership of the 1959 Revolution will be dead or out of office. At that time Cuba will face an identity crisis. How the younger generations respond to new leadership will determine Cuba’s future.

Simultaneously, the U.S. embargo placed on Cuba in 1962 is now over fifty years old. Cubans believe the embargo is the reason for their struggles. From many Cubans’ perspective the embargo is the main issue holding them back. It is not the only issue but we agree. The embargo is not relevant in a decade of new Cuban leadership. We trade and have relations with other similar nations. Current U.S. relations with China and Russia make the old arguments in favor of the embargo moot in today’s growing global economy.

Keywords: Cuba, socialism, economics, transition, embargo, trade