This book is a collection of meticulously gathered interviews with government officials, ambassadors, and executives involved in foreign investment and economic development in Cuba. The interviews, many for the first time with a foreign journalist, are valuable from a historical perspective and as a story of development. It offers an “open window” on Cuba into a crucial segment of the country’s economy, erroneously perceived by some as “shuttered” to the outside world. This work is structured by the contextual history of Obama’s opening with Cuba, the bleak days of Trump, the Havana Syndrome, the onset of the pandemic, the election of Biden, and his “unmet promises”, through to economic recovery of the island under the post-pandemic normal. It highlights the work of the ones who lead and invest, create opportunities for themselves and others, initiate change, trigger sustainable development, build infrastructure, improve lives, strengthen the economy, lessen suffering, and create hope. They stimulate forward progress. These are the visionaries with plans seeking to realize the full potential of Cuba, driving a new era of sustainable development and growth. By filling those gaps, this work is an important supplement for any future analysis seeking to examine the country’s potential. The book is divided into parts: government, economy, foreign investment, industrial zones, banking, law, and business, followed by interviews with top executives from Cuba’s primary sectors. This “open window” on Cuba is a compelling fresh take that shows that Cuba is open for serious business.

Cuba in a Global Context examines the unlikely prominence of the island nation's geopolitical role. The contributors to this volume explore the myriad ways in which Cuba has not only maintained but often increased its reach and influence in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the beginning, the Castro regime established a foreign policy that would legitimize the revolutionary government, if not in the eyes of the United States at least in the eyes of other global actors. The essays in this volume shed new light on Cuban diplomacy with communist China as well as with Western governments such as Great Britain and Canada. In recent years, Cubans have improved their lives in the face of the ongoing U.S. embargo. The promotion of increased economic and political cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela served as a catalyst for the Petrocaribe group. Links established with countries in the Caribbean and Central America have increased tourism, medical diplomacy, and food sovereignty across the region. Cuban transnationalism has also succeeded in creating people-to-people contacts involving those who have remained on the island and members of the Cuban diaspora. While the specifics of Cuba's international relations are likely to change as new leaders take over, the role of Cubans working to assert their sovereignty has undoubtedly impacted every corner of the globe.

Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in L

Vintage U.S.-made cars on the streets of Havana provide a common representation of Cuba. Journalist Richard Schweid, who traveled throughout the island to research the story of motor vehicles in Cuba today and yesterday, gets behind the wheel and behind the stereotype in this colorful chronicle of cars, buses, and trucks. In his captivating, sometimes gritty, voice, Schweid blends previously untapped historical sources with his personal experiences, spinning a car-centered history of life on the island over the past century. Packard, Studebaker, Edsel, De Soto: cars long extinct in the United States can be seen at work every day on Cuba's streets. Havana and Santiago de Cuba today are home to some 60,000 North American cars, all dating back to at least 1959, the year the Cuban Revolution prevailed. Though hardly a new part has arrived in Cuba since 1960, the cars are still on the road, held together with mechanical ingenuity and willpower. Visiting car mechanics, tracking down records in dusty archives, and talking with car-crazy Cubans of all types, Schweid juxtaposes historic moments (Fidel Castro riding to the Bay of Pigs in an Oldsmobile) with the quotidian (a weary mother's two-cent bus ride home after a long day) and composes a rich, engaging picture of the Cuban people and their history. The narrative is complemented by fifty-two historic black-and-white photographs and eight color photographs by contemporary Cuban photographer Adalberto Roque.

The histories of Cuba and the United States are tightly intertwined and have been for at least two centuries. In Race to Revolution, historian Gerald Horne examines a critical relationship between the two countries by tracing out the typically overlooked interconnections among slavery, Jim Crow, and revolution. Slavery was central to the economic and political trajectories of Cuba and the United States, both in terms of each nation’s internal political and economic development and in the interactions between the small Caribbean island and the Colossus of the North. Horne draws a direct link between the black experiences in two very different countries and follows that connection through changing periods of resistance and revolutionary upheaval. Black Cubans were crucial to Cuba’s initial independence, and the relative freedom they achieved helped bring down Jim Crow in the United States, reinforcing radical politics within the black communities of both nations. This in turn helped to create the conditions that gave rise to the Cuban Revolution which, on New Years’ Day in 1959, shook the United States to its core. Based on extensive research in Havana, Madrid, London, and throughout the U.S., Race to Revolution delves deep into the historical record, bringing to life the experiences of slaves and slave traders, abolitionists and sailors, politicians and poor farmers. It illuminates the complex web of interaction and infl uence that shaped the lives of many generations as they struggled over questions of race, property, and political power in both Cuba and the United States.

"Describes and analyzes the economic, national security, political, and social systems and institutions of Cuba."--Amazon.com viewed Jan. 4, 2021.

Cuba has more medical personnel serving abroad—over 50,000 in 66 countries—than all of the G-7 countries combined and more than the World Health Organization. For the last five decades, they have been a leading force in the developing world, providing humanitarian aid (or “cooperation,” as Cuba’s communist government prefers) and initiating programs for preventative care and medical training. In Healthcare without Borders, John Kirk examines the role of Cuban medical teams in disaster relief, biotechnology joint ventures, and in the Latin American School—the largest medical faculty in the world. He looks at their responses to various crises worldwide, including the 1960 earthquake in Chile, the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, the earthquake that wracked Haiti in 2010 and the subsequent cholera outbreak, and the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Kirk issues an informative and enlightening corrective for what he describes as the tendency of the industrialized world’s media to ignore or underreport this phenomenon as one of the positive aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process. In the process, Kirk explores the philosophical underpinnings of human rights and access to medical care at the core of Cuba’s medical internationalism programs and partnerships.