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Contemporary Cuba: The Post-Castro Era

Contemporary Cuba: The Post-Castro Era

Edited by Hope Bastian, Philip Brenner, John M. Kirk, and William M. LeoGrande
Rowman & Littlefield, 2023, 338 pp.
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Reviewed by Richard Feinberg

March/April 2024Published on
In This Review
Contemporary Cuba: The Post-Castro Era

Contemporary Cuba: The Post-Castro Era

Edited by Hope Bastian, Philip Brenner, John M. Kirk, and William M. LeoGrande

Rowman & Littlefield, 2023, 338 pp.
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Pounded mercilessly by U.S. sanctions and grappling with a contracting economy, severe shortages of food and fuel, and massive emigration, Cuban society is unraveling. In this indispensable compendium, 29 leading experts, including many young Cuban scholars, delve deeply into this precipitous disintegration. They blame the wizened, out-of-touch leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and an inefficient, self-serving bureaucracy for slow-walking structural reforms. Economists point to the inherent flaws of central planning and the government's reluctance to partner with an ambitious if incipient private sector. U.S. sanctions have also impeded independent entrepreneurship. Various chapters underscore the transformative role of social media but also the government's apparent capacity to quash any organized dissent. The novelist Leonardo Padura Fuentes notes widespread "cynicism" and "resignation" at the sight of government officials "wearing fancy linen guayaberas." LeoGrande, a co-editor of the book, starkly warns that "the public's desperation and alienation" could very well reach "a tipping point." The volume avoids speculating on the possibility of a post-socialist transition, but the social scientist Ailynn Torres Santana observes that "the anticommunist and anti-leftist narrative in Cuba is clearly gaining ground."


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