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The Cuban Economy in the 1990s: External Challenges and Policy Imperatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

A. R. M. Ritter*
Affiliation:
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and Department of Economics at Carleton University (Ottawa)

Extract

Cuba has entered the decade of the 1990s in a state of profound existential crisis. The countries of Eastern Europe, whose economic and political institutions and ideologies were adopted by Cuba, albeit with some modifications, were abandoning those same institutions and ideologies. Cuba's place in the international system had become one of growing isolation: Cuba had become a curiosity from the 1960s rather than the wave of the future, as it once perceived itself. By mid-1990, it appeared almost certain that the generous subsidization of the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union was about to end. Moreover, the Cuban economy was in serious difficulty as a result of some external factors, namely the convertible currency debt crisis and the problems and uncertainties in its relationship with the Soviet Union since 1985, but also as a result of internal institutional incapacities and deformities.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1990

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