Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:58:33.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does Cuba Fit Yet or Is It Still ‘Exceptional’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2008

ANTONI KAPCIA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Much of the external literature on the Cuban Revolution has been characterised by two dichotomies between ‘exceptionalism’ on the hand and the application of non-Cuban paradigms on the other, and that between Fidel-focussed interpretations and more systemic perspectives. This article examines the evolution of these dichotomies, from initial enthusiasm or condemnation, through an emerging awareness of a historical dimension, a focus on the social revolution, and new disenchantments, to the emergence of a less polemical attention to detail before the post-1991 return to type. In the light of this trajectory, new approaches are suggested to break with these patterns, while acknowledging the challenges for exogenous research.

¿ya se adecuó cuba o todavía es “excepcional”?

Mucha de la literatura externa sobre la Revolución Cubana se ha caracterizado por moverse entre dicotomías, por un lado está el “excepcionalismo” y por el otro la aplicación de paradigmas no cubanos. Asimismo, están las interpretaciones enfocadas en Fidel y las que utilizan perspectivas más sistémicas. Este artículo examina la evolución de tales dicotomías, empezando por el entusiasmo o condena inicial a la Revolución, y siguiendo por la conciencia emergente de la dimensión histórica, el enfoque en la revolución social y los nuevos desencantos. Finalmente se llega al surgimiento de una atención al detalle menos polémica antes del regreso post-1991 a los patrones familiares anteriores. A la luz de esta trayectoria, algunos nuevos enfoques sugieren que se está rompiendo con tales patrones, al tiempo que reconocen los desafíos existentes para las investigaciones externas.

Palabras clave: Revolución Cubana, Fidel Castro, revolución social, proceso político, estructuras políticas, polémica, historiografía.

Cuba já está integrada ou continua sendo “excepcional”?

Boa parte da literatura estrangeira que trata da Revolução Cubana pode ser caracterizada por duas dicotomias. De um lado o “excepcionalismo”, e do outro a aplicação de paradigmas não-cubanos; e, dentro deste, entre interpretações focadas na figura de Fidel e perspectivas mais sistêmicas. Este artigo examina a evolução destas dicotomias, partindo do entusiasmo ou condenação iniciais, passando por uma emergente consciência da dimensão histórica, pelo foco na revolução social e novas desilusões até a emergência de uma atenção aos detalhes menos polêmica, e por fim a volta à norma após 1991. À luz dessa trajetória, enquanto os desafios para a pesquisa exógena são reconhecidos, sugerem-se novas abordagens para quebrar esses padrões.

Palavras-chave: Revolução Cubana, Fidel Castro, revolução social, processo político, estruturas políticas, polêmica, historiografia.

Keywords

Cuban RevolutionFidel Castrosocial revolutionpolitical processpolitical structurespolemichistoriography
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 40 , Special Issue 4: Cuba: 50 Years of Revolution , November 2008 , pp. 627 - 650
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bert Hoffmann and Laurence Whitehead, Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (London, 2007).

2 Ernesto Che Guevara, ‘Cuba, ¿excepción histórica o vanguardia en la lucha anticolonialista?’, in Ernesto Che Guevara, Obras 1957–1967, vol. 2 (Havana, 1977), pp. 403–19.

3 Antoni Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford, 2000), p. 4.

4 C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee: the Revolution in Cuba (New York, 1960); Waldo Frank, Cuba: Prophetic Island (New York, 1961).

5 Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre on Cuba (New York, 1961); the quotation is from the 1974 edition (Westport, Conn.), p. 149. Sartre's account first appeared in a series of sixteen articles in France-Soir, under the title of ‘Ouragan sur le sucre’, between 28 June and 15 July 1960: see Hewitt, Nicholas, ‘Images of Cuba in France in the 1960s: Sartre's “Ouragan sur le sucre”’, Sartre Studies International, vol. 13, no. 1 (2007), pp. 62–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kepa Artaraz, ‘The Cuban Revolution and the New Left in the 1960s: a Study of Intellectual Cross-Fertilisation’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Wolverhampton, 2001.

6 Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (New York, 1960).

7 See especially Nathaniel Weyl, Red Star over Cuba: The Russian Assault on the Western Hemisphere (New York, 1961); Daniel James, Cuba: The First Soviet Satellite in the Americas (New York, 1961); I. P. Pflaum, Tragic Island: How Communism Came to Cuba (Englewood Cliffs, 1961); E. C. Stein, Cuba, Castro and Communism (New York, 1962). As discussed later in this article, the first wave of émigré literature on the new revolution contributed significantly to the nature, drive, and level of this perspective.

8 Herbert L. Matthews, The Cuban Story (New York, 1961); the quotation is from Herbert L. Matthews, Castro: A Political Biography (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 162.

9 Theodore Draper, Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities (New York, 1967), p. 34.

10 Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice (New York, 1969 [1965]), pp. 50–2; Jaime Suchlicki, Cuba: From Columbus to Castro (New York, 1974), later republished as Cuba: From Columbus to Castro and Beyond (4th edition, Washington, 1997); Boris Goldenberg. The Cuban Revolution and Latin America (New York, 1965).

11 Hennessy, Alistair, ‘The Roots of Cuban Nationalism’, International Affairs, vol. 39, no. 3 (1963), pp. 345–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, Cuba: The Making of a Revolution (Amherst, 1968).

12 Hugh Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (London, 1971); Sherry Johnson, The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba (Gainesville, 2001); see also Mario Llerena, The Unsuspected Revolution: The Birth and Rise of Castroism (Ithaca, 1978).

13 Sheldon Liss, Roots of Revolution: Radical Thought in Cuba (Lincoln NE, 1987).

14 Earl E. T. Smith, The Fourth Floor: An Account of the Castro Communist Revolution (New York, 1962); Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba (New York, 1968); Suchlicki, Cuba (1997 edition), p. 167.

15 Robert Scheer and Maurice Zeitlin. Cuba: Tragedy in our Hemisphere (New York, 1963).

16 Philip W. Bonsal, Cuba, Castro and the United States (Pittsburgh, 1971); Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933–1960: A Political Sociology from Machado to Castro (Middleton, CT, 1976); Edward Boorstein, The Economic Transformation of Cuba: A First-Hand Account (New York, 1968).

17 William Appleman Williams, Cuba, the United States and Castro: An Essay on the Dynamics of Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire (New York, 1962). The ‘classic’ analyses are Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880–1934 (Pittsburgh, 1977); Morris H. Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952–1986 (Cambridge, 1987).

18 For the former view, see Frank, Cuba; Matthews, The Cuban Story; for the latter, Enrique Meneses, Fidel Castro: siete años de poder (Madrid, 1966).

19 Edward Gonzalez, Cuba under Castro: The Limits of Charisma (Boston, 1974), p. 230.

20 Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (Chapel Hill NC, 2006), p. 168; D. L. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (London, 2006), pp. 113–21.

21 Meneses, Fidel Castro, p. 93; Gonzalez, Cuba under Castro, p. 168.

22 Richard Fagen, ‘Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro’, in Ronaldo E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés (eds.), Cuba in Revolution (New York, 1972), pp. 154–68.

23 Gonzalez, Cuba under Castro, p. 147; Suchlicki, Cuba, pp. 153–72; Andrés Suárez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959–1966 (Cambridge, Mass, 1967).

24 Matthews, Castro; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (London, 1986); Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro (New York, 1997). The latter category includes Peter Bourne, Castro: A Biography of Fidel Castro (London, 1986), and Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro (Boston, 1991).

25 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba.

26 Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy. Socialism in Cuba (New York, 1969), p. 17.

27 Boorstein, Economic Transformation; James O'Connor, The Origins of Socialism in Cuba (Ithaca, 1970), p. 280.

28 Robin Blackburn, ‘Prologue to the Cuban Revolution’, New Left Review, no. 21 (October 1963), pp. 52–91.

29 Smith, The Fourth Floor, p. 224.

30 Irving L. Horowitz, ‘Political Sociology of Cuban Communism’, in Carmelo Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh, 1971), pp. 127–44.

31 Goldenberg, Boris, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Party: the Cuban CP (1925–59)’, Problems of Communism, vol. 19, no. 4 (1970), pp. 61–80Google Scholar; Suárez, Cuba. See also Andrés Suárez, ‘Leadership, Ideology and Political Party’, in Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change, pp. 3–22; Marifeli Pérez-Stable, ‘“We Are the Only Ones and There is No Alternative”: Vanguard Party Politics in Cuba, 1975–1991’, in Enrique A. Baloyra and James A. Morris (eds.), Conflict and Change in Cuba (Albuquerque, 1993), pp. 67–85.

32 Richard R. Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford, 1969).

33 Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (New York, 1970).

34 Matthews, The Cuban Story. Matthews later repeated this in Revolution in Cuba: An Essay in Understanding (New York, 1975).

35 Dudley Seers (ed.), Cuba: The Economic and Social Revolution (Chapel Hill NC, 1964).

36 Richard Jolly, ‘Education’, in Seers (ed.), Cuba, pp. 161–280.

37 Huberman and Sweezy, Socialism, pp. 22–64; O'Connor, Socialism, pp. 90–134; René Dumont, Cuba: Socialisme et Développment (Paris, 1964), translated and published as Cuba: Socialism and Development (New York, 1970).

38 Carmelo Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh, 1972); Rolland G. Paulston, ‘Education’, in Ibid., pp. 375–98; Lourdes Casal, ‘Literature and Society’, in Ibid., pp. 447–70; Bonachea and Valdés (eds.), Cuba in Revolution; Nelson P. Valdés, ‘The Radical Transformation of Cuban Education’, in Ibid., pp. 422–55; Richard Leyva, ‘Health and Revolution’, in Ibid., pp. 456–96. Other anthologies published at this time included Jaime Suchlicki (ed.), Cuba, Castro and Revolution (Coral Gables, 1972), and Ronald Radosh (ed.), The New Cuba: Paradoxes and Potentials (Andover MA, 1975).

39 Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel (New York, 1969), p. 340.

40 Elizabeth Sutherland, The Youngest Revolution: A Personal Report on Cuba (New York, 1969).

41 Although not much is know about the UMAPs, they seem to have been set up between about 1965 and 1968, probably by the Ministry of the Interior, formally to provide alternative forms of compulsory service for those whose beliefs or health prevented them from being conscripted. In practice they became camps for ‘re-educating’ (through labour) many – mostly young – Cubans whose lifestyle, sexuality or religious practices were seen as deviant or even counter-revolutionary. They were closed after protests from the Writers' and Artists' Union (UNEAC)). José Yglesias, In the Fist of the Revolution:Life in Castro's Cuba (Harmondsworth, 1968); Barry Reckord, Does Fidel Eat More than Your Father? Conversations in Cuba (New York, 1972); Margaret Randall, Cuban Women Now: Interviews with Cuban Women (Toronto, 1974); K. S. Karol, Les Guérilleros au Pouvoir (Paris, 1970), published as Guerrillas in Power (New York, 1970). Other accounts include Andrew Salkey, Havana Journal (Harmondsworth, 1971); Joe Nicholson, Jr., Inside Cuba (New York, 1974); Lee Chadwick, A Cuban Journey (London, 1975).

42 Dumont, Cuba, pp. 27 and 58.

43 René Dumont, Cuba: est-il Socialiste? (Paris, 1970). The quotation is from the translated version, Is Cuba Socialist (London, 1974), p. 130.

44 Sam Dolgoff, The Cuban Revolution: A Critical Perspective (Montreal, 1976); Joseph Hansen, The Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: The Trotskyist View (New York, 1978).

45 Binns, Peter and Gonzalez, Mike, ‘Cuba, Castro and Socialism’, International Socialism Journal, vol. 2, no. 8 (1980), pp. 1–36Google Scholar.

46 Irving Louis Horowitz (ed.), Cuban Communism (New Brunswick, 1970).

47 Maurice Halperin, The Rise and Decline of Fidel Castro: An Essay in Contemporary History (Berkeley, 1972).

48 James Malloy, ‘Generation of Political Support and Allocation of Costs’, in Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change, pp. 23–42. The quotation is from p. 30.

49 Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization (Albuquerque, 1974).

50 Sergio Roca, Cuban Economic Policy: the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest (Beverley Hills, 1976); Heinrich Brunner, Cuban Sugar Policy from 1963 to 1970 (Pittsburgh, 1977). A staple theory perspective came from Archibald R. M. Ritter, The Economic Development of Revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and Economic Performance (New York, 1974).

51 Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, pp. 1–10; Thomas, Cuba.

52 Sandor Halebsky and John M. Kirk (eds.), Cuba: Twenty-Five Years of Revolution, 1959–1984 (New York, 1985).

53 Louis A. Perez, Jr., ‘The Cuban Revolution Twenty-Five Years Later: a Survey of Sources and Scholarship, and State of the Literature’, in Ibid., pp. 393–412; Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford, 1988).

54 Oscar Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, Susan M. Rigdon, Four Men: Living the Revolution. An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba (Urbana, 1977); Four Women: Living the Revolution. An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba (Urbana, 1977); Neighbors: Living the Revolution. An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba (Urbana, 1978); Douglas Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura: Relocation of Slum Dwellers in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (Urbana, 1980).

55 John M. Kirk, Between God and the Party: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Cuba (Tampa, 1989); Morley, Imperial State and Revolution; Jacques Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution (New York, 1978); Peter Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba (London, 1987); Cole Blasier and Carmelo Mesa-Lago (eds), Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh, 1979); Martin Weinstein (ed.), Revolutionary Cuba in the World Arena (Philadelphia, 1979); Jorge I. Dominguez (ed.), Cuba: Internal and International Affairs (Beverley Hills, 1982); Jorge I. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution:Cuba's Foreign Policy (Cambridge MA, 1989); Debra Evenson, Revolution in the Balance:Law and Society in Contemporary Cuba (Boulder, 1994); Julie M. Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad (Berkeley, 1993); Thomas C. Dalton, Everything within the Revolution: Cuban Strategies for Social Development since 1960 (Boulder, 1993).

56 Arthur MacEwan, Revolution and Economic Development in Cuba (London, 1981); Claes Brundenius, Revolutionary Cuba: The Challenge of Economic Growth with Equity (Boulder, 1984); Andrew S. Zimbalist, Cuba's Socialist Economy Towards the 1990s (Boulder, 1987); Andrew S. Zimbalist and Claes Brundenius, The Cuban Economy: Measurement and Analysis of Socialist Performance (Baltimore, 1989).

57 Marta Harnecker, Cuba, Dictatorship or Democracy? (Westport, 1979); John Griffiths & Peter Griffiths (eds.), Cuba: The Second Decade (London, 1979); John Griffiths, ‘Sport: the People's Right’, in Ibid., pp. 247–60; Antonio José Herrera and Hernán Rosenkranz, ‘Political Consciousness in Cuba’, in Ibid., pp. 36–52.

58 Sandor Halebsky and John M. Kirk (eds.), Transformation and Struggle: Cuba Faces the 1990s (New York, 1990); Sandor Halebsky and John M. Kirk (eds.), Cuba in Transition: Crisis and Transformation (Westview, 1992).

59 Richard Gillespie (ed.), Cuba after Thirty Years: Rectification and the Revolution (London, 1990).

60 Hugh S. Thomas, Georges A. Fauriol and Juan Carlos Weiss. The Cuban Revolution: 25 Years Later (Boulder, 1984), p. 53.

61 Jorge I. Dominguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 1978); Max Azicri, Cuba: Politics, Economics and Society (London, 1988).

62 Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada (London, 1993).

63 Perez, ‘Twenty-Five Years’, p. 402.

64 Jean Stubbs, Cuba: The Test of Time (London, 1989); Janette Habel, Cuba: The Revolution in Peril (London, 1981); Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy (New York, 1993).

65 Susan Eva Eckstein, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro (Princeton, 1994).

66 Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba after the Cold War (Pittsburgh, 1993); Enrique A. Baloyra and James A. Morris (eds.), Conflict and Change in Cuba (Albuquerque, 1993); Juan M. Del Aguila, Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution (Boulder, 1994).

67 Geraldine Lievesley, The Cuban Revolution: Past, Present and Future Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2004); Max Azicri, Cuba Today and Tomorrow: Reinventing Socialism (Gainesville, 2000).

68 Damián J. Fernández, Cuba and the Politics of Passion (Austin, 2000); Antoni Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford, 2000).

69 Maurice Zeitlin, ‘Cuba: Revolution without a Blueprint’, in Horowitz, Cuban Communism (1970), pp. 117–30. Suárez, ‘Leadership’; O'Connor, The Origins, p. 310.

70 Richard R. Fagen, ‘Revolution – for Internal Consumption only’, in Horowitz, Ibid., pp. 37–51; Nelson P. Valdés, Ideological Roots of the Cuban Revolution (Glasgow, 1975); Nelson P. Valdés, ‘Cuban Political Culture – Between Betrayal and Death’, in Halebsky and Kirk (eds.), Cuba in Transition, pp. 207–28; Tzvi Medin, Cuba: The Shaping of Revolutionary Consciousness (Boulder, 1990); Julie M. Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (University Park, PA, 1994).

71 Miguel A. Centeno and Mauricio Font (eds.), Toward a New Cuba? Legacies of a Revolution (Boulder, 1998); Baloyra and Morris, Conflict; Mesa-Lago, Cuba after the Cold War.

72 Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, was one of the first to benefit from the Gorbachev opening. See also Bain, Mervyn, ‘The Glasnost Effect on Soviet/Cuban Relations in the Gorbachev Era’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (2004), pp. 125–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Soviet-Cuban Relations, 1985 to 1991: Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana (Lanham, 2007).

73 Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York, 1997).

74 James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, with the assistance of David Lewis, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (New York, 1993); James G. Blight and Peter Kornbluh (eds.), Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined (Boulder, 1998).

75 Enrique Oltuski, Gente del Llano (Havana, 2000).

76 Gladys Marel García-Pérez, Insurrection and Revolution: Armed Struggle in Cuba, 1952–1959 (Boulder, 1998), later expanded and published as Insurrección y Revolución (1952–1959) (Havana, 2006).

77 Julia E. Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Cambridge, Mass, 2002).

78 See especially Raby, Democracy and Revolution.

79 Leopoldo Pío Elizalde, La Tragedia de Cuba (Mexico City, 1959); Florentino E. Rosell Leyva, La Verdad (Miami, 1960); Fulgencio Batista, Cuba Betrayed (New York, 1962).

80 Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro (New York, 1964); Manuel Urrutia Lleo, Fidel Castro and Company, Inc. (New York, 1964).

81 The many works of Jorge I. Dominguez from 1971 (especially Cuba. Order and Revolution) are the outstanding example of this phenomenon, as indeed are those by Carmelo Mesa-Lago; see also Mario Llerena, The Unsuspected Revolution: The Birth and Rise of Castroism (Ithaca, 1978).

82 Goldenberg, The Cuban Revolution and Latin America; Suarez, Cuba; Suchlicki, Cuba.

83 Bonachea and Valdés (eds.), Cuba in Revolution.

84 Jorge F. Pérez-López, Measuring Cuban Economic Performance (Austin, 1987); Jorge F. Pérez-López, The Economics of Cuban Sugar (Pittsburgh, 1991); Jorge F. Pérez-López and Sergio Díaz-Briquets, Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (Pittsburgh, 2000).

85 See especially Grupo Areíto, Contra viento y marea (Havana, 1978), and Román de la Campa, Cuba on my Mind: Journeys to a Severed Nation (London, 2000).

86 Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: the Cuban-American Way (Austin, 1994).

87 In 1980, as a response to domestic tensions, some 125,000 Cubans were allowed to leave Cuba through the port of Mariel. This emigration, the largest since 1971, was notable for being less ‘political’ than the early exodus, and for including more black and working-class Cubans, as well as some prominent cultural figures whom some saw as having ‘transgressed’ through their work or sexuality.

88 Especially Lourdes Casal, ‘Literature and Society’, in Mesa-Lago (ed.), Cuba in Revolution, pp. 447–70, and Grupo Areíto, Contra viento.

89 Hal Klepak, Cuba's Military 1990–2005: Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times (London, 2006); see, however, Perez, Louis A. Jr., ‘Army Politics in Socialist Cuba’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (1976), pp. 251–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 On the CDRs, see Fagen, The Transformation, pp. 69–103; on the FMC, see Maxine Molyneux, State, Gender and Change in Cuba's ‘Special Period’: The Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (London, 1996); on unions, see Carmelo Mesa-Lago, The Labor Sector and Socialist Distribution in Cuba (New York, 1968); Linda Fuller, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba (Philadelphia, 1992); on the electoral system, see Peter Roman, People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government (Lanham, MD, 2003).

91 Alexander I. Gray and Antoni Kapcia (eds.), The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society (Gainesville, 2008); Margaret E. Crahan and Ariel C. Armony, ‘Rethinking Civil Society and Religion in Cuba’, in Hoffman and Whitehead (eds.), Debating Cuban Exceptionalism, pp. 139–64; see also a characteristically challenging view from the island by Rafael Hernández, Looking at Cuba: Essays on Culture and Civil Society (Gainesville, 2003).