Book, "The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America" by Nicole Fabricant

The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism. The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America 
by Nicole Fabricant

Book Review of:
Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-first-Century Socialism.
by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox, Federico Fuentes
London and New York: Zed Books, 2013.

Book, "A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro"

A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro, Second Edition  EDITED BY PHILIP BRENNER; MARGUERITE ROSE JIMÉNEZ; JOHN M. KIRK AND WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE PURCHASE THIS EDITION  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Pages: 488 • Size: 7 x 10 978-1-4422-3098-9 • Hardback • July 2014 • $100.00 • (£70.00) - Currently out of stock. Copies will arrive soon. 978-1-4422-3099-6 • Paperback • July 2014 • $39.95 • (£24.95) 978-1-4422-3100-9 • eBook • July 2014 • $38.99 • (£24.95) Subjects: Political Science / World / Caribbean & Latin American, History / Latin America / General, History / United States / General,Political Science / International Relations / General, Social Science / Regional Studies Courses: Political Science; Comparative Politics; Government & Politics; Latin America, International & Area Studies; Latin American Studies; South America

ABOUT THE BOOK

Abstract, "Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America" by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America 
by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

Religion has been married to the colonial and imperial project in Latin America since the Spanish conquistadors planted the first cross on American soil. Even as the new European religion took root across the continent it became incarnate precisely in the large, impoverished, racially complex, subject, and politically marginalized population that the Catholic Church itself helped to create through the long colonial period. Religious institutions were intimately involved in producing and then maintaining structures of social inequality from the very “invention” of Latin America: thus was the vein opened. At the same time, just as religion was essential to colonial processes, it has been, inevitably, part of anticolonial and decolonializing movements and struggles. This issue returns again to the theme of religion and social inequality and the social movements (religiously motivated and otherwise) that seek to address religions’ ambivalent legacy across the continent. The election of the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first Latin American pope brings global attention to the complexity of the Latin American religious landscape as the religious context that shapes his agenda. Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) has made the problem of inequality central to his papacy, decrying the “unfettered market” and the resulting global “economy of exclusion.” Not only did he speak on the evils of capitalism before a joint session of the U.S. Congress but he garnered international media and public attention in April 2014 when he famously tweeted “Inequality is the root of social evil.” It would appear that Rome itself now calls for attention to the problem of inequality.

Abstract, "The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions" by Jalane D. Schmidt

:::::: Abstract ::::::

The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions 
by Jalane D. Schmidt

When revolutionary Cuba’s governmental cultural policy apparatus cast Afro-Cuban religions as “folklore,” certain religious forms, especially Santería, gained visibility in scholarly investigations, publications, documentary films, and state-sponsored cultural programming. Since the 1990s these discursive treatments of Santería have been monetized by the Cuban tourism industry and state-owned manufacturers and repackaged as merchandise that garners the attention and revenues of Cuban consumers and international visitors. This “ethno-business” produces a paradox: Afro-Cuban popular religions—long admired by the nation’s intellectual and artistic avant-garde as subaltern cultural rebuttals of dominant Cuban bourgeois opinion and U.S. economic pressures alike—are now promoted and consumed in a manner that conforms to neoliberal logic. The Cuban state confronts the challenges of late socialism with the methods of late capitalism. To some extent, the commodification of Afro-Cuban religions acts to fortify and extend revolutionary cultural policy.

Abstract, "Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America" by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America 
by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

Religion has been married to the colonial and imperial project in Latin America since the Spanish conquistadors planted the first cross on American soil. Even as the new European religion took root across the continent it became incarnate precisely in the large, impoverished, racially complex, subject, and politically marginalized population that the Catholic Church itself helped to create through the long colonial period. Religious institutions were intimately involved in producing and then maintaining structures of social inequality from the very “invention” of Latin America: thus was the vein opened. At the same time, just as religion was essential to colonial processes, it has been, inevitably, part of anticolonial and decolonializing movements and struggles. This issue returns again to the theme of religion and social inequality and the social movements (religiously motivated and otherwise) that seek to address religions’ ambivalent legacy across the continent. The election of the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first Latin American pope brings global attention to the complexity of the Latin American religious landscape as the religious context that shapes his agenda. Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) has made the problem of inequality central to his papacy, decrying the “unfettered market” and the resulting global “economy of exclusion.” Not only did he speak on the evils of capitalism before a joint session of the U.S. Congress but he garnered international media and public attention in April 2014 when he famously tweeted “Inequality is the root of social evil.” It would appear that Rome itself now calls for attention to the problem of inequality.

Book, "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century" Edited by Steve Ellner

:::::: Book ::::::

Book:  "Latin America's Radical Left. Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century"
Edited By Steve Ellner. Foreward by William I. Robinson

Abstract, "The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions" by Jalane D. Schmidt

:::::: Abstract ::::::

The Antidote to Wall Street?: Cultural and Economic Mobilizations of Afro-Cuban Religions 
by Jalane D. Schmidt

When revolutionary Cuba’s governmental cultural policy apparatus cast Afro-Cuban religions as “folklore,” certain religious forms, especially Santería, gained visibility in scholarly investigations, publications, documentary films, and state-sponsored cultural programming. Since the 1990s these discursive treatments of Santería have been monetized by the Cuban tourism industry and state-owned manufacturers and repackaged as merchandise that garners the attention and revenues of Cuban consumers and international visitors. This “ethno-business” produces a paradox: Afro-Cuban popular religions—long admired by the nation’s intellectual and artistic avant-garde as subaltern cultural rebuttals of dominant Cuban bourgeois opinion and U.S. economic pressures alike—are now promoted and consumed in a manner that conforms to neoliberal logic. The Cuban state confronts the challenges of late socialism with the methods of late capitalism. To some extent, the commodification of Afro-Cuban religions acts to fortify and extend revolutionary cultural policy.

Book, "A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro" Edited By Philip Brenner; Marguerite Rose Jiménez; John M. Kirk and William M. Leogrande

:::::: Book ::::::

Book:  "A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro"

Edited By Philip Brenner; Marguerite Rose Jiménez; John M. Kirk and William M. Leogrande

Abstract, "Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America" by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Spirits, Bodies, and Structures: Religion, Politics, and Social Inequality in Latin America 
by Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Maria das Dores Campos Machado

Religion has been married to the colonial and imperial project in Latin America since the Spanish conquistadors planted the first cross on American soil. Even as the new European religion took root across the continent it became incarnate precisely in the large, impoverished, racially complex, subject, and politically marginalized population that the Catholic Church itself helped to create through the long colonial period. Religious institutions were intimately involved in producing and then maintaining structures of social inequality from the very “invention” of Latin America: thus was the vein opened. At the same time, just as religion was essential to colonial processes, it has been, inevitably, part of anticolonial and decolonializing movements and struggles. This issue returns again to the theme of religion and social inequality and the social movements (religiously motivated and otherwise) that seek to address religions’ ambivalent legacy across the continent. The election of the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first Latin American pope brings global attention to the complexity of the Latin American religious landscape as the religious context that shapes his agenda. Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) has made the problem of inequality central to his papacy, decrying the “unfettered market” and the resulting global “economy of exclusion.” Not only did he speak on the evils of capitalism before a joint session of the U.S. Congress but he garnered international media and public attention in April 2014 when he famously tweeted “Inequality is the root of social evil.” It would appear that Rome itself now calls for attention to the problem of inequality.

Book, "People’s Power: Cuba’s Experience with Representative Government" Updated Edition By Peter Roman

::::::Book Review::::::

People’s Power: Cuba’s Experience with Representative Government – Updated Edition 
By Peter Roman

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 304 • Size: 6 1/4 x 9 1/4
978-0-7425-2564-1 • Hardback • November 2003 • $111.00 • (£75.00)
978-0-7425-2565-8 • Paperback • November 2003 • $49.00 • (£32.95)
Series: Critical Currents in Latin American Perspective Series
Subjects: History / Latin America / General

Book, "Today’s Left in Power: Promises and Problems" by Hobart A. Spalding

::::::Book Review::::::

Today’s Left in Power: Promises and Problems 
by Hobart A. Spalding

Book Review of:
Latin America’s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century.
by Steve Ellner (ed.)
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.

Book, "Labor History’s Transnational Turn: Rethinking Latin American and Caribbean Migrant Workers" by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Labor History’s Transnational Turn. Rethinking Latin American and Caribbean Migrant Workers 
by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Book Review of:
Deborah Cohen Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 201. 328 pp.
Leon Fink (ed.) Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 480 pp.
Julie Greene The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin Press, 2009. 475 pp.
Kathleen López Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. 340 pp.

Book, "The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America" by Nicole Fabricant

The Topsy-Turvy Path to Twenty-first-Century Socialism. The Limitations of the New Left in Latin America 
by Nicole Fabricant

Book Review of:
Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-first-Century Socialism.
by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox, Federico Fuentes
London and New York: Zed Books, 2013.

Book, "A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro" Edited By Philip Brenner; Marguerite Rose Jiménez; John M. Kirk and William M. Leogrande

:::::: Book ::::::

Book:  "A Contemporary Cuba Reader. The Revolution under Raúl Castro"

Edited By Philip Brenner; Marguerite Rose Jiménez; John M. Kirk and William M. Leogrande

Cuban Exceptionalism by Ken Cole

Cuban Exceptionalism: A Personal View 
by Ken Cole
Ken Cole is a member of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at London Metropolitan University. 

January 1, 2009, marks the fiftieth anniversary of victory in Cuba’s third war of independence. In his first speech of the Cuban Revolution, given in Santiago de Cuba on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro declared that for the first time in four centuries Cubans were free. Whereas Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and José Martí had led the previous wars, in 1868 and 1895, against Spanish colonial dominion, Castro’s July 26th Movement (named after the day in 1953 when the attack on the Moncada barracks marked the commencement of the revolution) challenged the economic domination of Cuba by the United States.

The Municipal University Centers: Past, Present, and Future by Jorge González Corona

The Municipal University Centers:  Past, Present, and Future
by Jorge González Corona
Translated by Mariana Ortega Breña
Jorge González Corona is Professor of Political Science at the Manuel Bisbé Municipal University. Mariana Ortega Breña is a freelance translator based in Canberra, Australia. 

The development of education in Cuba since January 1, 1959, has gone through several phases. The 1960's witnessed the National Literacy Campaign of 1961, the implementation of universal access to elementary education, the adult post-literacy programs, the massive training of teachers, and the University Reform of 1962. In the next period, 1970–1980, universal access to secondary education was achieved, as was a nationwide university network. These efforts were accompanied by substantial investment in the creation of the necessary material base for education and the accelerated training and upgrading of teachers and professors.

Reflections on the Cuban Revolution by Gary Prevost

Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

by Gary Prevost

Gary Prevost has been Professor of Political Science at St. John’s University since 1977.

When I visited Cuba in the first few days of 1992, it was not clear that the revolution would survive. Food was in relatively short supply and electricity blackouts were common. Even long-time supporters of the revolution were pessimistic about the future. Everything that had been accomplished in its first 32 years seemed in jeopardy when the Soviet Union went out of existence

at the end of 1991 and canceled most of its trade deals with Cuba. The country’s gross domestic product was in the process of shrinking by 50 percent.

Cuban Solidarity and Disaster Response by August Nimtz

Cuban Solidarity and Disaster Response 
by August Nimtz
August Nimtz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and the author of Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America (2003). A more detailed version of the argument presented here can be found in “Natural versus Social Phenomena: Cuba and the Lessons of Katrina” (The Black Scholar, 2006, 36 [4]). 

How is it that an underdeveloped country that is incessantly alleged to be under a dictatorship can do a far better job of saving the lives of its citizens when a hurricane strikes than a rich country with all the trappings of liberal democracy? The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that this is not just an interesting academic question but a matter of life and death. Even before then, international bodies such as the United Nations and the International Red Cross often cited Cuba for its exemplary practices in dealing with hurricanes. Measured in terms of preparation, loss of lives, and recovery, the differences between Cuba and the United States Gulf Coast persist. Even in the 2008 season, when Cuba was assaulted by the most powerful hurricanes on record, it experienced the loss of only five lives.

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! by William I. Robinson

Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! 
by William I. Robinson 
William Robinson is Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective, published in 2008. 

It was Fall 1980. I had recently returned to New York from a three-year stint in Africa and would shortly be heading to Nicaragua, where I would spend the next 10 years. At the time I did not know much about the Cuban Revolution, but my political awakening had taken place on a continent that was still in the process of overthrowing the shackles of colonialism.

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century. by Saul Landau

The Cuban Revolution. Half a Century.
by Saul Landau
Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He has produced 10 books and more than 40 films on social, political, and historical issues and worldwide human rights and is the recipient of Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. 

Five Cuban intelligence agents sit in federal penitentiaries across the United States because they infiltrated anti-revolutionary groups in Miami intent on doing violence in Cuba. These five men represent a long line of those who have acted from an understanding of their roles in the long human historical drama.