Cuban Exiles on the Trade Embargo

Cuban Exiles on the Trade Embargo
Author: Edward J. González
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 078648070X

First implemented in 1962, the American embargo against Cuba is one of the most enduring anti-trade measures in human history, having outlived most of the original government and military leaders responsible for its creation. But has it benefited the United States as intended, by weakening Fidel Castro's grip on his country? Or has it, instead, strengthened his position? This unique work draws upon interviews with Cuban exiles to provide broad-ranging insights on the embargo's effects on the Cuban people, and an evaluation of its diminishing role as an effective political tool.

The Cuban Embargo

The Cuban Embargo
Author: Patrick Haney
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2005-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0822972719

The United States and Cuba share a complex, fractious, interconnected history. Before 1959, the United States was the island nation's largest trading partner. But in swift reaction to Cuba's communist revolution, the United States severed all economic ties between the two nations, initiating the longest trade embargo in modern history, one that continues to the presentday. The Cuban Embargo examines the changing politics of U.S. policy toward Cuba over the more than four decades since the revolution.While the U.S. embargo policy itself has remained relatively stable since its origins during the heart of the Cold War, the dynamics that produce and govern that policy have changed dramatically. Although originally dominated by the executive branch, the president's tight grip over policy has gradually ceded to the influence of interest groups, members of Congress, and specific electoral campaigns and goals. Haney and Vanderbush track the emergence of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation as an ally of the Reagan administration, and they explore the more recent development of an anti-embargo coalition within both civil society and Congress, even as the Helms-Burton Act and the George W. Bush administration have further tightened the embargo. Ultimately they demonstrate how the battles over Cuba policy, as with much U.S. foreign policy, have as much to do with who controls the policy as with the shape of that policy itself.

Back Channel to Cuba

Back Channel to Cuba
Author: William M. LeoGrande
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469626616

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

In the Land of Mirrors

In the Land of Mirrors
Author: Maria de los Angeles Torres
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2001-02-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780472087884

DIVReflects on changes in the politics of the Cuban exile community in the forty years since the Cuban revolution /div

Cuba After the Cold War

Cuba After the Cold War
Author: Carmelo Mesa-Lago
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1993-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822974568

Ten original essays by an international team of scholars specializing in Cuba, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Latin America focus on the fall of communism in Europe and the transition to a market economy. Major themes of this study are the impact of the USSR's collapse on Cuba, how the historic events in Europe have affected the Central and South American Left, their implications to Cuba, Cuba's policies for confronting the crisis, and potential scenarios for the political and economic transformation of Cuba.

Sanctions as War

Sanctions as War
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004501207

Sanctions as War is the first critical analysis of economic sanctions from a global perspective. Featuring case studies from 11 sanctioned countries and theoretical essays, it will be of immediate interest to those interested in understanding how sanctions became the common sense of American foreign policy.

Our Woman in Havana

Our Woman in Havana
Author: Vicki Huddleston
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1468315803

A top US diplomat’s compelling memoir of her years in Cuba and the tumultuous relationship between the two countries: “Unparalleled insight.” —Culture Trip After the US embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the US Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would later serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans. Along with inside accounts of dramatic episodes such as the Elián González custody battle, Huddleston also evokes the charm of the island country and her warm affection for the Cuban people. Uniquely qualified to explain the inner workings of US-Cuba relations, Huddleston examines the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening of 2014, the mysterious “sonic” brain and hearing injuries suffered by US and Canadian diplomats serving in Havana, and the rescinding of the diplomatic opening under the Trump administration. She recounts missed opportunities for détente, and the myths, misconceptions, and lies that have long pervaded US-Cuba relations. Our Woman in Havana is essential reading for everyone interested in Cuba, including the thousands of Americans visiting the island every year, as well as policymakers and observers who study the stormy relationship with our near neighbor. “Anyone interested in the nitty-gritty of policy-making in Washington, and any young foreign service officer intrigued by worldly adventures will thoroughly enjoy.” —Ambassador Joseph Wilson, author of The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity

Finding Manana

Finding Manana
Author: Mirta Ojito
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006-04-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143036602

A vibrant, moving memoir of prizewinning journalist and New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito and her departure from Cuba in the Mariel boatlift—an enduring story of a family caught up in the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century. Mirta Ojito was one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees who traveled to Miami during the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift. Growing up, Ojito was eager to fit in and join Castro’s Young Pioneers, but as she grew older and began to understand the darker side of the Cuban revolution, she and her family began to aspire to a safer, happier life. When Castro opened Cuba’s borders for those who wanted to leave, her family was more than ready to go: they had been waiting for the opportunity for twenty years. Now an acclaimed reporter, Ojito tells her story and reckons with her past with all of the determination and intelligence—and the will to confront darkness—that carried her through the boatlift. In this stunning autobiography, she sets out to find the people who set this exodus in motion, including the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Mañana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. In Finding Mañana, Ojito and tell the stories of the boatlift’s key players in superb and poignant detail—chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.

October 1962

October 1962
Author: Tomás Diez Acosta
Publisher:
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN:

In October 1962, Washington pushed the world to the edge of nuclear war. Here, for the first time, the full story of that historic moment is told from the perspective of the Cuban people, whose determination to defend their sovereignty and their socialist revolution blocked U.S. plans for a military assault and saved humanity from the consequences of a nuclear holocaust.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
Author: Ada Ferrer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501154575

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.