Introduction

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Notes

1. Translator's note: The Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, known as “Comecon” in English, was the Eastern European and Soviet Common Market, later expanded to Cuba, Vietnam and Mongolia.

2. See Pedro Monreal, “Development as an Unfinished Affair: Cuba after the Great Adjustment of the 90s,” in Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk and William LeoGrande, A Contemporary Cuba Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

3. Translator's note: Canada and Mexico enacted laws declaring that the measures in the Helms-Burton Law were invalid in their countries.

4. Translator's note: “Emos” – from the word “emotional” – are a new urban tribe of young people. They dress in black, get depressed because society (and their parents) does not understand them, and listen to a specific kind of rock and roll. Women wear white makeup and very dark, often black, lipstick. The young men have unusual haircuts (short on one side and long on the other).

5. Translator's note: The Centennial Generation (Generación del Centenario) was a group of young people who left Cuba's Orthodox Party, which was projected to overwhelmingly win in 1952 elections had the coup not occurred, to take up armed struggle against Batista. They called themselves the Centennial Generation because the beginning of their struggle coincided with the hundredth anniversary of José Martí's birth in 1853.

6. For a discussion and critique on this issue, see María López Vigil, “The Cuban Media,” in Brenner et al., A Contemporary Cuba Reader, 373–8.

7. Translator's note: Cuba has two circulating monetary systems. The Cuban peso represents the national system, used by most Cubans for purchasing daily necessities. The convertible peso represents the equivalent of hard currency and its value is pegged to the US dollar. It is used by tourists and by Cubans with access to dollars and other hard currencies to purchase items not available in Cuban pesos.

8. See Luisa Campuzano, “Ser cubanas y no morir en el intento,” Temas no. 5 (January-March 1996), 4–10.

9. See Margaret Crahan, “Introduction” to Religion, Culture and Society: The Case of Cuba (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2003).

10. See Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).