Cuban Studies

Revolutionary Cuba abounds with enigmas, especially in the realm of the State's relation with those intellectuals committed to constructive criticism of the regime. Such criticism occurs and serves to reveal aspects of the inner workings of state policies, but only rarely does evidence emerge about these debates from areas other than those within the principal governing bodies. Since its founding in 1977, the Centro de Estudios sobre América (CEA) has directed its social scientist staff to research and publish on public policy topics pertaining to the Americas. After 1989, the Center turned as well to Cuban topics because of the urgency to right the economy and rethink socialism. As nationalists concerned with the survival of the country's independence amid brutal economic changes, these intellectuals sought to advance ideas and strategies Cuba could embrace to ensure equity to all parts of society during the transition. CEA researchers Alberto F. Álvarez García and Gerardo González Núñez discuss and critique the events of the last decade that led to the State's intervention and subsequent silencing through reorganization and exile of CEA's intellectuals. This account offers insights likely to clarify speculation while also providing valuable knowledge of the State's penetrating role in all aspects of intellectual life. As such, it builds upon the compilation of Maurizio Giuliano, El caso CEA: Intelectuales e inquisidores en Cuba. ¿Perestroika en la isla? (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998).

Could Cuba meet international expectations for the autonomy of academic institutions? Substantial evidence exists that it could not because of the inter-connectedness among the State, the Communist Party of Cuba, and its Central Committee. Pluralism of ideas expressed privately was individualism, but when the State-sponsored research network embraced this pluralism, only distrust [End Page 208] and censorial responses emerged. The authors relate with often intriguing detail the State's tactics of increased monitoring to stifle intellectual openings and debate. By the early 1990s it had become evident that reforms would be economic, not political. Part of the CEA's staff argued for democratic politics within socialism as an important reform to incorporate into the overall transition then occurring. The assessment that economic reforms were introducing a type of economic apartheid was not welcome. This response signaled that CEA's incursion into Cuban affairs using the same intellectual prowess and critiquing capacity that it had applied to other countries in the Americas was not acceptable. The implications rippled throughout the CEA and served to warn other State-affiliated researchers.

The authors experienced CEA's reduction in autonomy during the 1990s. Continual reminders that academics could never successfully separate themselves from political objectives were part of a generational difference of expectations and experimental space for socialism. State intervention in the CEA's respected journal, Cuadernos de Nuestro América, by the placement of hardline government functionaries on the editorial board, coupled with the appointment of personnel from the armed forces, Ministry of the Interior, and agencies of the Central Committee, were all actions underscoring CEA's transformation into mediocrity and ideological purity.

The example of the CEA's decline adds to the critiques of the failure of authoritarian rule to create and securely maintain an atmosphere favorable for intellectual creativity in the social sciences. Furthermore, a moderate left, concerned as it is internationally with socioeconomic and political inequalities, cannot, as yet, be part of the Cuban public debate or institutional framework. A redefinition of the State and the role of nationalist critics must await a future date.

The authors appear to be doing just that from their posts in Canadian and Puerto Rican academic venues.