The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a ‘self-study’ process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.     

Foreign Investment and Trade in Cuban Development: A 50-Year Reassessment with Emphasis on the Post-1990 Period

This article provides a 50-year reassessment of foreign investment and trade in Cuba and locates this analysis within Cuban debates on development and the economics of transition. Transformations contextualised in these debates cover three periods. The 1959–1989 period was characterised by nationalisations and expropriations, the imposition of the US trade embargo, and the trade and economic assistance agreements signed with the Soviet Union. The Special Period crisis emerged in the 1990s and Cuba had to turn to foreign investment and alternative trade options while continuing to reject the adoption of open regionalism and neoliberal policies. The 2005–2008 period was characterised by Cuba's incorporation into the Bolivarian Alternative, a new regional integration model.     

Margaret Fuller's Rome and the problem of provincial American democracy

ABSTRACT

Margaret Fuller's visit to Italy as a correspondent for the New York Tribune at the time of the 1848 revolutions gave her a unique perspective on them, not only as a feminist intellectual but also as a commentator on the American relationship with revolutionary Europe. In her Tribune writings she addressed issues at once more partisan and more global than those she had covered inside the United States, including the political condition of Italy as a subject state under Austrian imperial control, and as an object of ridicule by many American observers, and the condition of American slavery. Italian peoples and slaves, in her mind, were, like women, oppressed by a transatlantic patriarchy whose prejudices allowed only for white males to enjoy political independence. Fuller called for American support for the Roman republic, but her sympathies did not reflect the thrust of American opinion. Many Americans did not believe Italians were capable of maintaining republican self-government, which was different, they alleged, from their own version, part of the inheritance of the American Revolution. That heritage conferred a unique American revolutionary ‘exceptionalism’. For these Americans, the 1848 revolutions provided evidence that Europe was impulsive, reactionary and flawed; they saw in them confirmation of the superiority of American race relations and democratic society. After her death in 1850, the American Civil War would confirm Fuller's implicit sense that the United States and Europe were more alike than many Americans of her generation believed or realized. Her critique of American attitudes to the prospect for democracy in Italy provides perspective on the ambiguity of American global leadership today.     

(In)securitization and illiberal practices on the fringe of the EU

Illiberal practices of liberal regimes have been extensively studied by critical security studies. The literature on risk emphasises the idea of imminent dangers and the logic of worst-case scenarios, which eventually unsettle the balance between security and liberty by always favouring the former in its most coercive and exceptional forms. This paper, by drawing on (in)securitization theory, attempts to explain how particular illiberal practices with respect to the control and management of immigration on the fringe of the EU become normalised. It argues that (in)securitization of immigration and illiberal practices are effects of the very functioning of a transnational field of (in)security professionals that are produced through the structural competition between different actors of this field over the definition of security and the appropriate control and management of immigration. In this respect, it uses Greece as a case study and draws on material gathered through interviews with Greek security professionals in Athens, Lesvos, Orestiada, and Alexandroupoli, and analysis of their discourse in dissertations they prepared during their study in police academies.     

When Art and Commerce Collide: Colorization and the Moral Right

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the dominant framework that drives US public diplomacy initiatives and insists that, short of major structural changes, US public diplomacy lacks ethical legitimacy. Based on a review of past US public diplomacy practices, the article finds that these efforts were mainly characterized by a one-way flow of information and an emphasis on image management. Using the theories of hegemony, American exceptionalism, Orientalism, and cultural imperialism, the author lays a theoretical framework for analyzing public diplomacy. The author suggests that, for public diplomacy to move beyond propaganda, it needs to incorporate two-way communication and symmetry.     

Diplomatic Rivalries and Cultural One-upmanship: New Zealand’s Long Quest to Become More Pacific than Australia

Abstract

New Zealand’s governmental and non-governmental agencies, academic commentators and media have long framed the country as uniquely and favourably positioned on cultural grounds to be a strategic diplomatic actor in the South Pacific. Justifications for the framing stem from two linked complexes: the history of New Zealand’s colonial and post-colonial involvement in a number of Polynesian territories in the Pacific; and the related history of relations between settlers and indigenes in New Zealand itself. These different strands of the argument have increasingly been brought together by the growth in numbers of New Zealand-born and domiciled Pacific Islanders. They, along with Maori, have been recruited into the diplomatic service and overtly contribute to the use of Polynesian encounter rituals in New Zealand’s diplomatic outreach. Such histories are used to justify New Zealand’s role in the Pacific in its relations with other external powers, especially in diplomatic jostling with Australia. The claims to special insight and cultural capital are subjected to critical scrutiny.     

The Silent Scream of the Locas in Mariposas en el andamio

This article explores the way cross-dressing has been used as a tool of dissent by queer subjects in the film Mariposas en el andamio . This documentary not only advocates the integration of homosexuals in the realm of Cuban society, but also evidences the establishment of a culture of transvestism on the island. The ultimate intention of Mariposas is to posit the male-to-female transvestite as a figure that contests hegemonic heteronormativity as well as the machista values predicated by the Cuban revolution. The film not only opposes sexist heteronormativity (machismo in Latin American societies), but also establishes a link between homosexuality and cross-dressing practices in Latin America, as transvestism becomes an externalisation of these individuals' homosexual identity. Furthermore, the film seems to suggest that the transvestites feel trapped in the wrong biological sex. The second focus of this article is on the geographical spaces where such transvestic practices are permissible on the island. Although the film makes a case for a more open and inclusive Cuban society, it fails to show that same-sex desire and cross-dressing can be played out outside the neighbourhood's canteen in which the show takes place. Finally, I intend to show how camp becomes the best strategy for the transvestites to challenge the idea of homosexuals as anti-revolutionary figures as well as Latin American heteronormativity. To this end, I engage in a study of a strategy of gender subversion that I call 'camp fuck'. This type of campness de-constructs the idea of a bourgeois camp to transform it into a more political device, which permits the contesting of heteronormativity through elements that have traditionally been regarded as frivolous and apolitical.     

Cuban Anti‐slavery Narrative through Postcolonial Eyes: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (1841) has come to be regarded as an iconic work in the canon of nineteenth‐century Cuban fiction, celebrated as much for its literary pedigree as for its radical combination of anti‐slavery and feminist ideas. Yet it has been the subject of very divergent critical appraisals. This essay sets out to breathe new life into Avellaneda’s novel by interpreting it through a postcolonial optic. Drawing on ideas from the scholarship of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, as well as the ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, these pages explore the implications of its nationalist, racial, sexual and feminist politics for Sab’s anti‐slavery meaning. This postcolonial reading provides a possible solution for the conflicts between its various interpretations.     

Society for Latin American Studies 2004 Plenary Lecture The Return of Cuba to Latin America: The End of Cuban Exceptionalism?

Comparing Cuban history and contemporary circumstances to those in the rest of the region, this article challenges the idea of Cuban exceptionalism. The last four decades have seen Cuba move away from typical Latin American patterns such as economic and geographical inequalities. The Revolution has not been able, however, to reverse a historical dependence on external financing nor has it resolved racial inequities. While the Revolution did establish an unusually effective political apparatus, it did not use this opportunity to nurture democracy. As the social welfare advances of the revolution erode, Cuba resembles the rest of the continent ever more and reflects the central problems facing the region.     

Chapter 8. The Mariel and Balsero Cuban Immigrant Experience

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the differential family reunification issues experienced by Cuban Marielitos and balseros upon entrance into the United States. Treatment recommendations, aimed at ameliorating the emotionally laden reunification issues, are presented within a family systems and ecological context. The overall intent of this chapter/article is to assist mental health practitioners in their therapeutic work with members of a relatively small but distinct Hispanic ethnic group. Two case vignettes are presented as a means of illustrating the key family reunifications issues that have impacted-and continue to affect-Cuban Marielitos and balseros.