In this monograph, Síntesis—a Spanish-language journal that reproduces previously published essays, documents, and other research materials on Latin American topics for the social scientific community in Spain—focuses on Cuba. Director Guadalupe Ruiz-Giménez Aguilar has made an excellent selection: Fernando Mires (the continuities of Cuban history); Jorge I. Domínguez (the military in the late 1980s); Carmelo Mesa-Lago (the economy and the return of ideology); Fernando Martínez Heredia (Cuban socialism, independence, and democracy); José Luis Rodríguez (socioeconomic accomplishments of the revolution); Rhoda Rabkin (political institutions); Jorge Pérez-López (Cuba’s economic relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1980s); Haroldo Dilla et al. (municipal assemblies of Popular Power); Luis Suárez Salazar (Cuba in the post-Cold War world); Archibald R. M. Ritter (Cuban prospects in the 1990s); and Max Azicri (Cuban-American politics). The volume also includes several book reviews, an extensive bibliography, and three useful documents: the January 1, 1990, open letter to Fidel Castro by Cubans abroad calling for a plebiscite in Cuba; the August 1990 Madrid declaration of the Democratic Platform, a group of centrist and liberal Cuban exiles likewise proposing a plebiscite and other democratic reforms on the island; and the October 1991 Communist party resolution on Popular Power assemblies recommending the direct election of National Assembly deputies.
Three themes underlie these essays that are indeed representative of the field of Cuban studies: revolution versus counterrevolution; democracy versus dictatorship; and socialism versus capitalism. The first underscores the issues of national independence and social justice, which have deep roots in Cuban history and which the past 35 years have upheld. The primary concern of the scholars who emphasize these issues (that is, Mires, Martínez Heredia, Suárez Salazar) is Cuban independence from the United States. The theme of democracy versus dictatorship focuses on political institutions, citizen participation, and the nature of Cuban elites. Scholars whose principal interest is the political system (Domínguez, Rabkin, Dilla, and others) vary in their assessment of Cuban democracy. The third theme, socialism versus capitalism, involves issues of performance, constraints, and prospects. Dependence on the former Soviet Union and the weight of politics in economic planning are two central questions in evaluating Cuban socialism. The essays by Mesa-Lago, Pérez-López, Ritter, and Rodríguez cover the spectrum of debates about the Cuban economy.
A final observation is in order. Of 11 essays, Cubans and Cuban Americans wrote 4 each, and a Chilean, a Canadian, and an American wrote the remaining 3. That Cubans and Cuban Americans figure so prominently in the study of Cuba would not be noteworthy were it not for the prevalent and entrenched political polarization between the United States and Cuba, and between the Cuban government and the Cuban American community. That over the 1980s Cuban and Cuban American academics managed to establish a respectful dialogue is a modest example of the benefits of dialogue over confrontation. With diverse analyses and rich data, this issue of Síntesis also underscores the importance of intellectual dialogue on the highly charged subject of contemporary Cuba.
