La economía cubana en los primeros años de la revolución y otros ensayos

Juan F. Noyola was a Mexican economist who, when he was killed in an airplane crash in November 1962, held several important government and university posts in revolutionary Cuba. As tribute to his life and work, Noyola’s friends and colleagues put together this book, which contains a collection of several lectures on Cuban economic problems and prospects, given to different groups in the island and in Mexico from 1959 to 1961, and class notes of an economics course given in Havana in November 1961. Although all the lectures cover essentially the same terrain as the class notes, there is an increasing level of radicalization in the latter, corresponding to the radicalization of the revolutionary process itself. Noyola provides a solid and erudite summary of Cuban economic history with many pertinent references to similarities and differences culled from the Latin American record. His depiction of Cuba’s economic prospects for the 1960s, however, is breezily carefree and overly optimistic. His miscalculations were typical of the time and of people involved in heady revolutionary tasks. Noyola was more than an economic technician; he was a participant revolutionary.