Contemporary Cuban Medical Aid Programs: Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

The implosion of the Soviet Union led to a series of major reforms in Cuba starting in the early 1990s. Policies that would have been inconceivable just a few years before were now reluctantly accepted by the revolutionary leadership as being essential for the survival of the Cuban revolution. As a result, starting with the legalization of hard currency in 1993, a number of economic innovations were introduced—some 200,000 Cubans became self-employed, foreign investment was successfully courted and hundreds of joint ventures were soon in place, state farms were reorganized as collectives with greater autonomy, tourism (which for decades had been studiously neglected) became the locomotive dragging the economy in its wake—and the numbers of tourists increased eightfold between the early 1990s and 2007. Cubans living abroad who returned after an absence of several years hardly recognized the country.