Abstract
Recent discussions regarding Cuba have revealed some of the many challenges and contradictions facing the country as it moves into an uncertain future somewhere between socialism and free market capitalism. At a 2008 conference in Manhattan titled “A Changing Cuba in a Changing World,” scholars from all political stripes gathered to discuss the future of the island nation.1 Many of the keynote talks focused on pressing questions both within and outside of Cuba: Where was Cuba headed in the twenty-first century? What economic and political maps should Cuba use? What role, if any, would the international (or specifically American) community play in this future? Like many conferences on the subject of Cuba, the debates were often contentious as economists touting Cuba’s repressed entrepreneurial spirit squared off against political scientists sympathetic to the aims and spirit of the Cuban revolution in 1959. While many on the right of the political spectrum envisioned a more “global” Cuba, with open markets freed from restrictions on trade, investment, and entrepreneurship, many on the left were anxious about the risk that these moves posed to key areas of social policy in the country—namely a well-funded, health, education, and cultural sector. However, as the actions implemented by the new commander-in-chief Raoul Castro indicate, change is coming to Cuba. Recent decisions to open up the real estate market, to free up regulations on some forms of small business, and to lay off large sectors of the public service, present major challenges to the revolutionary status quo and will undoubtedly have broad implications for the country in the future.
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Notes
For a broad discussion of the energy and legacy of the “global sixties” see Karen Dubinsky et al., New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2009).
Julianne Burton, “Democratizing Documentary: Modes of Address in the New Latin American Cinema, 1958–1972,” in The Social Documentary in Latin America, ed. Julianne Burton (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990).
Ann-Marie Stock, On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking During Times of Transition (Durham NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 39. See also Zuzana Pick, The New Latin American Cinema: A Continental Project (Austin: University of Texas, 1993).
Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, “Cuba’s Alternative Geographies,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 10, no. 2 (2005): 283–284.
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© 2013 Mette Hjort
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Balaisis, N. (2013). The School for Every World: Internationalism and Residual Socialism at EICTV. In: Hjort, M. (eds) The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137032690_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137032690_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44120-4
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