If That Is Heaven, We Would Rather Go to Hell : Contextualizing US-Cuba Relations

The history of Cuba is one of conquest and rebellion. Since the arrival of Columbus, it has had two colonial masters: Spain and the United States. Spain, after the collapse of its empire, ceased to be a threat to the peoples of America. Now, the Spanish are among the principal investors in Cuba, and make up a high percentage of tourists to the island. The United States, engaged in empire-building as sole superpower and continuing to pursue a half-century-old policy of regime change in Cuba, is still seen by the Cubans as the greatest threat to their independence and sovereignty. This article reviews the history of relations between the two countries, seeking to contextualize their social origins and political evolution, concluding that an improvement in relations is unlikely absent a profound change in the political economy of either country, or of both, a change that could occur internally or be caused by external factors

If That Is Heaven, We Would Rather Go to Hell : Contextualizing US-Cuba Relations

The history of Cuba is one of conquest and rebellion. Since the arrival of Columbus, it has had two colonial masters: Spain and the United States. Spain, after the collapse of its empire, ceased to be a threat to the peoples of America. Now, the Spanish are among the principal investors in Cuba, and make up a high percentage of tourists to the island. The United States, engaged in empire-building as sole superpower and continuing to pursue a half-century-old policy of regime change in Cuba, is still seen by the Cubans as the greatest threat to their independence and sovereignty. This article reviews the history of relations between the two countries, seeking to contextualize their social origins and political evolution, concluding that an improvement in relations is unlikely absent a profound change in the political economy of either country, or of both, a change that could occur internally or be caused by external factors

A Hunger for Memory, A Thirst for Justice

This piece was originally presented November 7, 1992 as the keynote address for the Eighth Annual Juan Luis Tienda Scholarship Banquet presented by the Hispanic Law Students Association (HLSA). The author is now Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. He also holds appointments at MSU\u27s Insitute of Public Policy and Social Research and at The University of Michigan\u27s Center for Research on Social Organization. At the time of this presentation, he was Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at The University of California, San Diego

A Hunger for Memory, a Thirst for Justice

Keynote address at the University of Michigan Law School in remembrance of Juan Luis Tienda, November 1992. "...A young man of humble lineage, Juan Luis Tienda strived for, and achieved, a virtuous life. We know him best by his deeds. He himself, only 24 years old when he died, may not have been fully conscious (who among us is?) of the historical chain of being of which he was a part, anymore than fish are of water. Yet his short life was meaningful and purposeful, and in his own way, above all in his thirst for justice and in his search for meaning in his life's work, he was a representative of a long and rich Hispanic tradition in the Americas of students of law – from Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Spanish son of a friend of Columbus who denounced the encomienda system while renouncing his own inherited privilege and who issued the "first cry for justice in the Americas," to Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian who did not learn to speak Spanish until he was twelve but became Mexico's great reformer and liberal president, and José Martí, the criollo son of Spanish immigrants and apostle of Cuban independence whose prolific prose and poetry was penned largely in exile – lawyers all who thirsted for justice, who saw wrong and tried to right it.