Human Services in Postrevolutionary Cuba

Human Services in Postrevolutionary Cuba PDF Author:
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Human Services in Postrevolutionary Cuba

Human Services in Postrevolutionary Cuba PDF Author:
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Product information not available.

Social Relations and the Cuban Health Miracle

Social Relations and the Cuban Health Miracle PDF Author: Elizabeth Kath
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351489631
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
For Cuba's supporters, health is the most commonly cited evidence of the socialist system's success. Even critics often concede that this is the country's saving grace. Cuba's health statistics are indeed extraordinary. This small island outperforms virtually all of its neighboring countries and all countries of the same level of economic development. Some of its health statistics rival wealthy industrialized countries. Moreover, these health outcomes have resulted against all odds. Setting out to unravel this puzzle, the author finds that Cuba possesses an unusually high level of popular participation and cooperation in the implementation of health policy. This has been achieved with the help of a longstanding government that prioritizes public health, and has enough political influence to compel the rest of the community to do the same. On the other hand, popular participation in decision-making regarding health policy is minimal, which contrasts with the image of popular participation often promoted. Political elites design and impose health policy, allowing little room for other health sector groups to meaningfully contribute to or protest official decisions. This is a problem because aspects of health care that are important to those who use the system or work within it can be neglected if they do not fit within official priorities. The author remains, overall, supportive of health achievement in Cuba. The country's preventive arrangements, its collective prioritization of key health areas, the improvements in public access to health services through the expansion of health facilities and the provision of free universal care are among the accomplishments that set it apart. The sustainability and progress of these achievements, however, must involve open recognition and public discussion of weaker aspects of the health system.

A Developmental Analysis of Cuba's Health Care System Since 1959

A Developmental Analysis of Cuba's Health Care System Since 1959 PDF Author: Theodore Harney MacDonald
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book is a compendium of clinical and social information and, in particular, focuses on the impact of the US Trade Embargo and the Helms Burton Act on the continued viability of the enterprise. In this account, the medical reader will find a huge amount of relevant and difficult to obtain epidemiological and clinical data. Discusses current areas of Cuban research as well as the historical context.

Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898

Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 PDF Author: Katherine Hirschfeld
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351516094
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Challenging many of the assumptions scholars have made about the Cuban Revolution's impact on healthcare, this volume recounts one anthropologist's quest to discover the truth behind the complicated relationship between Cuba's revolution, politics, and healthcare system. Katherine Hirschfeld became interested in Cuba in the mid-1990s, after reading numerous laudatory books and articles describing the Castro regime's achievements in health and medicine. Cuba's population health indicators seemed to be far superior to those of neighboring countries, the national health costs low, and medical care free at point-of-service to the entire people. Historical records indicated that most of these positive health trends resulted from the changes instituted by Castro in 1959. Few of these authors, however, had actually spent time on the island. Thus, Hirschfeld found that academic writing on Cuba was often long on praise, but short on empirical research about what exactly had changed in Cuban medicine since 1959.After much bureaucratic wrangling, Hirschfeld managed to secure permission to conduct long-term ethnographic research in Cuba, where she lived with families from Havana and Santiago, conducted clinic observations, interviewed doctors and patients, and was treated in a Cuban hospital during an epidemic of dengue fever. The reality of the Cuban healthcare system turned out to be different than the scholarly ideal: it was bureaucratized, authoritarian, and repressive, and most people preferred to seek healthcare in the informal economy rather than endure the material shortages, red tape, and political surveillance of the public sector. Written in the form of a first-person narrative, Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 not only critically reevaluates Cuban healthcare after the 1959 revolution; it includes chapters detailing Cuban health trends from the Spanish-American War (1898) through the fall of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and into the

Antiracism in Cuba

Antiracism in Cuba PDF Author: Devyn Spence Benson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146962673X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Analyzing the ideology and rhetoric around race in Cuba and south Florida during the early years of the Cuban revolution, Devyn Spence Benson argues that ideas, stereotypes, and discriminatory practices relating to racial difference persisted despite major efforts by the Cuban state to generate social equality. Drawing on Cuban and U.S. archival materials and face-to-face interviews, Benson examines 1960s government programs and campaigns against discrimination, showing how such programs frequently negated their efforts by reproducing racist images and idioms in revolutionary propaganda, cartoons, and school materials. Building on nineteenth-century discourses that imagined Cuba as a raceless space, revolutionary leaders embraced a narrow definition of blackness, often seeming to suggest that Afro-Cubans had to discard their blackness to join the revolution. This was and remains a false dichotomy for many Cubans of color, Benson demonstrates. While some Afro-Cubans agreed with the revolution's sentiments about racial transcendence--"not blacks, not whites, only Cubans--others found ways to use state rhetoric to demand additional reforms. Still others, finding a revolution that disavowed blackness unsettling and paternalistic, fought to insert black history and African culture into revolutionary nationalisms. Despite such efforts by Afro-Cubans and radical government-sponsored integration programs, racism has persisted throughout the revolution in subtle but lasting ways.

Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba

Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba PDF Author: Mark Q. Sawyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139448102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This book analyzes the triumphs and failures of the Castro regime in the area of race relations. It places the Cuban revolution in a comparative and international framework and challenges arguments that the regime eliminated racial inequality or that it was profoundly racist. Through interviews, historical materials, and survey research, it provides a balanced view. The book maintains that Cuba has not been a racial democracy as some have argued. However, it also argues that Cuba has done more than any other society to eliminate racial inequality. The contemporary outlook of the book demonstrates how much of Cuban racial ideology was unchanged by the revolution. Thus, the current implementation of market reforms and in particular tourism has exacerbated racial inequalities. Finally, it holds that despite these shortcomings, the regime remains popular among blacks because they perceive their alternatives of the US and the Miami Exile community to be far worse.

Revolution of Forms

Revolution of Forms PDF Author: John A. Loomis
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568981574
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"A revolution of forms is a revolution of essentials."-Jos Mart, Cuban intellectual and independence leader. Although the current surge of interest in Cuba has extended to that country's architecture, few know that the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution stands neglected just outside Havana. The Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art Schools), constructed from 1961 to 1965, were the result of an educational program initiated by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara soon after the Revolution of 1959. The architects they commissioned created an organic complex of brick and terra-cotta Catalan vaulted structures that reflected the optimism and exuberance of the period. The schools attempted to reinvent architecture, just as the Revolution hoped to reinvent society. However, even before construction was completed, the schools fell out of official favor and were subjected to an attack that resulted in their subsequent "disappearance." An ideological campaign branded them politically incorrect, a bourgeois luxury that was not in keeping with the Revolution. The buildings fell into disuse and, abandoned to the jungle, were literally overgrown. Now, almost 40 years later, Cuba is beginning to recognize and reclaim these significant works of architecture. Revolution of Forms investigates the history and politics surrounding the creation of these structures as well as their subsequent abandonment. The text is accompanied by archival photographs, plans, and images of the present condition of these structures.

Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic

Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic PDF Author: Melina Pappademos
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic

Making the Revolution

Making the Revolution PDF Author: Kevin A. Young
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110842399X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Offers new insights into both the successes and the limitations of Latin America's left in the twentieth century.

Afro-Cuban Voices

Afro-Cuban Voices PDF Author: Pedro Pérez Sarduy
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813065550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
From the forewords: "At a time when Cuba is undergoing immense economic and social changes, race becomes a kind of cultural litmus test for the national identity. . . . This anthology illustrates fully that it is possible to be both revolutionary and black in Cuba."—Manning Marable, Columbia University "The authors of Afro-Cuban Voices, also key actors in the new, unfolding dialogue about race in Cuba, make a seminal contribution through a forthright critique of ‘racial blind spots’ in official history and present-day racial discrimination."—James Early, director of cultural studies and communication, Smithsonian Institution From the series editor: "A courageous attempt to deal head-on with the issue of race in Cuba today. . . . Pérez Sarduy and Stubbs [seek to] put a human face on this debate, and do so well. The book will be received with relief by some and with frustration by others. Controversial it will undoubtedly be, since—as with most things Cuban—strong emotions are a given assumption. It will be an admirable beginning for the series and, it is hoped, will spark a much-needed debate in the United States on many aspects of the ‘Cuban question.’ It is about time."—John M. Kirk Based on the vivid firsthand testimony of prominent Afro-Cubans who live in Cuba, this book of interviews looks at ways that race affects daily life on the island. While celebrating their racial and national identity, the collected voices express an urgent need to end the silences and distortions of history in both pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba. The 14 people interviewed—of different generations and from different geographic areas of Cuba—come from the arts, the media, industry, academia, and medicine. They include a doctor who calls for joint U.S.-Cuban studies on high blood pressure and a craftsman who makes the batá drums used in Yoruba worship ceremonies. All responded to four controversial questions: What is it like to be black in Cuba? How has the revolution made a difference? To what extent is that difference true today? What can be done? Exposing the contradictions of both racial stereotyping and cultural assimilation, their eloquent answers make the case that the issue of race in Cuba, no matter how hard to define, will not be ignored. A volume in the series Contemporary Cuba, edited by John M. Kirk