Breaking the Taboo

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.1.0005
• Published date: 01 April 2013
• Date: 01 April 2013
• Pages: 5-5
• Author: Stephen Wilkinson

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

edItorIalS

breakIng the taboo

Stephen Wilkinson

Cuban internationalism has a history as long as the revolution itself. From

the very beginning, as early as 1959, Cuba began sending personnel abroad

to assist in other developing countries. At f‌irst, the aid was often military but

latterly, since the end of the Cold War, this has become principally medical and

educational in nature. Such is the scale of Cuba’s overseas commitment that it

amounts to the most compelling large-scale example of empathetic solidarity in

modern times. Knowledge of it deserves widespread dissemination because it

contests certain conservative and neoliberal articles of faith, especially the view

of social solidarity as naïve, illusory, and even contrary to human nature. Cuban

internationalism takes empathy out of the abstract and provides evidence that

‘Another World Is Possible’. Perhaps this explains the embargo on information

about Cuba that Robert Huish, one of the guest editors of this special issue of

our journal, has said amounts to a ‘virtual taboo in academic and policy circles

that has systematically failed to take into full account the country’s remarkable

achievements in the provision of health and education, despite its widespread

recognition by communities in receipt of those services around the world’.

It has been a great privilege for IJCS to have been able to invite Robert Huish

and Sarah Blue to be guest editors. We hope that this will be the f‌irst of many

more such guest edited issues that will contribute in their own small ways to

breaking that taboo.

IJCS5_1 5 20/02/2013 09:18