This Edition

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.7.2.0139
• Pages: 139-141
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Stephen Wilkinson

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

EDITORIALEDITORIAL

THIS EDITION

Stephen Wilkinson

As this edition was being prepared for publication, preparations were under way

for the Pope’s visit to Cuba and three US cities; it was announced that the num-

ber of visitors to Cuba had increased by more than 17 per cent year on year, and

the CEO of the Davidoff brand of cigars had said that the company was contem-

plating a return to the island. Furthermore, talks between Cuba and the European

Union on a commercial agreement were reported to be progressing with impres-

sive results. All of these very positive factors point to a stronger more robust

position in the world for Cuba both economically and politically. It has long

been the position of this journal that Cuba is well placed to become a Caribbean

tiger and that once the yoke of the US embargo policy is lifted from its shoulders,

it will become an engine for growth and stability within the Caribbean. The signs

are that we were not wrong in this assumption.

The renewed relationship between Cuba and the US provides us with the rare

opportunity to present two articles this month that were written in collaboration

between US and Cuban scholars and three other articles that focus on the his-

torical relationship and experiences of American and Afro-Cuban/Americans in

the island.

In the first article, ‘Cuba in the Western Hemisphere: What Has Changed?’,

Cuban scholar Carlos Oliva Campos and US political scientist Gary Prevost

place the reestablishment of full diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US

in the context of the changing political relations in the Western Hemisphere

culminating in Cuba’s historic participation in the seventh Summit of the

Americas in Panama in April 2015. The authors argue that a key factor in the

political change was the growing independent-minded thinking of key Latin

American countries and their progressive leaders. It is this, they argue, that

explains Obama’s overture to Cuba in the absence of any fundamental conces-

sions from the Cuban side.