This Issue

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.8.1.0005
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Date: 01 April 2016
• Pages: 5-8
• Author: Stephen Wilkinson

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

EDITORIAL

THIS ISSUE

Stephen Wilkinson

It is a disadvantage of publishing an academic journal biannually that one is

inevitably always in danger of being dated by the time the edition comes before

the reader. This editorial is being composed in April 2016, just a month after

President Obama’s historic visit to Havana, and a week after the Cuban

Communist Party Congress. The former event produced huge hope and optimism

among many that significant changes were in the offing whereas the latter to oth-

ers indicated that any ideas of a Cuba ‘transition’ to a free market liberal demo-

cratic model are mistaken. Whither Cuba? As these two chronologically adjacent,

linked and yet contradictory events show, this is a tricky question to answer. The

wise would not hazard to say where Cuba will be and what it will be like in July

when this edition of the journal is published. But we do believe it is possible to

understand Cuba and the Cubans well enough to be more certain as to what and

where they will not be. That is the premise upon which this journal was founded.

By examining Cuba and its revolution dispassionately and academically in all its

aspects, we hope to come to an understanding of what exactly it is and thereby

what possibilities there are for its future. So to that end, we present in this edition

six articles from four disciplines and five different countries, including Cuba, all

of which in their different ways add to our understanding of the island, its his-

tory, its current society and its relationship with the US.

A memorable moment of President Obama’s visit came when he made an

unprecedented speech to the Cuban people in which, among other surprising

things, he paid tribute to Cuba’s contribution in the field of medical care. In this

issue, we are proud to lead with an examination of one recent example of Cuba’s

involvement in Africa that was integral in cementing Cuba’s reputation in this

sphere. In their article, ‘Cuban Medical Internationalism: The Ebola Campaign

of 2014–15’ Canadian academics, John Kirk and Chris Walker detail the Cuban

response to Ebola in West Africa, and specifically in the three countries where

the Cuban medical personnel focused their efforts–Guinea, Liberia and Sierra