This Issue

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.1.0005
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• Date: 01 April 2017
• Pages: 5-15
• Author: Al Campbell

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

EDITORIAL

THIS ISSUE

Al Campbell

Almost exactly a year ago from the time this editorial is being written, the

Communist Party of Cuba held its 7th Congress. International partisans of

Cuba’s returning to capitalism were upset. ‘. . . the Party Congress proved to be

a disappointment even by the cautious standards of reform that Raúl Castro . . .

has set in train since he took over as president in 2008’ (Bello 2016).

The Party Congress actually said exactly the same as Raúl and the Cuban

government have been saying for 10 years. Cuba has consistently declared that

it intends to build a ‘prosperous and sustainable socialism’ and that they will

make their policy choices to try to achieve that goal. Cuba argues that there is no

model to copy to achieve their humanistic goal, and so they need to try to dis-

cover and create their own new road forward.

Notwithstanding the deep changes to the Cuba economy promoted by the

government and Communist Party since 1990, and at an accelerated pace since

2008, the fact that a process of capitalist restoration has not been unleashed is

consistently reported by the majority of the international press as ‘no real

change’, etc. Following the Party Congress, The Economist wrote, ‘The Cuban

Communist Party blocks change’ (Bello 2016); USA Today wrote, ‘Once again

Cubans waiting for change’ (Gomez 2016); The Washington Post wrote, ‘Despite

some market reforms and economic tinkering in recent years, the authoritarian

system the Castros have built still dominates state and society’, and further that

Cuba’s response to the many calls for change which Obama put forward in his

visit the month before was ‘no way’ (Editorial Board 2016); and so on, and on,

and on.

Our second editorial in this issue reflects on personal experiences in Great

Britain of severe media bias against Cuba. After Fidel’s death, Denise Baden, a

senior lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility at the University of

Southampton, was invited onto BBC 24 to talk on her experience doing research

in Cuba and what she had learned about Fidel. She relates,