Editor's Choice Ep. 8: Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution w/ Joana Salém Vasconcelos

Latin American Perspectives Podcast

Historian Joana Salém Vasconcelos joins us to discuss her book Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution: Dilemmas of Peripheral Socialism (Brill 2023; Haymarket 2023).

Translated from Portuguese and originally published in Brazil in 2016, this meticulously researched study unpacks the complicated political and economic challenges Cuba has faced since its 1959 revolution, demonstrating why the sugar plantation economic structure in Cuba has persisted. Drawing on diverse historical sources, Salém Vasconcelos narrates in detail the three dimensions of Cuban agrarian transformation during the decisive 1960s – the land tenure system, the crop regime, and the labor regime – and its social and political actors. She explains the paths and detours of Cuban agrarian policies contextualized in a labor-intensive economy that desperately needs to increase productivity and, simultaneously, promised widely to emancipate workers from labor exploitation.

Joana Salém Vasconcelos is a full-time Visiting Professor at Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil, and has a PhD in Economic History from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil.

Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution: Dilemmas of Peripheral Socialism is available for purchase through Haymarket books and Brill:

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2420-agrarian-history-of-the-cuban-revolution

https://brill.com/display/title/64107?language=en

For more information about Latin American Perspectives, our podcasts and guests, please contact [email protected]