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Historiography on U.S.-Cuban relations has tended to cast an aura of inevitability on Fidel Castro’s Revolution—as well as on Cuba’s clash with the United States after 1959. Indeed, much of the historiography suggests that it was Washington’s hegemonic approach to Cuba that was responsible for creating the structural disequilibrium that made revolution and the rupture of bilateral relationships inevitable. In this talk, Dr. Pettinà will argue against this view, maintaining that the US-Cuban relationship during the 1930s and ’40s was marked by a reciprocal cooperative attitude that favored the island’s democratic consolidation and economic development. The tremendous impact of the Cold War on US-Cuban relations played a crucial role in destroying the equilibrium of earlier decades, destabilizing the island’s political system, and creating fertile ground for the crisis of the 1950s.
Vanni Pettinà is an Associate Researcher at Ortega y Gasset Research Institute of Madrid and the LSE-IDEAS Latin American International Affairs Program of London. In July 2012 he will be Postdoctoral Fellow at Colegio de México in Mexico City. He is author of Cuba y Estados Unidos, 1933-1959 (Madrid, 2011). His work at the Kluge Center has been dedicated to an English edition of this work.
Thursday, May 17 at 12:00 PM
Location: LJ 119, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington DC
For more information, contact the Kluge Center at (202) 707-3302.
Request ASL and ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.
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