In the years since Raúl Castro took office as president following Fidel Castro's illness and retirement, Cuba has embarked on four major transitions almost simultaneously: a restructuring of elite decision-making; a transformation of Cuba's centrally-planned economy into a market socialist economy; a relaxation of tight social control, providing greater social autonomy for civil society and even a degree of political decompression; and, a transition from the founding generation of the political elite (los históricos) to a successor generation, when neither Castro will hold power. Each of these processes by itself entails political risk; unfolding together, they constitute the greatest political challenge the Cuban regime has faced since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Washington's challenge during George W. Bush's presidency was to define a new relationship with Latin America beyond free trade and neoliberal economics – a relationship responsive to the region's demand for social and economic justice. Preoccupied by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration failed this challenge. The president left his Latin American policy in the hands of conservative cold warriors who reacted with hostility to the election of ‘new left’ socialists and populists. As a result, Washington's reputation and relations in Latin America deteriorated dramatically.

Democracy Delayed: The Case of Castro's Cuba. By Juan J. López. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 272p. $42.50.

When the Berlin wall came down, many Cuban-Americans eagerly anticipated the imminent fall of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. “Next Christmas in Havana,” read the bumper stickers in Miami. But most scholars studying Cuba doubted that Castro would be so easily dislodged. They cited manifest differences between Cuban and European communism: Cuba had an authentic revolution that began with broad support, whereas communism arrived in most of Eastern Europe in the rucksack of the Red Army. Cuban nationalism bolstered the legitimacy of a government in conflict with the United States, whereas European nationalism corroded the legitimacy of regimes beholden to Soviet Russia. The standard of living in communist Europe paled in comparison to that of the West, whereas Cuban conditions compared favorably to much of Latin America and the Caribbean. European communist regimes were led by colorless bureaucrats who had long since lost faith in their own ideology, whereas Cuba was still led by the charismatic Fidel Castro and the generation that made the revolution.

Since the colonial era Cuba has been the paradigmatic case of a monocultural export economy, dependent upon the production of one primary commodity – sugar – for sale to one principal trade partner. Overcoming dependency was a high priority for Fidel Castro in 1959, yet despite a promising start, his efforts proved ultimately unsuccessful. Only the collapse of communism in Europe freed Cuba from dependent trade relations with the Soviet Union – albeit at the cost of enormous economic disruption. This article examines Cuba's post-1959 pursuit of economic independence, first to explain why the government's initial successes proved unsustainable in the 1980s, and then to examine Cuba's attempt to reinsert its economy into the global market in the aftermath of the Cold War.