Cuba the Morning After: Normalization and Its Discontents

The author challenges both assumptions in Cuba the Morning After, a major study of U.S.-Cuban relations. He suggests that this island is mired in history and fantasy―in thrall to an economic and social system that does not work and cannot work. Communism has shattered a once-rich civil society, one that cannot be rapidly reconstructed, particularly in the absence of a small-business class and a freer access to organized political activity. Fear of the future, declining demographies, a culture of dependency, and a tendency to opt out for emigration to the United States add to the mixture.

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, where he writes the monthly Latin America Outlook newsletter. He has taught at the Universities of Illinois, Oregon, and California at Los Angeles, as well as the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. He has served as a professional staff member on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a senior consultant to the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, and a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-Cuban Relations. Mr. Falcoff is editor of The Cuban Revolution and the United States, 1958-1960: A History in Documents (2001) and author of numerous books, including A Culture of Its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously (1998) and Panama's Canal: What Happens When the United States Gives a Small Country What It Wants (1998). He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.