Cuban Studies Institute

A body created in 1961 by merging the Partido Socialista Popular, the Movimiento Veintiseis de Julio and the Directorio Revolucionario.  The objective was to unify these major anti-Batista groups into a united party controlled by Fidel Castro and Raul.  It was directed by old-time Communist Aníbal Escalante.  In 1963 the ORI was transformed into the Partido Unido de la Revolución […]

FREEMASONRY.  Rationalism, in the form of Freemasonry, was a legacy of the British occupation of 1763 and was reinforced by the arrival of French masons fleeing Haiti, until many of these were expelled following the Napoleonic intervention in Spain.  When Cubans learnt in March 1820 of restoration of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, Cuba’s four lodges led

BOHEMIA.  An illustrated magazine, founded by Miguel Ángel Quevedo in Havana in 1908, which became Cuba’s most influential weekly.  In the 1940s and 1950s, when it was a consistent critic of Fulgencio Batista, this “revista enciclopédica” had a 200,000 circulation.  During the struggle to overthrow Batista, it portrayed Fidel Castro as a true Cuban hero in the model of

Orígenes, A “Revista de arte y literatura” founded by José Lezama Lima, which published the major literary figures of the post-World War II era in its 40 issues between 1944 and 1957, a record length of uninterrupted publication for a Cuban literary magazine.  Its circulation and quality made its associates, particularly the poets, the most important

Under the Constitutions of 1976, the “National Assembly of the People’s Power” was called into session for its first meeting as the new legislature under speaker Blas Roca on December 2, 1976.  Headed by a speaker (presidente), deputy speaker (vicepresidente), and a secretary, it has one national deputy (elected for a five-year term) for every

The National Association of Small Farmers is led by a member of the Central Committee of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC).  Its c180,000 members are independent farmers outside the system of state and collective farms.  Their farms constitute about 20% of Cuba’s total cultivated land.  They concentrate mainly on such specialized crops as tobacco,