When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Cuba famously entered the most difficult decade of its revolution since the 1960s (and until now). As access to oil and beneficial trading relationships closed and the United States doubled down on punitive economic policies, Cubans suffered through blackouts, malnutrition, and political turmoil that culminated in the rafter crisis of 1994; at the same time, the crises of the 1990s revealed the resiliency and creativity of a population that was used to adapting when necessary. Cuba’s so-called “Special Period in the Time of Peace” has recently begun to receive the historical attention it deserves. But what happened during the Special Period wasn’t just because of Cuba’s loss of an economic partner; the stark decline in available resources also exposed tensions, fault lines, and sometimes potential strengths that had been thrumming below the surface of Cuba’s relative stability in the 1980s. This panel sheds light on some of those tensions—reforms and internal debates, aggressively implemented new policies and quiet shifts in old policies—in the hopes of understanding better the conflicts that had exploded by the mid-1990s.

“Boys to (New) Men: Youth Reformatories & Urban Inequality in 1960s Havana” and “The Repeating Intervention: Cuban Troops in Angola, 1974-1989” take as their subjects Cuban men and boys. “Boys to (New) Men” explores the long history of juvenile punishment in revolutionary Cuba, connecting its origins even to the pre-revolutionary era. “The Repeating Intervention” looks at how waves of military intervention in Angola might have transformed Cuban soldiers’ solidarity with Africa and their own understanding of Cuba’s role as a Third World leader. “Experimenting with the Market: Cuba’s Agrarian Policy in the 1980s and 1990s” reveals that the experiments with a free market model that have come to define the Special Period in Cuba have an earlier history, while “Under the Eye: Cuban Experiences of Hurricanes and the Hurricane Response System, 1970-2018” locates Cuba’s innovative approach to climate change in general and hurricanes in particular has its roots in experimental policies developed in the 1980s.

This panel will be of interest to students of Cuban history and Latin American revolutions, as well as those interested in the seismic political shifts of the end of the twentieth century. Given Cuba’s current economic and political precarity, this panel also has much to offer those who might be wondering what might happen in Cuba in the very near future. “What the Special Period Exposed” identifies the historical foundations of the conflicts and innovations of the Cuban 1990s, connecting that surprising decade back to the (seemingly) more stable era of the Cuban Revolution.