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Cuba

A vintage car driver waits for tourists after Hurricane Irma caused flooding and a blackout, in Havana, Cuba September 12, 2017

U.S. trade embargo has cost Cuba $130 billion, U.N. says

By News & Current Affairs

HAVANA (Reuters) – A United Nations agency said on Tuesday an “unjust” U.S. financial and trade embargo on Cuba had cost the country’s economy $130 billion over nearly six decades, coming up with the same estimate as the island’s communist government. Although many U.S. allies join Washington in criticizing Cuba’s one-party system and repression of political opponents, the United States has lost nearly all international support for the embargo since…

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Eluard Luchell McDaniels, Spanish Civil. War Volunteer, Batea, Spain, May 1938. Image Courtesy of the Tamiment Library, New York University

African American Anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War

By Editors' Choice

Anti-fascist volunteer Canute Frankson explained his motivation in a letter home in 1937: “We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim crow trains, no lynching. That is why, my dear, I’m here in Spain.” By Peter Carroll, BlackPast.org — Approximately 90 African Americans fought in Spain during the civil war that engulfed that nation between 1936 and 1939.…

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Paying homage to Fidel Castro at Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana in 2016

In Cuba’s Change of Leadership, More Black Officials in Power

By Editors' Choice

By Frances Robles and Azam Ahmeda — As the departing Cuban president, Raúl Castro, tells it, even too many of the radio and television newscasters in Cuba are white. It “was not easy” getting the few black broadcasters now on the air hired, Mr. Castro said in his retirement speech Thursday, a remarkable admission considering the state controls all the stations. So it was all the more extraordinary to see…

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Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, left, with predecessor and patron Raul Castro in Havana on April 19, 2018.

Cuba’s New President Vows to Defend Socialist Revolution

By News & Current Affairs

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the new period would be characterized by “modernization of the economic and social model.” Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, began his term on Thursday with a promise to defend the socialist revolution led by the Castro brothers since 1959, giving a sober speech that also emphasized the need to modernize the island’s economy. A stalwart of the ruling Communist Party, Diaz-Canel was sworn in to replace…

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Cuba's First Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel listens to Vietnam's Communist Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong at University of Havana.

Who Is Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba’s New President?

By Commentaries/Opinions

Cuban National Assembly elected Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez to succeed Raul Castro as country’s head of state. By teleSUR— The Cuban National Assembly elected Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, a 57-year-old Cuban born two years after the island’s socialist revolution, as the country’s new head of the Council of State and therefore the president of the Caribbean country. During his speech after he was sworn-in, Diaz-Canel vowed to be faithful to the legacy of late Cuban President Fidel Castro and…

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Cuba After Irma: a Call to Our Combative People

Cuba After Irma: a Call to Our Combative People

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Raul Castro — Hurricane Irma, with its destructive power, battered our island for 72 hours, beginning the morning of September 8 until this Sunday afternoon. With winds that surpassed 250 kilometers per hour on occasion, it crossed the north of the country from Baracoa – hit hard by another phenomenon of this type almost a year ago – to the outskirts of Cárdenas. However, given its immense size, practically no province was spared its effects.

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