Cuban National Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion: Mem­ory, Truth, and Justice

June 10, 2003 - 5:00 PM

Pan­elist:

  • Mar­ifeli Perez-Stable
    Florida Inter­na­tional University
  • Elz­bi­eta Maty­nia
    Tran­sre­gional Cen­ter for Demo­c­ra­tic Studies

Mod­er­a­tor:

  • Mauri­cio Font
    Direc­tor Bild­ner Cen­ter for West­ern Hemi­sphere Studies

Mar­ifeli Pérez-Stable is a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Soci­ol­ogy and Anthro­pol­ogy at Florida Inter­na­tional Uni­ver­sity in Miami. In fall 2003, she will be a fel­low at the Kel­logg Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame. She is the author of The Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion: Ori­gins, Course and Legacy (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1993; 2nd edi­tion 1999); a Spanish-language edi­tion was pub­lished by Edi­to­r­ial Col­i­brí (Madrid, 1998). Her work in progress, “Cuba’s Long Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury (1868–2002),” pro­poses a polit­i­cal rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Cuban his­tory. Dr. Pérez-Stable chaired the Task Force “Mem­ory, Truth, and Jus­tice,” which issued the report, Cuban National Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Her talk will address the report’s main themes and rec­om­men­da­tions: the imper­a­tive of a demo­c­ra­tic Cuba for full national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; the need to begin rein­te­grat­ing dis­parate his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ries; and the pur­suit of dia­logue among all Cubans to the extent pos­si­ble. Estab­lish­ing the truth about human rights vio­la­tions by the Cuban gov­ern­ment, abuses by the armed oppo­si­tion in Cuba and in exile, and the actions of the United States in Cuba is essen­tial. The report con­cludes out­lin­ing four aspects of national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion: indi­vid­ual; fam­ily, dias­pora; and political.

See http://memoria.fiu.edu for the full report in Span­ish and Eng­lish. English-language copies will be avail­able the day of the presentation.

Elz­bi­eta Maty­nia is a soci­ol­o­gist whose major fields are intel­lec­tual his­tory, polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, and the soci­ol­ogy of cul­ture. Since 1986 she teaches at the Grad­u­ate Fac­ulty where she is also the Direc­tor of the Tran­sre­gional Cen­ter for Demo­c­ra­tic Stud­ies. Her works include a book of essays enti­tled “Grap­pling with Democ­racy: Delib­er­a­tions on Post-Communist Soci­eties”, 1990–1995; “Find­ing a Voice: Women in Post-Communist Cen­tral Europe”, in The Chal­lenges of Local Fem­i­nisms: Women’s Move­ments in Global Per­spec­tive (West­view Press, 1995), “Fur­nish­ing Democ­racy”, in East­ern Euro­pean Pol­i­tics and Soci­ety, 2000, and other writ­ings on soci­ety, cul­ture, and pol­i­tics which appeared in vari­ety of schol­arly jour­nals in Amer­ica and Europe.