Reshaping the State. Cuba from Rectificación to Período Especial

Abstract

The crisis of comunism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the accompanying shock waves felt in Cuba starting in 1991, intensified internal divisions within the regime. This article has a two-fold purpose. First, it seeks to present and assess critically the changes that tooke place in Cuban society, economy, politics, and culture as Cuba emerged from the rectificación and the crisis of the 1990s. Second, it analyzes the Constitution of 1992 commected with the new dynamic between state and society that is shaped by the characteristics of Cuba’s national history, as well as the interactions between exogenous and endogenous factors during the “Special Period”.