Cuba After Fidel: Reflections on his Legacy Past, Present, and Future

The Center for Latin American Studies invites you to join us for a Public Presentation and Discussion on Cuba after the death of Fidel Castro. Screening of rare footage to follow.

12:30pm-1:45pm: CLAS Lecture: "Feeling like Fidel": Legacies, Memory & Official Amnesia in Today's Cuba with Lillian Guerra, Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History, University of Florida

For decades, Fidel Castro demanded self-surveillance and self-censorship from citizens as conduits for collective empowerment and national security in revolutionary Cuba. More than a slogan, the goal of "feeling like Fidel" for generations of Cubans became both a mandate of state pedagogy and a substitute for citizen control over government. Yet, when the Cuban state adopted capitalism in 1993, memories of fidelista  Communism's reliance on willful forms of self-repression became as taboo as citizens' efforts to resist them. Today, the greatest legacies of Fidel Castro may be found in the state’s losing battle against the unofficial, historically informed memory of citizens.​

2:15-4pm: Roundtable Discussion with Lillian Guerra, Katherine Gordy and Kym Morrison

4:15-5:15pm: Screening: Never-before-seen documentary footage of Cuban youth in the 1960s

Special thanks to our presenters:

Lillian Guerra, Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Florida

Katherine Gordy, Associate Professor of Political Science, San Francisco State University

Kym Morrison, Assistant Professor of History, San Francisco State University

and our Moderators:

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Director, Center for Latin American Studies

Mikael Wolfe, Assistant Professor, Department of History