Graduate Student Highlight: Hélio A. de Souza Alves on Reforms, Reversals and Contradictions in Cuba during the Late Twentieth Century
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Caribbean History, working under Dr. Lillian Guerra. My dissertation explores the policy shifts and ideological contradictions of the Cuban Revolution between the 1970s and the 1990s—an era long overshadowed by scholarship that has disproportionately focused on the first decade of the revolution. I argue that a new stage in the revolution began in the 1970s, marked by shifting relations with both the citizenry and the exile community. Drawing on concepts such as Reinhart Koselleck’s “space of experience” and “horizon of expectations,” I examine how Cubans perceived, navigated and responded to these transformations, as well as the futures they envisioned within them.
Since my M.A. at the São Paulo State University, my scholarly engagement with Revolutionary Cuba has led me to research in archives across Brazil, Cuba and the United States. I am currently in residence at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) on a two-month archival research fellowship supported by the Goizueta Foundation. Holding a pre-prospectus fellowship at the CHC during my first year of doctoral study at UF proved essential to familiarizing myself with the collections and the experience has directly informed my current, deeper engagement with the archive.
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Caribbean History, working under Dr. Lillian Guerra. My dissertation explores the policy shifts and ideological contradictions of the Cuban Revolution between the 1970s and the 1990s—an era long overshadowed by scholarship that has disproportionately focused on the first decade of the revolution. I argue that a new stage in the revolution began in the 1970s, marked by shifting relations with both the citizenry and the exile community. Drawing on concepts such as Reinhart Koselleck’s “space of experience” and “horizon of expectations,” I examine how Cubans perceived, navigated and responded to these transformations, as well as the futures they envisioned within them.
Since my M.A. at the São Paulo State University, my scholarly engagement with Revolutionary Cuba has led me to research in archives across Brazil, Cuba and the United States. I am currently in residence at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) on a two-month archival research fellowship supported by the Goizueta Foundation. Holding a pre-prospectus fellowship at the CHC during my first year of doctoral study at UF proved essential to familiarizing myself with the collections and the experience has directly informed my current, deeper engagement with the archive.