ABSTRACT
When I was asked to make a contribution to a festschrift for Irving Horowitz’s sixty-fifth birthday, I felt honored and happy. It gave me the opportunity of expressing my gratitude to him, first, as a Cuban American for his dedication to Cuba, and second, as an individual who has enjoyed his friendship and generous encouragement to do research on Cuba. At the same time I felt overwhelmed, because I don’t know of any non-Cuban who has made a more prolific contribution to scholarly work on Cuba. His published work over the last thirty years, written from the perspective of a sociologist, covers many dimensions of Cuban life and contemporary history.
