ABSTRACT
Cuban studies and immigrant scholars are in debt to Irving Louis Horowitz. He was an early critic of some flaws of the revolution at a time when such criticism was virtually nonexistent and considered anathema by the left. His analysis contributed to the legitimization of the work of Cuban-American academics, which was then rejected outright as biased or inconsequent by uncritical supporters of the revolution: “Any analysis is suspect and scrutinized from the standpoint of the analyst instead of how well it explains the Cuban system” (Horowitz, 1975a). He also opened the door of Society and Studies in Comparative Development to Cuban-American scholars and praised our work, favorably contrasting it with that produced on the island and that of many U.S. and European intellectuals (Horowitz, 1975b, 1989a, 1993). Last but not least, part of Horowitz’s oeuvre has stood the passage of time; this is remarkable in view of the numerous zigzags of Cuban policy in thirty-five years and the radical transformation of the socialist world in the last quinquennium.
