Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses realistically and critically the past and present in United States (US)-Cuban relations in their full complexity and aims to develop a perspective on the evolution of the conflict and an inventory of forms of cooperation. It summarizes an interpretation of the evolution of the triangle involving US-Cuban relations and the southern part of the hemisphere. In the closing years of the Cold War, the conflicts in Central America and southwestern Africa became key problems between Cuba and the US Cuba’s relations with most of Central America had been bad since the 1960s. With the 1990 fall of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, Cuba lost its only regional ally at the time. As for the islands of the Caribbean, at the start of the final decade of the twentieth century, Cuba had no diplomatic relations with Haiti or the Dominican Republic.