Suchergebnisse

"Aus historischer Perspektive lässt sich die Karibik nicht nur als Teil einer Atlantischen, sondern darüber hinaus einer globalen Welt verstehen. Im Zuge der kolonialen Expansion zirkulierten zwischen den als East und West Indies bezeichneten Regionen, Güter, Menschen und Ideen. Im 19, Jahrhundert war Kuba ein Knotenpunkt innerhalb der so entstandenen Netzwerke, und die kubanische Zigarre etablierte sich als globales Luxusprodukt. In vielen Teilen der Welt begehrt und nachgeahmt, wurde EI Habano zu einem mythenumgebenen Herzstück transnationaler Produktions- und Handlungsprozesse: industrielles und agrikulturelles Wissen, Saatgut sowie menschliche Arbeitskräfte wanderten zwischen den verschiedenen Regionen umher. Der Artikel verfolgt die grenzüberschreitenden Wege und Mythen von EI Habano vom 19. bis ins 21. Jahrhundert und nimmt verschiedenen Stätten der Produktion in Kuba, Florida, Connecticut sowie Indonesien in den Blick." (Autorenreferat)

Review of:An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. Ruth Behar, photographs by Humberto Mayol. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. xiii + 297 pp. (Cloth US$ 29.95)Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. Fidel Castro & Ignacio Ramonet. New York: Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2008. vii + 724 pp. (Paper US$ 22.00, e-book US$ 14.99)Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Julia E. Sweig. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. xiv + 279 pp. (Paper US$ 16.95)[First paragraph]These three ostensibly very different books tell a compelling story of each author's approach, as much as the subject matter itself. Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography is based on a series of long interviews granted by the then-president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, to Spanish-Franco journalist Ignacio Ramonet. Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, by U.S. political analyst Julia Sweig, is one of a set country series, and, like Ramonet's, presented in question/answer format. An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, with a narrative by Cuban-American anthropologist Ruth Behar and photographs by Cuban photographer Humberto Mayol, is a retrospective/introspective account of the Jewish presence in Cuba. While from Ramonet and Sweig we learn much about the revolutionary project, Behar and Mayol convey the lived experience of the small Jewish community against that backdrop.

In the half century since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, El Habano remains the premium cigar the world over; but both before and since 1959, the seed, agricultural and industrial know-how, and human capital have been transplanted to replicate that cigar in a process accentuated by upheavals and out-migration. The focus here is on a little-known facet of the interconnected island and offshore Havana cigar history, linking Cuba with Connecticut and Indonesia: from when tobacco was taken from the Americas to Indonesia and gave rise to the famed Sumatra cigar wrapper leaf; through the rise and demise of its sister shade wrapper in Connecticut, with Cuban and Sumatra seed, ultimately overshadowed by Indonesia; and the resulting challenges facing Cuba today. The article highlights the role of Dutch, U.S., British, and Swedish capital to explain why in 2009 the two major global cigar corporations, British Imperial Tobacco and Swedish Match, were lobbying Washington, respectively, for and against the embargo on Cuba. As the antismoking, antitobacco lobby gains ground internationally, the intriguing final question is whether the future lies with El Habano or smokeless Swedish snus. (Cuba Stud/GIGA)