Alexander Scott speaks with rural sociologist Andrew Smolski about U.S. imperialism and the long history of empire in Cuban development. Drawing on Smolski's archival research and his work on Cuban agriculture, the conversation traces how imperialism has shaped Cuba's capacity to develop across five centuries — from Spanish colonialism, the Haitian Revolution, and the rise of the sugar-slavery complex, through U.S. occupation and the Platt Amendment era, to a blockade now in its seventh decade — and asks what it would mean for development research to treat imperialism as a condition of development rather than mere background.

Andrew Smolski is an assistant professor of rural sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at The Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the Latin American Perspectives editorial collective.

Further reading from our guest:

"Interrogating Structural Conditions for Agricultural Production: A Comparative-Historical Study of Cuban Incorporation, Delinking, and Exile," Journal of World-Systems Research 28(2), 2022 (open access):
https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/1117

The Agrarian Question as an Ecological Question in Latin America, special issue of Latin American Perspectives (January 2024), co-edited with Daniela García Grandón and Joana Salém Vasconcelos:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0094582X241252111

Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America, special issue of Latin American Perspectives (January 2021), co-edited with Matthew Lorenzen:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20975005

"Class Struggle and Violence in Latin American Cities," Latin American Perspectives 48(1):
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0094582X19860470

For more information about Latin American Perspectives, our podcasts, and guests, please contact lap.outreach@gmail.com.

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