Guest Lecture By Dr. Ernesto Dominguez Lopez: In the Eye of Geopolitical Storms

The relationship between the United States and Cuba is a centuries-old, complex reality that evolves while deeply intertwined with power games between major actors in the once emerging and then changing international system. It cannot be understood outside that framework, as much as the power structures in the Great Caribbean basin and the entire hemisphere are deeply impacted by it. The Cuban revolution of 1959 generated massive changes, both in the island´s domestic reality and the regional, even global, political dynamics. The US´ government and power elites reacted in consequence and produced a State policy oriented to the reversal of the revolution and the reconstruction of their prior influence and hegemony, structured around a core of long-standing axes. Cuban politics, foreign policy, economy, society and culture have been profoundly impacted by the ensuing conflict. The history of the country and the region, and in part the political history of the United States itself, has been driven by the flow, meanders and turning points of that conflict as inserted in much broader geopolitical processes as the traditional Cold War, the so called unipolar world of the 1990s, the transformations in Latin America and the shifting sands of a hegemonic transition in the world-system.

Full Professor, Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies, University of Havana (Cuba)
Honorary Visiting Professor, University of Buckingham (United Kingdom)
Visiting Professor, University of Sancti Spiritus (Cuba)
PhD in Historical Sciences (2011) from the University of Havana, Doctoral Candidate in Political Sciences at the University of Rostock (Germany).

Visiting professor, visiting scholar and visiting lecturer at several universities and academic institutions in Cuba, United States, Colombia, Argentina, France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Greece and Germany. Dominguez Lopez has authored, co-authored and edited books, academic articles and book chapters published in Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, the United States, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and France. His research interests include the study of knowledge capitalism, US political system and processes, Cuba-US relations, international relations, political theory and theory of history. He has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses on subjects like Cuban history, Cuban foreign policy, Cuba-US relations, research methodology in social sciences, research methodology in non-linear systems, contemporary history, political economy, political sciences, US politics, international migrations, history of social sciences, history of systems of thinking, and theory of history.