Historian of Cuba. LatAm & Caribbean History PhD Candidate @UWMadison. Bylines: @thenation @DissentMag I’m andrespertierra.bsky.social on BlueSky
Joined September 2013
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5 May 2025
Proud to have my latest in @DissentMag’s Spring issue, going live today
I go over the causes and consequences of the current crisis in Cuba
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In Cuba I got lots of reading every week combined with lots of lectures (often good ones!) interspersed with professor led seminar classes to make sure we were keeping up with readings.
Lectures gave undergrads a framework, readings gave their understanding texture/dimension
In general, US profs assign far more pages of readings than European profs. When I taught in France undergrads relied much more on lectures than reading assignments—40 pages of assigned reading was normal. Assigning lots of reading works if the students read it but often it shows that profs are insecure of their ability to get through a 90 minute class on their own if necessary.
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 12
Eating in Mexico coming from England or Scotland has got to be a transcendent experience. Like seeing colors for the first time
THAT WAS THE BEST FOOD IVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE OMG 😭😭😭
VAMOSSS CHICHARRONNN! 😍
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Between 1949 and 1961, when the Berlin Wall went up, up to 2.7 million people fled the GDR
For context, in 1950 it had an official population of 18.3 million and would have only 16 million four decades later in 1990
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Honestly, and there may already be a study on this, but I think this explains Cuban 1980s a lot too. 1980 Mariel crisis showed mass discontent with quality of life on the island after two decades of precarity.
Gov spends 80s subsidizing consumption, often via debt
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Despite powerful combo of huge Soviet subsidies and large amounts of debt to western lenders incurred in early 1980s, Cuban economic growth was slow and much of spending went to consumption rather than investment, to the frustration of the Soviet Union
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Jun 13
Top 21% on first try, let's gooooo
Jun 12
i feel very obligated to let all the nerds know that there is a free game like geoguesser where you guess the location of origin and time period for art and historical artifacts. really high level:
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Jun 13
I never understood the attraction of geoguesser, though I was always impressed by RainBolt et al being so good at it, but this is exactly my jam
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 12
As a teen, Keiko Fujimori was first lady to her father, Alberto, an iron-fisted ruler eventually imprisoned for extrajudicial killings.
Now, she's following him into Peru’s presidency as the latest right-winger to win power in Latin America.
wsj.com/world/americas/the-d… via @WSJ
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 12
FINALLY museums giving the people what they want: reproductions of the artifacts
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 12
Esto escribí no hace mucho: Acoso judicial contra una académica en Cuba - La Razón de México razon.com.mx/opinion/2023/11…
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Of reforms #Cuba announced yesterday, what matters to #Cubans? 1. land for agriculture, allowing farmers to access supplies & foreign currency. 2. Seeking foreign investors to expand the use of renewable energy & imports of e-cars 3. Trash collection by foreign investors
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Jun 13
Something that would make a fun Cuban history post-1959 course idea is a memoir or travelogue a week for 14 weeks, from a variety of perspectives, combined with assignments focused on fact checking and challenging their premises
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Jun 13
The point isn’t to bothsides the issues but to have important authors (Cubans, foreigners) from many perspectives (communist, liberal, anti-communist conservatives, etc) and just have folks practice sussing out gaps in their (often sincere) very different narratives
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Jun 13
The point of the course is not to force people into a specific conclusion either
It’s to teach methods first and foremost, expose them to largely sincere but totally divergent readings of the same reality, and get them to think about how similar dynamics play out elsewhere
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 13
BREAKING: Venezuela has confirmed the death of the leader of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang founded in Venezuela, during a "joint operation" with the United States.
Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias 'Nino Guerrero,' has been "neutralized," authorities said.
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Jun 12
It seems like degrowth has three main problems:
-it's a political non-starter to even try to enact
-even if it was enacted as policy it would create such a political backlash it would destroy the party that tried
-it would not actually fix the need for $$$ for climate remediation
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the prof who spends all their free time playing video games def exists but it’s 1) far from everyone and 2) in part the result of burnout/need for a break from being deep in academic lit a lot among other things
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I’ve noticed that my friends who are already TT professors/on track to be tend to have pretty “lowbrow” habits, as in watch reality TV and play Nintendo and don’t read many novels, while my friends with good taste are largely half-employed and cursed to wander the earth
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Andrés Pertierra retweeted
Jun 12
NEW: China arrested a US citizen after Trump met with Xi in Beijing and accused him of endangering national security — a rare charge against an American. The detainee, U Min Zin, is a grad student at @UCBerkeley who researches Myanmar. This adds a new strain to US-China ties.
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