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Andrés Pertierra Profile picture
Andrés Pertierra
@ASPertierra
Historian of Cuba. LatAm & Caribbean History PhD Candidate @UWMadison. Bylines: @thenation @DissentMag I’m https://t.co/sn3zTPW2lK on BlueSky
May 20 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Increasingly feels like we're entering into a new 'post-literate' society Image From here:

reddit.com/r/chicago/comm…
Oct 14, 2024 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
Since it’s Indigenous People’s Day, here’s a short thread on what we know, what we popularly assume, and what we don’t have any way to know about the indigenous Caribbean before Columbus, and in particular the people known as the Taíno 🧵 Image 1) the term Taino isn’t what these people called themselves. Indeed, it isn’t even clear there’s a coherent label they would have recognized as applying to all the peoples we call Taino. Instead it’s a term used by late modern academics for a broad culture or civilization
Apr 29, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The more I read about Cortes and Pizarro successfully toppling the Aztecs and Inca, the more it makes sense in certain aspects (lots of native allies, disease often helping destabilize native societies, etc) while still being incredible in others (lots of luck, stubbornness, etc) Cortes wasn’t even supposed to lead this massive conquest of the Aztecs. He did a mini-coup as soon as he arrived and took charge of Diego Velazquez’s expeditionary force, of which he was a member. He then beat Velazquez’s force meant to bring him to heel. He also found allies
Mar 9, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The argument that “the gold stolen from the Americas is all around you, in the cities, doors, cathedrals, hospitals, and universities” has a couple of problems, but one of the biggest is that the real answer is much of it was spent either in wars or to pay off foreign bankers This is true even as far back as the capture of the Incan emperor, whose ransom paid for the invasion of Tunisia under Charles v. Not invested
Mar 2, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Finally got internet on my phone now that I’m in Cuba.

Trying to not use it up too quick so just popping in for a bit

Country is at the lowest point that I’ve ever seen. It was bad when I visited two years ago but much worse now. Econ crisis is devastating The rise of barter because of the collapsing value of the peso due to hyperinflation is something that makes total sense but is absolutely wild to see given the relative stability of the peso in the late 00s and most of the 2010s

Peso dropping from week to week.
Feb 3, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
“To these people who say democracy is being dismantled, my answer is yes - we are not dismantling it, we are eliminating it, we are replacing it with something new”

More than a little worrying that the Vice Presidential candidate of a country is just openly declaring this
Image On the back of wide popular support, tyrants can start off seeming like they’re the solution because they can just take draconian measures that ignore laws and can override established interests who’d normally slow down or veto reforms.

Problems come as they entrench themselves
Oct 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Cuba only had a population of 11.2 million in 2021, meaning that almost 4% of the entire population of Cuba has emigrated *just* to the US and *just* in the past two years

Given that many migrants will be young, working & childbearing age this has massive implications for Cuba Keeping in mind that Cuban migrant outflows are heading to Europe, to Latin America, to Asia, and even to Russia as mercs as the recent scandal showed, the total number of Cuban emigration over the past few years is going to be staggering whenever it comes to light
Jun 3, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Latino isn’t a race, it’s a broad cultural identity that includes white people. LatAm also has centuries of explicitly white supremacist laws & policies

Also this isn’t some rando Op-Ed, Geraldo Cadava is a historian of right wing Latinos in the US. This is literally his beat Like the US during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, countries like Cuba, Argentina, & Brazil all had major programs to encourage specifically white immigration to whiten their pops, and even those that failed used Japanese immigration to ‘improve’ their pops
May 31, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The Aztec practice of human sacrifice (terrible as it was) wasn’t why the Spanish invaded Mexico, destroyed Tenochtitlan, forced them into vassalage to the king of Spain & enslaved thousands upon thousands of natives

This is a retroactive justification for wanting money & power It’s similar to how the practice of enslaving natives in the Caribbean under various pretexts became easier as a way to replace the labor force that kept dying off in Spanish controlled territory, to scare natives off from rebellion, & justify raids vs threats to Spanish rule
May 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is a cool game concept and I hope the game is actually fun/engaging

Already calling that the discourse around it is going to be insufferable though Points here Re: art design already seem like a bad sign but it’s not set to come out for another two years so I’d be happy to see it addressed by then
Mar 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
He deleted it but Bevins is correct here, both generally and in the specific case of the Cold War.

It’s a mistake to see ideology as just a purely cynical cover when the whole purpose of an ideology is to smooth over contradictions and justify/cover up self-interest Image This is the one of the core arguments of Odd Arne Westad’s recent book on the Cold War, based on years of archival work around the globe.

Contrary to accusations during the conflict that the other side was merely using ideology as a thin veneer, both sides were largely sincere Image
Mar 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“The Chilean dictatorship [of August Pinochet] taught us, in brutal form, the risks of relativizing democracy and human rights. And we learned that never, and under no circumstances or pretexts, should that be permitted.” - Boric critiquing Nicaragua

elpais.com/america/cumbre… Boric is more clear eyed on Nicaragua, imho, in no small part because he lacks major political or economic incentives to do otherwise (Chile isn’t deeply tied to Nicaragua) and because it benefits him politically to differentiate himself from Ortega et al. But he’s also right.
Mar 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The more you dig into Cuba’s dependence on the USSR in 1990 the more incredible it is that the country didn’t completely collapse post-91

Despite extremely generous terms of trade for sugar and oil, a de facto form of subsidy, Cuba was $24.6 billion US in debt to the USSR by ‘90 Image Even the relatively prosperous 1980s, a growth period compared to the 60s and 70s, was built on major subsidies and massive amounts of debt. The entire economic model was built and sustained on soviet aid.
Nov 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's weird to see criticisms of Prof Bustamante's Hypermedia piece since it seemed not just fair but pretty basic and grounded.

A lot of Cuba discourse is so polarized that basic points get framed as polemical talking points when they're not just true, they're important The embargo, by design, hurts the Cuban population. This is what it was designed to do. There are carveouts for food now (good! though incomplete and full of caveats) and individual sanctions on specific figures, but the broad spectrum sanctions are meant to hurt the whole econ
Nov 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Next read for the dissertation: Why Dominant Parties Lose: ... The basic argument is that the structural crisis of the PRI makes it less able to effectively put its finger on the scale in elections like it used to (significant material advantages to incumbents) and already existing hitherto small scale opposition orgs capitalized on crisis
Nov 6, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Last month was the biggest month so far for my Cuban history podcast, @OrigenesPodcast, so I want to thank everyone for listening/sharing it. It was something I wanted to do for years and seeing it develop a niche but dedicated audience has been really nice.

Thank you! @OrigenesPodcast The podcast's episodes have come out pretty slow, because I've been doing it while in grad school, because I tend to over research, and because the pre-colonial era isn't my specialization. A lot of folks who have gotten bored and moved on but c. 1k didn't. Really grateful.
Oct 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's been really encouraging to see how even parts of the political center in Brazil are backing Lula vs Bolsonaro.

In addition to the dangers of Bolsonaro, as a far-right loose cannon, I also wonder whether Lula is benefiting from his track record of respecting the laws/norms Lula was extremely popular in office but didn't try to indefinitely remain in power.

While Bolsonaro is campaigning against Lula as if he's going to declare a socialist republic, this accusation falls flat given his and his party's track record
Oct 4, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Today’s read, for the theory section, since the concept of civil society has become relevant to the new project Image I read his better known book, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a civilization, for seminar and it was super interesting, so I’m going in excited to see what he makes of the concept, its limits, etc Image
Oct 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I think it's right to push back against attempts to frame every single protest over blackouts in Cuba as maximalist protesters calling for the overthrow of the gov, but I think this overcorrects by a lot.

People taking to the streets to demand change *is inherently* political. People going into the street in a direct action, sometimes blocking major streets and roads, and refusing to budge until their demands are met is an essentially political act. We would treat it as such here in the US and it is definitely one in Cuba too.
Oct 3, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
As today draws to a close, it definitely seems like the latest protest wave in Cuba, centered on Havana, is receding. The peak was between the 29th-1st with far fewer protests by the 2nd.

Restoring power in most of the capital seems to have defused the mounting pressure. It's definitely the biggest protest wave we've seen since J11 last year, but is very different from it in key ways.

Most obviously, J11 was a national wave, this was mostly protests centered on Havana, which is still a big deal but not a nationwide explosion like last year.
Oct 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It feels a bit surreal that as protests pop off in Cuba news orgs are turning to people who haven't set foot in Cuba since 1971

No aid to Cuba unless it's done through the Catholic Church, evangelical churches, freemasons (!?), or dissident orgs is the same as saying 'no aid' ah, cool cool, he was also part of Alfa 66, a notorious far right Cuban exile paramilitary org based out of Florida