Cuban Landscapes Heritage, Memory, and Place

This accessible book offers a vivid geographic portrait of Cuba, exploring the island’s streetscapes, sugar cane fields, beaches, and rural settlements; its billboards, government buildings, and national landmarks. The authors illuminate how natural and built landscapes have shaped Cuban identity (cubanidad), and vice versa. They provide a unique perspective on Cuba’s distinct historical periods and political economies, from the colonial period through republicanism and today’s socialist era. Compelling topics include the legacies of slavery and the sugar industry, the past and future of urban development, and the impact of “islandness” on sociocultural processes.

Joseph L. Scarpaci is a broadly trained human geographer who has taught in public health, geography, urban studies, and planning programs at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, Rutgers University, the University of Iowa, Virginia Tech, and Virginia Military Institute. He is currently Professor of Marketing in the Department of Economics and Business at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Dr. Scarpaci has been conducting research in Cuba since 1990 and is the author of Plazas and Barrios (University of Arizona Press, 2005) and coauthor, with architects Mario Coyula and Roberto Segre, of the Choice Award-winning book Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

Armando H. Portela is a physical geographer who worked for 23 years in the Institute of Geography of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. He coauthored the section “Geomorphology (Relief)” in the Nuevo Atlas Nacional de Cuba (Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, 1989) and produced a number of geomorphologic maps of the island. He currently works at the Miami Herald and freelances for the newsletter CubaNews, where he regularly publishes on geographical issues of the island.  

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