Cuba and Circum-Caribbean

It is often remarked that New Orleans is the northernmost Caribbean city. Historically serving as a major access point for French and Spanish colonial enterprises into North America, New Orleans is connected to the greater Caribbean region through shared migration patterns, artistic and linguistic traditions, travel and tourism-based economies, and food heritage pathways. A vibrant array of creole/s and mixed languages are spoken across New Orleans and the Caribbean and a robust network of cultural practices—such as Mardi Gras and Carnival—further bridge the two regions. New Orleans was a key port in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and remains connected to other sites along this route through shared histories of colonialism, enslavement, resource extraction, organized resistance, and maroonage strategies.¹

A shared set of climate concerns and environmental precarities, too, links the trajectories and socio-cultural formations of New Orleans and the Caribbean; hurricanes, humidity, and heat shape the patterns of everyday life in both settings. Archipelagic in nature, the Caribbean lends itself easily to diasporic understandings of identity. Unbound by land-based models of national formation, New Orleans and the Caribbean are linked through ties to water – as a surrounding feature, as a life-force, and as a destructive element. In countless traceable ways, it is New Orleans’ close proximity to the Caribbean which distinguish it as a wholly unique city. Situated within New Orleans, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University has distinguished itself, over the last century, as an energetic meeting point for Circum-Caribbean research, publications, programs, and activities. 

“We always have those conversations at Tulane. And that was the other thing that made sort of kind of cool sense to me. The other thing that was that’s been really fun for me here is that Stone Center students I have had consistently – over a quarter century now – Stone Center graduate students are the one thing in my Tulane career that hasn’t changed, that you always have students that come from a variety of perspectives and interests into the Stone Center environment that turn up in Caribbean studies classes or in Black studies classes because of that region-wide thinking that the Stone Center nurtures. 

[…] 

I think the thing that for the Stone Center, and I’d be super interested in how the Center looks at this, there’s been a lot more conversation in the city about its relationship to the Caribbean –in significant part because of the huge post-revolution, post-Haitian Revolution migration here, that transform of the city. But that public conversation about New Orleans ties to the Caribbean has been the, sort of the I think the intellectual local shift that’s been most dramatic to me.” 

– Rosanne Adderley

Caribbean Studies at Tulane – the early years (pre-1980s) 

From its inception, Latin American Studies at Tulane has held a specific interest in the Caribbean region. Established as a medical school in 1834, Tulane’s founders were primarily concerned with then-prevalent “peculiar diseases” such as cholera, yellow fever, malaria, and other parasitic infections. Tulane headed the first-ever “Cuban Yellow Fever Commission,” where the malaria parasite was propagated for the very first time in a laboratory setting.

As early as 1947, plans developed around a Carnegie Corporation-funded grant for a “cooperative program in the field of Latin American Studies,” set to be conducted by four universities – University of Texas, University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, and Tulane University – each of which would “agree to continue to stress its established area of interest and fields of study.” Tulane’s designated areas of study under the foundational Carnegie Corporation grant were Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (then-identified as the “West Indies.”)

By the 1950s, Tulane was considered to be a leading voice on Caribbean Studies. Latin American Studies-affiliated faculty frequently participated in regional conferences on the Caribbean.

During the 1960s, Tulane’s Howard-Tilton Memorial Library conducted an active acquisition policy – a central goal of the Carnegie Corporation grant. As part of the grant, Latin American materials were collected widely, but a focus was maintained on collecting and caring for materials from the grant-designated areas of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Early Caribbean Studies coursework, such as a 1960s-era course on “Literatures of Central America and the Caribbean”² and a 1970s-era course on “Literatures of the Spanish Caribbean” laid the groundwork for a robust network of Caribbean Studies-adjacent classes offered across multiple departments and disciplines. Beginning in the 1970s, the Tulane history department offered a series of highly-sought after courses on Caribbean history, including a colloquium on Caribbean revolutions (offered 1970-1973) and, later, a two-part series entitled “Caribbean Basin to 1981” and “Caribbean Basin since 1981.”

In November of 1979, the Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane directed a major convening of Latin American and Caribbean economists. The event, entitled “Gulf South Trade and Economic Issues: A Seminar for Latin American Economists,” was aimed at placing “middle and upper-level economists and planners in contact with their North American counterparts.”³ Co-organized with the Centers for Latin American Studies at the Universities of Wisconsin, Southern California, and Texas – as well as business and policy partners at the International Trade Mart, the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, the International Communications Agency, and the Port of New Orleans – this conference included prominent Caribbean panelists such as the Director of Foreign Trade at the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic.⁴

1980s

The 1980s saw a boom in Caribbean Studies at Tulane University. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, New Orleans came into increased national focus as a center for civic and business-based outreach to Latin America and the Caribbean. This focus on establishing Tulane as a national center for business relationships in the Caribbean gave rise to a wide range of symposiums, conferences, and workshops – such as a 1985 conference co-sponsored with the “Worlds Systems Group” of the American Sociological Association, entitled “Crisis in the Caribbean: Past and Present.⁵

Latin American Economics Program

Under then-director Richard E. Greenleaf, a proposal was developed by the center in the February of 1980. Submitted to the Exxon education fund, the proposal sought the creation of a Latin American Economics program, highlighting Tulane’s proximity to the “Gulf of Mexico energy region,” including oil refinery sites in Trinidad and other locations in the Caribbean.

Caribbean Basin Initiative 

In 1983, the U.S. government launched the Caribbean Basin Initiative [CBI] as part of the Caribbean Basin Recovery Act. The CBI was designed as a series of economic programs “intended to facilitate the development of stable Caribbean Basin economies by providing beneficiary countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for most goods.”⁶ In 1984, the Stone Center co-hosted a Tulane International Business Forum on “The Caribbean Basin Initiative: Opportunities for Small U.S. International Business Entrepreneurs.” In the following years, the Center conducted multiple rounds of programming around the Caribbean Basin Initiative.⁷ 

Caribbean Basin Scholarship Initiative 

In 1985, the Louisiana Board of Regents endorsed a plan that could “bring thousands of Central American and Caribbean citizens to study in Louisiana colleges and universities,” including Tulane. This Reagan-era foreign policy program was established as the “Caribbean Basin Initiative Scholarship” and its primary aim was focused on “combatting the spread of communism by encouraging business investment and educational opportunities in Central America and the Caribbean.”

CARIMOS and Architectural Conservation 

In the mid-1980s, a contingent of Stone Center-affiliated faculty members (Stephen Jacobs, Donald del Cid, and Eugene Cizek) attended a meeting of CARIMOS – an agency which “coordinates historical preservation planning throughout the greater Caribbean.”⁸ At this meeting, Tulane was designated as a “co-sub center” member of the program alongside the University of Florida. In concert with CARIMOS, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and the Tulane School of Architecture, approx. 20 historic preservation programs have since been run in Cuba.⁹

“Afro-Latin America” and Dillard University Partnership 

The mid-late 1980s also saw the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane undertake a series of programming focused on Afro-Latin America, building on a concurrent rise in the field of Afro-Latin American Studies, broadly.

Between 1983 and 1985, the Center began a multi-year collaboration with Dillard University.¹⁰ Programming highlights included a Tulane campus visit and lecture given by preeminent Caribbean scholar Franklin W. Knight (October 1983), as well as a day-long conference which took place at Dillard University entitled “The African Presence in Latin America” (November 1983).¹¹ This theme was selected in conjunction with Dillard as the concluding theme for a major 5-year exploration of Latin American culture which took place at the Center, funded through the Mellon Foundation.” In accompaniment to these major conferences, the Stone Center-Dillard Partnership programming included cultural events, such as cross-campus film screenings.¹²

1990s

The 1990s saw another round of expansion for Caribbean Studies at the Stone Center for Latin
American Studies. Building from a 1980s-era focus on racialization in Latin America, Tulane
undertook faculty hires in Africana Studies (including L. Roseanne Adderley and Chris Dunn) and
developed a series of programming centered on Afro-Latin America, the African Diaspora in the
Caribbean, and afterlives of enslavement throughout the region.

Cuban Studies and Study Abroad

Coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an increasingly tumultuous socio-economic period in Cuba, the 1990s also saw a proliferation of Cuba-focused programming at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. 

In 1996, Tulane President Eamon Kelly was the first president of a U.S. research university to make an official visit to Cuba in 37 years. That summer, Tulane – through the Stone Center – became the first U.S. institution to offer an undergraduate program in Cuba.¹³ This 1996 “Summer in Cuba” program, as well as President Kelly’s Cuba visit, aided in prompting the creation of the Cuban Studies Institute [CSI] in 1997.

The CSI “evolved out of over three years of sustained effort in developing relations with Cuban counterpart organizations for the purpose of academic collaboration and exchange, curricular development, cultural exchange and international dialogue.” The Cuban Studies Institute formed a significant exchange program in the late 1990s through mutual interest with the University of Havana and other intellectual organizations in Cuba. These include the Juan Marinello Center, the Fernando Ortiz Foundation, the Centro Felix Varela, the Cuban Zoological Society, and the National Institute of History, among others. This continued exchange developed years of programming focused on Cuba and the surrounding Caribbean, including the 1998 Book Donation and Exchange Program.

Aside from Cuba, Tulane hosted multiple study abroad programs in other parts of the Caribbean throughout the late 1990s. Prompted in part by an institutional shift towards cultural studies. During this time, Tulane offered multiple programs in the Caribbean focused on architecture, public health and cultural communication – such as a 1997 program in Barbados entitled “Communication and Culture: Summer Abroad in the Caribbean.”

Mirroring a concurrent rise in the field of Cultural Studies, the late 1990s also an increase in interest in cultural similarities found between New Orleans and the Caribbean. This interest was highlighted in multiple sets of programming, including a 1996 interdisciplinary seminar entitled “Cultural Identity in the Caribbean,” which focused on Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago and New Orleans. These lectures were complemented by community-focused multidisciplinary programs in the Caribbean, like the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine’s Nutrition and Epidemiology programs – which took place in Haiti, as well as in other locations across the English-speaking Caribbean.

This article is currently a work in progress. We appreciate your interest and invite you to check back for the complete version soon.

References

1. For more see Cécile Vidal, Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019). ↩︎
2. Tulane University Proposal for a Center for Latin American Studies (1962) and Program Brochure: Latin American Graduate Programs at Tulane University (1968) ↩︎
3. TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1979) ↩︎
4. TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1979) ↩︎
5. TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1983), TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1984) and “Mellon” Grant Report (1984) ↩︎
6. Executive Office of the President, Office of the United States Trade Representative, “Caribbean Basin Initiative.”  ↩︎
7. Business Opportunities in Central America Today: Trade and Investment Under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (September 1984) and Update on the Caribbean Basin Initiative and Central American Conference Flyer (1987). ↩︎
8. TULAS Newsletter (1988-1989, no.1). Also, CARIMOS is an international and interdisciplinary organization dedicated to preserving the history of the region, inventory of sites and monuments, as well as developing the technical expertise for the preservation and conservation of these historic sites. For more see https://www.carimos.org/#carimos. ↩︎
9. Panel conversation with Eugene Cizek, “Circum-Caribbean Studies at Tulane,” which took place as part of the “LAST 100: Celebrating a Century of Tulane and Latin America,” September 19 – 20, 2024 in New Orleans, LA.   ↩︎
10. Located in New Orleans, Dillard University is the oldest HBCU in Louisiana. For more see https://www.dillard.edu/. ↩︎
11. TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1983) ↩︎
12. TULAS Newsletter (Fall 1984) ↩︎
13. TULAS Newsletter (1996-1997, no. 2) / ↩︎