On Hurricanes: My Favorite Metaphor
The hurricane is my favorite metaphor for the study of both Cuba and political science. Living through hurricanes as a little boy predisposed me to study both. Hurricanes combine certainty and uncertainty, which are key concerns in the study of politics anywhere and of Cuba in particular. Hurricanes are metaphors for revolutions, election campaigns, and nearly every topic that I have studied. Hurricanes have a well-identified structure, origin, and location. They have a predictable trajectory during a specified period of time. They recur. And yet, some of their most important features are known to be unknown: We do not know when and where they will hit, and their force is quite variable even during short periods of time.
Winter 2007, Volume VI, Number 2
Jorge I. Dominguez is the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs.
Related Articles
Editor’s Letter: Natural Disasters
My very first reporting trip to Latin America was to cover the aftermath of a natural disaster. Hurricane Fifi had smashed into Honduras in the fall of 1974, and my neighbro Angela Acosta…
The Rise of Nationalism in Venezuela
Nationalism and the idea of the nation-state fascinate us all. We come to think of ourselves, govern ourselves and manage our relationship to the rest of the world through the agency of a…
The History of Havana
“This city is the most welcoming place,” begin Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernández, the former a well-regarded novelist and social critic and the latter a Cuban social scientist, poet and editor of…
