Michael J Bustamante

Join us this afternoon!

My department is hiring!

TT Modern US history, Reconstruction - Civil Rights Era.

I'm late to sharing, but the window is admittedly short, due to a later budget cycle that we would have liked. Review of applications begins Dec 1.

networks.h-net.org/jobs/69444/u...

Call for Applications: The Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Program | Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries Apply by December 2, 2025

We've also just launched an artist residency. Program and application info here. We're treating "artist" as an expansive category. Please help us spread the word.

mailchi.mp/miami.edu/li...

Join the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries online for the “Seminar in Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Studies” Fall 2025 and spring 2026 | Multiple dates

Hi bluesky. Been a minute. Or several months. Dropping in to share the link to the program & registration info for our 2025-2026 Seminar in Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Studies at U Miami's Cuban Heritage Collection.

Great line-up. It's all virtual. Hope you can join us.

mailchi.mp/miami.edu/li...

Deadline extended! Still time to get your applications in.

Attention grad students in the US!

Deadline for the Goizueta Graduate Fellowships Program
@umchc.bsky.social is tomorrow.

Call for Applications | The Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowship 2025-2026 Apply online by February 28, 2025

Reminder: Applications for Goizueta Graduate Fellowships
@umchc.bsky.social are due 2/28!

Pre-dissertation & dissertation stage awards for graduate students at US institutions. Support 1-3 months of research in largest archive dedicated to Cuba outside of the island.

mailchi.mp/miami.edu/li...

Great convo last night @umchc w Fabien Pisani & CM Álvarez after screening “En la caliente.”

A film about not just *the* little known pioneer of reggaeton in Cuba, Kandyman, but the irrepressible nature of popular culture and Santiago de Cuba as a crucible of Caribbean sounds.

Happy to interview FIU alum Andrew Gomez about his book “Constructing Cuban America: Race and Identity in Florida’s Caribbean South, 1868-1945” from @utexaspress.bsky.social 🇨🇺 newbooksnetwork.com/constructing...

That said, if Cuba wants to have any chance of Trump 2.0 not eventually rolling these measures back, they will have to follow through on their commitments, and may have to put even more on the table. Time will tell.

Path of least resistance for the Biden administration was to do nothing. They chose to try to do something. And that's important, even if many find the results flawed.

There is also the point that negotiating for the release of prisoners who should have never been in jail in the first place is ugly business. I get that objection. But to it I say: what's the workable alternative? In this and other contexts, I'm not sure.

They made big commitments without a single prisoner release yet taking place. That may change in the coming days, but they're already being accused of "giving away the store" and that will continue.

Finally, I'm just surprised a Biden administration that was on the back foot so often on Cuba policy would do something this dramatic, so late—just days after Maduro's widely denounced inauguration no less, at which Miguel Díaz-Canel was present.

Still, coming at a time when Cuba's govt is clamping down on private sector (again), military enterprises are trying to regain market share, and there have been blockbuster (though unconfirmed) reports of military sitting on major $ as economy craters, the optics are explosive.

The Biden administration also likely came to see economic pressure as exerted through the CRL as contributor to mass migration, instability, and human suffering (in that it impeded things like Cuba's energy imports), without any real prospect of political change on the table.

If the Cubans made CRL a non-negotiable for prisoner releases (which I can see them doing), and Biden admin is reasonably confident Trump 2.0 will reinstate CRL anyway, maybe White House saw short window of lifting it as worth it for humanitarian gain?

The biggest surprise to me, though, is the full elimination of the CRL.

That likely explains Cuba's indication it will slow walk the full slate of releases.

Full SSOT delisting takes 45 days. Cuba likely to stretch out releases over that period as "leverage" to make sure at least SSOT delisting is allowed to take effect & buy time. :-/

But on that same token, one has to wonder what Cuba thinks it can gain. If—cruelly—it has used J11 and other presos as negotiating chips, they just ostensibly laid a bunch of them on the table for changes from the Biden administration that may not last long.

Worse, even if you think SSOT delisting was overdue & right on the merits (as I do), such a late move may put a bigger target on Cuba's back for the incoming administration than was already there. Once re-listed, Congress could also try to codify the designation this time.

The obvious: Can't Trump just re-list Cuba as SSOT in the next few months? Yes. CRL and Title III could also be revived fairly quickly—within 6 months, say.

Even as all parties are denying an explicit quid pro quo, I'm surprised by the scope, timing, and rollout of the deal for several reasons.

Given parallel announcement from Havana, it has to be the prospect of significant prisoner releases—we now know more than 500.

But whether as a result of steady negotiation or a last ditch effort (from Havana?) to put a deal on the table in exchange for relief, we don't know.

Pre-November, there was some chatter Biden might do SSOT if Harris won, to take the political hit for her on his way out.

But when Trump won, the item appeared dead on arrival, and folks in D.C. were talking that way. What changed?

To recap, Biden admin announced
1. Removing Cuba from SSOT
2. Waiving Title III of Helms-Burton
3. Getting rid of the Cuba Restricted List

Cuba announced:
1. Pending release of 553 prisoners.

1 of these in lame duck was unexpected. All of them seemed impossible.

Some thoughts on today's bombshell 🇨🇺 news.

🧵

t.co/M8NpYJPfAa

Whoops, typo in that last one: "Tales of a Reggaeton Warrior," not "War."

Join the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries for "En la Caliente: Tales of a Reggaeton Warrior," a film screening and discussion with writer and director Fabien Pisani February 6, 2025 | 6 p.m. | Kislak Center at the University of Miami

Fourth, and final (for now), join us on 2/6 at 6pm for a screening of En la Caliente: Tales of a Reguetón War, dir. by Fabien Pisani. Pisani will be in conversation with me and noted Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez after the film.

https://buff.ly/40wpsmr

Third, join us on 1/31 at 2pm (online) for the third session of CHC's 2024-2025 Seminar in Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Studies, featuring a paper by Chasitie Brown (UT-Austin) and comments from Alejandro de la Fuente.