1949–
Cuban-born US sociologist and historian of the Cuban Revolution
In December 1977 she helped lead the Antonio Maceo Brigade with Lourdes Casal on a visit to Cuba by 55 exiles, a trip that preceded the 1978 dialogues between Cuban exiles and the Cuban government.
Marifeli Pérez-Stable is a Cuban-born sociologist and historian of Cuba, born in 1949; her family left the island when she was 11. She took her PhD in sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985 and a master's in political science at the University of Florida. She is the author of The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (Oxford University Press, first edition 1993), whose periodization the dictionary's historiography draws on. She was professor of sociology at Florida International University, now professor emeritus, and served as vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue from 2004 to 2009. Her designation as Cuban is an attributed label; no formal US citizenship status is documented.
Also known as: Marifeli Perez-Stable
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1976–1988Instructor and assistant professor, Politics, Economy and Society Program, SUNY College at Old Westbury
- 1985PhD in sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook
- 2004–2009Vice president for democratic governance, Inter-American Dialogue
- 2004–2011Biweekly Miami Herald column on Latin America
Related historical events
The Antonio Maceo Brigade and the 1977-78 trip to Cuba
Pérez-Stable was part of the Cuban-American left of the mid-1970s. The proposal for a visit to Cuba by Cuban exiles was first raised in 1974 at the Instituto de Estudios Cubanos by Lourdes Casal, and on 22 December 1977 fifty-five Cuban exiles from the United States, Mexico and Spain travelled to Cuba, led by Casal and Pérez-Stable.
They claimed the right of Cuban exiles to visit Cuba and to maintain good-neighbourly relations with the Cuban government. The brigade admitted only people who had taken no part in anti-Castro activity and who had left Cuba as children by their parents' decision. During the two-week visit they met welcoming crowds, took part in tours and volunteer work, and saw their families. After the visit Castro proposed a dialogue with Cubans abroad, and that dialogue led to the release of political prisoners, the reunion of separated families and an easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba. The brigade was formally organised in 1978, after the first visitors had returned.
The brigade is credited with showing that Cuban exile politics was not a single anti-communist conservative bloc and with opening room for Cuban Americans to take part in left-wing politics. The visit, however, drew criticism from hard-line anti-communists: in 1979 brigade member Carlos Muñiz Varela was assassinated in Puerto Rico, and some members later lost their hopes for Cuba. She herself says that she sympathised with the Cuban revolution for "a little less than twenty years" and has opposed it for "many more years" since. That is her own self-description, and her statement that she was never an agent of Cuban State Security, the CIA or the FBI is self-defence in the same vein.