Johanna Cilano Pelaez
Speaker
Regional Researcher at Amnesty International, specializing in human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cuba 2026: Policrisis endógena y escenarios geopolíticos
Date and Time
April 15, 2026
12:00PM - 02:00PM EDT
Location
CGIS South, Room S-250
To understand the deeper sources of international behavior of the Cuban regime, it is necessary to examine not only the ideological convictions that animate it, but also the pragmatic calculations that have enabled a state with severe economic and military limitations to exercise a disproportionate degree of political and cultural influence within its regional environment.
The central question guiding this presentation is twofold: (1) What ideological and pragmatic factors explain the international conduct of the Cuban regime? and (2) What concrete mechanisms does Cuba employ to project its influence across the hemisphere?
Within this framework, the speakers will discuss the state of Human Rights in Cuba: their context, current status and future trends.
This event will be held in Spanish.
Armando Chaguaceda
Speaker
2026 Karl Loewenstein Fellow and Visiting Professor of Political Science, Amherst College.
Tania Bruguera
Moderator
Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance, Theater, Dance & Media; Affiliate of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University.
Bios
In her current role, she leads research, documentation, and advocacy in the Caribbean, mainly in Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, producing reports, conducting fieldwork, and engaging with regional and international stakeholders to strengthen human rights protections across the region. She holds a law degree from the University of Havana and a PhD in History and Regional Studies from the University of Veracruz. She is a member of Mexico's National System of Researchers and the Red Politologas- No sin Mujeres a network of women political scientists.
Researcher in Government and Political Analysis AC (GAPAC), a think tank based in Mexico. In Cuba (since 2000 to 2008), Chaguaceda was a professor at the Higher Pedagogical Institute and the University of Havana. In Mexico (since 2009), he was a professor at El Colegio de Veracruz, the Universidad Veracruzana, the Universidad Iberoamericana and the University of Guanajuato. He has been Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (2010), the Central University of Venezuela (2011), the University of Girona (2018), the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (2019-2020). Member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) of the National Council of Science and Technology (Mexico).
Chaguaceda specializes in the study of democratization and autocratization processes as well as the state-civil society relationship in Latin America and Russia.
The installation and performance artist Tania Bruguera researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life, focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her long-term projects have been intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics.
Bruguera earned her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. Bruguera’s work has been exhibited at documenta 11, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern and also at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and Shanghai Biennale. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions around the world, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
Visit taniabruguera.com and read about Tania Bruguera in the Harvard Gazette.