Conjectures on an absence: Latin American planning thought, seen in the mirror of Revolutionary Cuba

Adrián Gorelik

Planning Perspectives, 2025, vol. 40, issue 1, 39-51

Abstract: This article questions a significant absence in the classic period of Latin American planning thought: it is impossible to find references to the experience of revolutionary Cuba in the media and institutions that shaped the fabric of the planning field during the 1960s. It was not until 1971 that the book by Maruja Acosta and Jorge Enrique Hardoy, Reforma urbana en Cuba revolucionaria, was published in Venezuela; but even so, the presence of Cuba as a subject remained scarce, without ever being integrated as a topic of its own. It is well known that to pose a question about something that did not happen is a risky historiographic exercise. However, the centrality of the Cuban revolution in the most varied spheres of Latin American intellectual life makes its absence in the field of planning a resounding evidence that calls for hypotheses and revisions. For there is no doubt that Latin American planning thought conceived itself as part of the intellectual life of the region, and experienced along with it, in the 1960s, a similar process of theoretical and ideological radicalization. The text takes several paths to address the enigma of why planning went down this road without Cuba.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2024.2338345

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