Welcome to my blog. Since I am teaching a class on U.S.-Latin American relations and tomorrow will be sending off the final draft of my textbook on that topic, it is only fitting that I start with U.S.-Cuban relations, which never gets boring.

In its Interest Section in Havana, the U.S. government put up a sign that is beaming messages (such as the news that a conservative government won in Canada, though I am not sure how this would cause the Cuban people to get excited and overthrow Castro). Castro is now apparently getting really annoyed. The sad thing is that the U.S. has simply run out of ideas with regard to dealing with Fidel, and our policy has been reduced to trying to annoy him. Strangely enough, if that indeed was the goal of this particular stunt, it actually worked, which is a rarity for U.S. policy toward Cuba.