The United States-Cuban Relations: Una investigación de los impactos políticos en las remesas culturales

This Independent Study Thesis attempts to build a relationship between the existing prominent fields of Spanish and Political Science by looking into how United States politics affect the cultural identity of the exiled Cuban communities within the US. This cultural identity will be traced using the analysis of poetry as a proxy for cultural remittances, an economic concept that has been applied by scholars to conceptualize the transfer of ideas and customs across borders. Throughout the body of poetry, themes relating to the historical context that are uniquely Cuban, were prevalent thus verifying that the poetry contained cultural elements that could be diffused in the United States. The policy impacts were determined by immigration trends tracked and published by the Department of Homeland Security. My research supported a correlation between policy and cultural remittances, but found that the policies implemented by the country of origin, have a profound impact on the immigration flows due to the higher transaction costs and risks associated with the Castro dictatorship