Less Velvet for the Cuban Transition? Transnational circulations and learning processes between Central European, Cuban and Latin American networks

Since the end of the 1990s, former dissidents from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have cooperated with Cubans on the island and in Miami in order to transfer their knowledge and know-how of civil society building and the transition from communist rule. For the CEE dissidents involved, it was a way of reciprocating for the international solidarity they received while under communism. Here, I will argue that, despite the success of the Velvet transition model, CEE experts have actually exported a vision critical of this model to the Cuban opposition. Moreover, debates about the transition in Cuba have remained embedded within regional and professional divides.