Cuba Pt. 3: Che Guevara and the Building of Socialism w/ Helen Yaffe

Cuba Pt. 3: Che Guevara and the Building of Socialism w/ Helen Yaffe

From Upstream by Upstream

March 23, 2026 · 1h 32m

About this episode

This episode explores Cuba's transition to socialism after the revolution through Che Guevara's contributions, featuring insights from Helen Yaffe.

In this episode, part 3 of our ongoing series on Cuba, we're joined by Helen Yaffe for a conversation exploring Cuba's transition to socialism after the revolution through Che Guevara's contributions. Helen Yaffe is a professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World , and Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution . She is also the cohost of the Cuba Analysis podcast and the documentary Cuba's Life Task: combatting climate change . The episode begins with a brief introduction to Che Guevara—providing an overview of Che's life and biography. We then discuss what the Cuban revolutionaries inherited in terms of Cuba's semi-colonial economic and political state—unemployment, poverty, inequality, underdevelopment, and dependency. We talk about how socialism became the guiding light of revolutionary Cuba and how the revolutionary government became more radical in response to the United States' attempts to sabotage it. We discuss Che Guevara's role in developing the productive capacities of Cuba and his many roles ranging from President of the National Bank of Cuba…

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