Inter-subjective and Transnational Racial Effects: The Role of the United States in the Formation and Evolution of the Collective Perception and Racial Relations in Cuba, 1898-1902
OF THE DISSERTATION INTER-SUBJECTIVE AND TRANSNATIONAL RACIAL EFFECTS: THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE COLLECTIVE PERCEPTION AND RACIAL RELATIONS IN CUBA, 1898-1902 by Tiffany Yolanda Jimmece Bryant Florida International University, 2010 Miami, Florida Professor Felix E. Martin, Major Professor Since the arrival of the first African slaves to Cuba in 1524, the issue of race has had a long-lived presence in the Cuban national discourse. However, despite Cuba’s colonial history, it has often been maintained by some historians that race relations in Cuba were congenial with racism and racial discrimination never existing as deep or widespread in Cuba as in the United States (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). In fact, it has been argued that institutionalized racism was introduced into Cuban society with the first U.S. occupation, during 1898–1902 (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). This study of Cuba investigates the influence of the United States on the development of race relations and racial perceptions in post-independent Cuba, specifically from 1898-1902. These years comprise the time period immediately following the final fight for Cuban Independence, culminating with the Cuban-SpanishAmerican War and the first U.S. occupation of Cuba. By this time, the Cuban population comprised Africans as well as descendants of Africans, White Spanish people,
The Origins of the Cuban Revolt
For Cubans and Spaniards the Spanish-American War was neither ‘splendid’ nor ‘little’ but a 350 days’ climax to a war of almost thirty years’ duration which in its savagery and destruction presaged the total wars of the twentieth century. Americans may celebrate 1898 in a mood of self-congratulation at having liberated an oppressed people from corrupt and tyrannical rule at the same time celebrating their own emergence as a world imperial power, but for Spaniards and Cubans there is little to celebrate. The war was el Desastre for Spain, leading to decades of painful adjustment to loss of empire culminating in the bitterest civil conflict in a century and a half of domestic turbulence.1 For Cubans there will be regret that the war destroyed Jose Marti’s vision of Cuba Libre, bequeathing a divided society and a devastated country which instead of becoming the republic of a visionary’s dream became a new field for American endeavour now that the continental frontier of Westward expansion had ‘closed’.2 Any celebration in Cuba in 1998 will have been tempered by awareness that there will be Cuban exiles in Florida planning to overthrow the revolutionary regime in much the same way as earlier generations of exiles had planned to overthrow Spanish rule during the half-century before 1898.
Study on essential drug use status and its influencing factors among cerebral infarction inpatients in county level hospitals of Anhui Province, China
Background and purpose Drug costs is one of the main components of hospitalization expenditure for cerebral infarction inpatients. In China, the National Essential Medicine System (NEMS) was created to relieve the heavy drug-cost burden for patients. The objective of this study was to investigate essential drug-use status and its influencing factors among cerebral infarction inpatients in county-level hospitals of Anhui province, China. Methods Three county-level hospitals were selected through a multi-stage cluster random sampling method. The hospitalization cost data of cerebral infarction inpatients in the three hospitals were extracted from the Anhui provincial information platform of the New Rural Cooperative Insurance System (NCMS), and whether the proportion of essential drug cost in the total drug cost reached the median value of 33.05% which was set as the evaluation index for essential drug-use status. Questionnaires for hospitals and physicians were designed and given to them to assess influencing factors. Results We retrieved the cost data of 2,189 inpatients from the NCMS platform and investigated 51 corresponding physicians in total. The drug costs accounted for 52.6% of the total hospitalization cost, and essential drug costs alone accounted for 37.0% of the total drug costs. The essential drug-cost proportion was high among physicians with a higher recognition degree on NEMS, older age, lower final academic degree, longer work experience and lower professional title. Married physicians and those with tight organizational affiliation also prescribed more essential drugs. Conclusions Increasing the proportion of essential drugs was an effective way to reduce the disease burden for cerebral infarction patients. Perfecting the NEMS, increasing government investment, reinforcing education and propaganda, and formulating relevant incentive and restrictive mechanisms were all effective ways to promote and increase the number of essential drug prescriptions written by physicians.