T.P. Moreno Fraginals’s scientific contributions

The Cuban Revolution imbued confidence to reformists and revolutionaries in 1959. Castro's challenge to American hegemony and promises of an independent socialist society came to naught as Cuba became a satellite of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The breakdown of the Soviet bloc and USSR's collapse ended the subsidies that sustained the system despite the embargo enforced by the United States of America. Cuba's tourist industry, export of Cuban labor, the Internet, and the regime's diminishing coercive power have fostered internal challenges. In 2008, Fidel Castro turned power over to Raúl Castro, his octogenarian younger brother, who started limited economic reforms in an attempt to ensure the regime's survival under the Party's dictatorship. The 2011 economic reforms threaten the safety-net that characterized the revolution.