Thousands of Cubans across the island marched on Sunday in an unprecedented show of discontent demanding freedom, food and medicine.
FIU experts in a variety of topics related to Cuba are available for interviews. The list of experts can be found here.
For questions or assistance in contacting any of the following experts, please call the Office of Media Relations:
- Maydel Santana, associate vice president: 305-348 -1555, santanam@fiu.edu
- Dianne Fernandez, broadcast media specialist: 305-608-4870, dfernand37@fiu.edu
- Gaby Aguirrechu, media relations representative: 786-307-4557, gaguirre@fiu.edu
- Amy Ellis, communications manager, Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs: 352-999-0577, ellis@fiu.edu
Politics
Jorge Duany
Director of the Cuban Research Institute
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Jorge Duany is director of the Cuban Research Institute and a professor of anthropology. He earned his Ph.D. in Latin American Studies, specializing in anthropology, at the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in psychology from Columbia University. Duany has published extensively on migration, ethnicity, race, nationalism, and transnationalism in the Caribbean and the United States. He is available for Spanish language interviews.
Office: 305-348-1991
Email: joduany@fiu.edu
Eduardo Gamarra
Professor, political science
Department of Politics and International Relations
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Political science professor Eduardo Gamarra has done research on the regional dynamics of Latin America, including Cuba’s role. As an expert on Bolivia and the Andean region, he has followed closely the alliances formed by the Castro brothers, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan leaders. He has testified in front of the U.S. Congress several times and is the author of more than half a dozen books and more than 40 academic articles on Latin America. He is available for Spanish language interviews.
Office: 305-348-1718
Cell: 786-253-4898
Email: Eduardo.Gamarra@fiu.edu
Carlos Díaz-Rosillo
Director
Adam Smith Center for the Study of Economic Freedom
Díaz-Rosillo is former director of policy and interagency coordination at the White House. He also served as senior deputy chairman and chief operating officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., and acting principal deputy assistant secretary of defense. He is available to discuss U.S. and international response.
Díaz-Rosillo is available for English and Spanish language interviews.
Office: 305-348-2494
Email: carlos.diazrosillo@fiu.edu
Dario Moreno
Associate professor
Department of Politics & International Relations
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs. Moreno conducts research on Miami politics, Florida politics, and Cuban-American politics. He has published over 20 scholarly articles, book chapters, and two books. Moreno is a nationally recognized expert on Florida and Miami politics and is often quoted in both the national and local media. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, has been a Pew Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Fulbright scholar in Costa Rica. He teaches courses on Miami politics, Cuban politics, Florida politics and urban politics
Office: 305-348-3854
Email:darmrn@aol.com
Brian Fonseca
Director
Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy
Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs
Fonseca joined FIU after serving as the senior research manager for socio-cultural analysis at United States Southern Command. Fonseca can address the role and importance of the Cuban military, as well as political and international relations matters related to Cuba and the region.
Phone: 305-348-7420
Email:fonsecab@fiu.edu
Human Rights
Martin Palouš
Director of the Václav Havel Program Human Rights and Diplomacy
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Palouš is the former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States and the United Nations. One of the first signatories of Charter 77, Palouš served as spokesman for the dissident human rights group before serving as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly formed Czech Republic. As Director of the Havel Program, Palouš launched the Cuba Initiative, a project of collaboration between FIU, the Inspire America Foundation and other institutions, including the Václav Havel Library in Prague and the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. The project is dedicated to the research, exploration, and dissemination of alternatives for Cuba’s future as it transitions toward a more democratic system. Palouš has written profusely about Cuba, departing from his Central European perspective and his personal experience of a democratic transition, and he maintains a constant dialogue with members of the Cuban civil society both within the United States and on the island.
Phone: 347-366-1248
Email:martin.palous@gmail.com
Sebastian Arcos
Assistant director
Cuban Research Institute
Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs
Arco’s father and uncle were active participants in Castro’s revolutionary movement and briefly held important governmental positions but were soon disillusioned by the new regime’s totalitarian nature. His entire family was arrested and sent to prison for attempting to leave Cuba illegally in 1981. In 1987 he joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights (CCPDH), the first independent Cuban human rights organization, and was part of the CCPDH team who met with the Special Group from the UN Commission on Human Rights who visited the island in 1988. He was finally allowed to leave Cuba in 1992. For three consecutive years (1995, 1996, 1997) Sebastian was part of the Freedom House delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. He later advised the U.S. Department of State on issues concerning human rights in Cuba between 1998 and 2000. He is available for Spanish language interviews.
Office: 305-348-7250
Cell: 305-431-4576
Email: Sebastian.Arcos@fiu.edu
Juan Carlos Gómez
Director
Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic
College of Law
Gómez has been defending the rights of individuals in immigration matters for the last twenty years. During this time, he has represented persons before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the United States Departments of Justice and Homeland Security in complex immigration matters. Within the field of immigration law, he has helped thousands of individuals in situations including removal and deportation proceedings, family immigration, and the transfer of professionals and executives to the United States. Mr. Gómez counsels international and national corporations on compliance with immigration laws.
Phone: 305-348-3179
Email:jcagomez@fiu.edu
Economics
Jorge Salazar-Carrillo
Professor
Department of Economics
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Salzar-Carrillo has conducted research and published extensively on Latin America’s labor markets, particularly Venezuela’s oil sector, including Oil and Development of Venezuela during the 20th Century (2004) and The Economic Development of Venezuela and the Oil Sector: 1910-1990 (1994.) Salazar is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a consultant for both the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB.)
Office: 305-348-3283
Email: Jorge.Salazar-Carrillo@fiu.edu
José M. Gabilondo
Associate Dean, Accreditation & Reporting
Professor, College of Law
Prior to joining FIU Law, Gabilondo worked in the financial market regulation at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the World Bank. Gabilondo teaches tax and corporate finance. His scholarship focuses on debt markets and (separately) heterosexual subject formation in law. He is co-author of Corporate Finance: Debt, Equity, and Derivative Markets and their Intermediaries in the American Casebook Series. He has been a featured speaker at meetings of the American Society for International Law, the American Association of Law Schools, the Latin American Law and Economics Association, the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, the Georgetown University Conference on Socio-Economics, Law and Society, the American Association of University Professors, LatCrit, and the Latin American Studies Association. Cell: 305-710-5656
Email: jose.gabilondo@fiu.edu
Law
Manuel A. Gómez
Associate Dean, Graduate Studies and Global Engagement
Professor, College of Law
Manuel A. Gómez is an expert on institutional and legal reform in Latin America. His research focuses on dispute resolution, governance and legal and institutional reform in Latin America and has earned awards such as a 2007 prize from the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). He earned his law degree from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Caracas, Venezuela) and has been a faculty member at the Universidad Central de Venezuela Law School in Caracas. He has served as legal expert in domestic and transnational litigation and international arbitration proceedings in the U.S. and Latin America. Gómez is Associate Dean of International and Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law.
Office: 305-348-1158
Email: magomez@fiu.edu
Ediberto Román
Professor
College of Law
Román is a nationally-acclaimed scholar and award-winning educator with broad teaching interests and an extensive scholarship portfolio with an interest in immigration law and reform. Before entering academia, he specialized in securities and antitrust litigation at several Wall Street law firms. He is available for Spanish language interviews.
Office: 305-348-2444 (Office)
Email:romane@fiu.edu
Sociology
Andrea Jean Queeley
Professor
Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Queeley’s research interests include Caribbean migration, Cuba, African diaspora, race, social inequality, black popular culture and anthropological fieldwork. Specifically, her research concerns African Diasporic subject formation, migration and the negotiation of globalized structural inequalities. Situating these processes within the specificities of national and international political moments, she explores questions of social hierarchy and diversity within the African diaspora. She is particularly interested in the social and economic conditions under which racialized subjects assert their cultural identities and how such assertions shift over time. Queeley has conducted research in eastern Cuba among people of English-speaking Caribbean descent in which she explores narratives of “jamaicano” identity and the reemergence of Anglophone Caribbean institutions during Cuba’s Special Period. She has also conducted research in the urban United States ans is intrigued by the extent to which racialized categories are disrupted and/or reinforced by the globalization and mass consumption of multi-rooted black popular culture.
Phone: 305-348-6289
Email:aqueeley@fiu.edu
History
Michael Bustamante
Assistant professor of Latin American history specializing in modern Cuba, Cuban America and the Caribbean
Cuban Research Institute
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
Michael J. Bustamante is assistant professor of Latin American history, specializing in modern Cuba, Cuban America and the Caribbean. Bustamante previously served as a research associate for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He comments frequently on contemporary Cuban and Cuban-American affairs for publications like Foreign Affairs and media outlets like Al-Jazeera America. Since 2013, he has served as a study leader the Smithsonian Institution’s people-to-people trips to Cuba.
Office: 305-348-2035
Email: mbustama@fiu.edu