Every spring, for the past five or so years, we’ve partnered with Florida Gulf Coast University and the Naples Discussion Group to bring conversations with speakers they’ve brought to town to our listeners on this show. This has created a sort of grab bag of expertise and the ability to highlight various dimensions of the world around us on the show.
Last week, the speaker was Dr. Luis Martínez-Fernández. He’s a distinguished historian, author, and is Pegasus Professor of History at the University of Central Florida where he specializes in Caribbean, Latin American, and Latino/Hispanic history. He has taught at UCF since 2004 and is a recognized expert on Cuban history. He was born on the island in 1960 and lived there briefly before his parents left the country during the early years of the revolution.
Dr. Martínez-Fernández has published at least eight books, including “Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba” in 2019, and “Revolutionary Cuba: A History” in 2014. He was also a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate — it’s an independent media and syndication company.
The talk Dr. Martínez-Fernández was giving at FGCU last week was titled “Chiseled out of stone and cast out of bronze: a history of the Caribbean as told by its statues.” But, because of recent events in South & Central America and the Caribbean — and in Iran and the Middle East and other parts of the world and how it’s all connected — we didn’t talk about statues, but instead began our wide-ranging conversation with his most recent book, “When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022."
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