Mario Juan Valdés Navia, 2023–24; 2024–25

Fellowship Work Summary, 2024–25

Mario Juan Valdés Navia is a historian, professor, and essayist on Cuban issues, cultural studies, and Latin-American thinking, specializing in the life and works of Jose Marti, the Cuban Apostle of Independence, and the evolution of Cuban thinking. Navia has taught in Cuban universities for more than 20 years and worked as a visiting professor in universities in Brazil, Haiti, and El Salvador. He has also pursued extensive research in study centers on history, education, scientific and cultural methodology and Marti studies. His work has appeared in a variety of independent academic and political platforms on the internet and his essays about Cuban issues and cultural history have received multiple awards. As a result of critical publications about Cuban problems, he was separated from the academic sphere by the Cuban government, and in 2022, the IIE/SRF of New York selected him for a scholarship to continue his academic life in another country. In October 2023 he began work as a visiting scholar at Duke University and the NHC where he continues his current research on civicism and militarism in Cuba, especially during the period known as the Revolution in Power.

Selected Publications

• Valdés Navia, Mario. El Manto del Rey: Aproximaciones Culturales a la Economía Cubana. Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Matanzas, 2020.
• Valdés Navia, Mario. “José Martí and the Dimension of All.” Vocablo Digital Magazine (2021): 4—5.
• Valdés Navia, Mario. José Martí and the Subversion of History. Havana: Editorial of the Jose Marti Study Center, 2021.
• Valdés Navia, Mario. “José Martí Against the Spaniard Apoliticism and the Racist Segregation in Tampa and Cayo Hueso (1891-1895).” Yearbook of the Jose Marti Study Center 44 (2021): 115—35.
• Valdés Navia, Mario. Fernando Lles y el Grupo Minorista de Matanzas. Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Matanzas, 2020.