Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Civil Code, and the Problem of Transculturation

In this paper, I have two purposes. First, I offer a simple warning of the dangers posed by cultural imperialism in the legal exchanges that we are beginning. Second, and more positively, I invite my Cuban colleagues to educate me about what happened to the Civil Code in Cuba in the period between 1898 and 1959. The positive aspect should contribute to a comparative study of law in which we can understand the respective Cuban and U.S. legal cultures, using the mixed experience of Puerto Rico with Spanish civil law and the U.S. common law as part of the process of developing new bilateral relations.

For my part, as a professor of comparative law, I propose to learn about the Cuban legal culture, starting with those first years of our second colonial period and their effect upon the civil law.