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person1950–

Carlos Eire

Disciplines:
history
reformation
latin america/cuba
higher education/yale

Summary

Cuban-American historian at Yale — one of the Pedro Pan children who escaped Cuba without his parents in 1962 — author of Waiting for Snow in Havana (National Book Award, 2003) and A Very Brief History of Eternity — specialist in the Reformation and early modern Catholic history.

Core Contribution

Creates the most intimate literary account of Castro's Cuba from the perspective of those who lost it — Waiting for Snow in Havana combines memoir and historical analysis to capture what Cubans experienced under the revolution in a way that abstract political history cannot.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Left Cuba at 11 without his parents (Pedro Pan operation) and never saw his father again — his childhood loss informs every aspect of his historical writing about the costs of revolutionary utopias
  • Studies the Reformation period as a historian of death and the afterlife — his scholarly focus on how early modern people understood death connects to his personal experience of exile as a form of living bereavement

Notable Works & Achievements

Waiting for Snow in Havana

Learning to Die in Miami

A Very Brief History of Eternity

Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450–1650

Historical Influences

Cuban exile tradition Catholic historical scholarship

Intellectual Lineage

Havana, CubaPedro Pan operationNotre Dame Yale Yale Divinity and History

Contemporaries & Peers

Reinaldo ArenasCristina García

Minds Influenced

Cuban exile literature

Intellectual Posterity

Waiting for Snow in Havana Pedro Pan children

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Carlos Eire

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