Cuban Landscapes

Joseph L. Scarpaci, PhD, until his death in 2023, was Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech, where he taught in a range of fields, including geography, urban planning, historic preservation, landscape architecture, and Latin American studies. He was also the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Cuban Culture?+?Economy. Dr. Scarpaci received multiple Fulbright Fellowships and was the recipient of awards from the Association of American Geographers, the Conference of Latin American Geography, and the Library of Congress. Most known for his research on Cuba and Cuban communities in the United States, he began conducting research in Cuba in 1990 and made nearly 100 trips to the island.

Armando H. Portela is a physical geographer who worked for 23 years in the Institute of Geography of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. He coauthored the section “Geomorphology (Relief)” in the Nuevo Atlas Nacional de Cuba (Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, 1989) and produced a number of geomorphologic maps of the island. He currently works at the Miami Herald and freelances for the newsletter CubaNews, where he regularly publishes on geographical issues of the island.