This Hot Spots series attempts to interrogate how Cuba is interpellated by diverse audiences to think with and about the complexities and paradoxes of everyday, textured accounts of life in opposition to, in the shadows of, or at the vanguard of living la Revolución at this historical juncture in U.S.–Cuba relations. The series is broadly tied together under the rubric of Cuba as dreamworld and catastrophe, in a nod to the work of Susan Buck-Morss. For Morss (2000, x), “Mass utopia, once considered the logical correlate of personal utopia, is now a rusty idea.” The utopic dreams of the twentieth century, articulated across a diverse political spectrum of regimes, be they capitalist or European socialist, have repeatedly turned into nightmares. How, then, should we approach an examination of Cuba, an actually existing socialist state persisting long after the disintegration of European socialism, at the brink of supposedly momentous change? How do we make sense of and interpret the vexing realities of determination, nostalgia, hope, loss, bewilderment, and promise? Must utopic dreams always turn to nightmares?