Luis Martínez-Fernández
Luis Martínez-Fernández (born January 14, 1960) is a Cuban-born American historian, educator, and columnist, specializing in Cuban and Caribbean history and culture. He is Pegasus Professor of History at the University of Central Florida and a weekly syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. The focus of his books ranges widely across centuries from "Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonia"l "Cuba" to "Revolutionary Cuba: A History". He served as chief editor of the multiple-award winning "Encyclopedia of Cuba: People, History Culture". Early life and education. Martínez-Fernández was born in Havana, Cuba  in 1960, when the Cuban Revolution was entering its second year. In 1962, his family went into exile, settling briefly in Miami Beach and relocating to Lima Peru, until 1970, when his family moved to Puerto Rico. He attended the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras), where he studied under historians Fernando Picó and Andrés Ramos Mattei, earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in History. In 1986, Martínez-Fernández left Puerto Rico to attend Duke University, where he received a PhD in Latin American history (1990). His dissertation director was historian of colonial Latin America John TePaske. Career. Upon graduation from  Duke, Martínez-Fernández joined the faculty of Augusta State University and later Colgate University, where he specialized in Caribbean and Latin American History. In 1994 he joined the Rutgers University faculty with a joint appointment in History and the Department of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, which he chaired between 1998 and 2004. Since 2004, he has taught at the University of Central Florida, where he directed the Latin American Studies Program and founded the Latin American Cultural Festival of Central Florida. Martínez-Fernández is also an award-winning columnist, whose Op-Eds have appeared in the "Christian Science  Monitor", "The Miami Herald", and the "Chronicle of Higher Education" among other periodicals, and the online news venue "The Globe Post". In 2020, he joined Creators Syndicate as weekly syndicated columnist.