We recently returned from a two-week trip to Cuba in June, 2003 and we are still trying to sort out our reactions to the trip and to Cuba. This was our third trip and we couldn’t help comparing Cuba now with Cuba in 1980.

Although we will be raising some problematic issues below, we want to begin noting the massive changes that benefit all members of Cuban society–under incredibly difficult circumstances. Most significantly, the Cuban revolution still exists in spite of U.S. blockade and the collapse of the Soviet Block in the early 1990s. As many people pointed out to us, Cuba could not have survived this “special period”if it did not have the support of the majority of the population.

Cuban socialism has provided a decent education to all its citizens. Today, the campaign for a universal ninth grade education has long been completed (in comparison to the 6th grade education goal of 23 years ago).

Cuba remains the “jewel” in Latin American health care–-providing free and effective medical care for its citizens. Cuba’s overall birthrate is virtually the same as in the U.S. generally and is many times better than in our poorest communities. In addition, many Cubans were proud to say that they die of the same diseases that people in industrialized countries die of like old age, heart disease, etc.

Every neighborhood has its own doctor and nurse who live in the community and serve about 125 families. Their medical schools also educate (free of charge) future doctors from dozens of countries around the world, including, more recently, U.S. citizens who want to go back and help their own impoverished communities in the U.S.

Most people own their own living quarters; and if they don’t, they only pay a small percentage about 10 percent) of their income. Children are healthy and well cared for; many people live in housing they have built with the help of housing brigades. Sexism and racism are no longer officially tolerated and many programmatic systems were set in place to promote women and dark-skinned people’s opportunities.

Finally, we found people going about their daily lives like people do in any country. They laugh, they cry, they play, they work. They are not looking over their shoulders to check if the government is watching their every behavior.

Our comments below assume that the reader has some knowledge and understanding of Cuban society since 1959 and are, on the whole, supportive, as are we, of the Cuban socialist efforts for a more socially just society. Being sympathetic, however, doesn’t mean being uncritical.

CONTEXT OF OUR VISIT

We first visited Cuba in 1979 and again in 1980 to see for ourselves the Cuban version of socialism. When people asked us about our overall impressions after these first two trips, we could honestly say that we were excited and impressed by what we saw. We spent most of the time outside of Havana so we saw many smaller cities and the countryside. We spent half-days at schools, hospitals, factories, neighborhoods, and museums. At these places, we were given tours in addition to introductory lectures. We also arranged a visit to a mental hospital and had the good fortune to participate in informal visits to a cracker factory and an improptu midnight visit to a medical school after watching a rousing baseball game, which was free for everyone.

All in all, we learned a lot about how Cuba was organized and how different institutions worked. Natalie emphasized women and Fred emphasized education. We were concerned about “civil liberties” type issues but it did not dominate our thinking. We felt that we could defend most of what Cuba was doing at the time.

In June 2003, we went to Havana for a third time to attend the 15th Annual Radical Philosophy and Social Science Conference. We had fewer visits to Cuban institutions and were not given extensive tours of the ones we visited. On the other hand, we heard more talks by Cuban intellectuals, some of which were highly informative and stimulating, and some of which were not. When people ask us our impressions, we are much more conflicted and ambivalent. Natalie uses the adjective “interesting” and Fred says “stimulating.” We were both aware that we couldn’t say “excited” or “impressed.” We felt that we didn’t learn as much on this trip as compared with our other trips, in part because we were in Havana for virtually the entire trip. We were also disappointed that things hadn’t improved more in the 23 years since we had been there–-although we are well aware of the horrendous impact of the fall of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the U.S. blockade. Cuba has had to make many hard decisions in order to survive.

There are many positives in 2003 compared to 1980. We saw very few lines for basic foodstuffs on our recent trip; these were quite common in our earlier trips. The flow of electricity and water were much more reliable this time; many more cars–especially newer ones--were on the roads Despite the still crowded buses, there were many more of them. Most people own their own homes in 2003, whereas most were renters previously. Once again, we did not see a single child with the external signs of malnutrition. Finally, people were free to practice religion since 1990 (and we visited all three Jewish synagogues in Havana).

These are no small accomplishments given the economic chaos that Cuba has experienced. When Cubans asked us how we liked their country, we said “very much.” Some people would respond that they liked it, too–but not so much. However, when people with more language facility than us in Spanish probed these answers, they found that while people wish things were not so difficult in Cuba, they saw the problems more the fault of the “special period” and the U.S. blockade, not of socialism.

On the negative side, we saw more begging this time, especially by some of the elderly, which we did not see at all on our earlier trips. Tourist hustling, which we had experienced previously, was much more pronounced. We were also more aware of the hustling since we were so imbedded in the tourist area this time where our hotel was located. Prostitution, especially in tourist areas, exists in 2003 where it did not in 1980. Finally, and maybe most disturbing, we found that people still seemed reluctant to criticize official government policy in public. Fred did meet one person in the market in Old Havana, however, who spent ten minutes explaining how he hated what was going on. He had been “thrown out” of the United States for undisclosed reasons. This issue of dissent is important and we will return to it later.

THE ECONOMY

The economic problems that Cuba faced since 1989 are central to understanding what is happening today. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Soviet Block countries, Cuba lost 85% of its export capacity according to Alejandro Aguilar, a Cuban economist who spoke to our group. The period of the early 1990s, called the “special period,” was extremely difficult for the entire population. Everyone had to literally tighten their belts when it came to food, energy and everything else. If this wasn’t bad enough, the United States tightened the blockade against Cuba in the early 1990s. (The Toricelli Act forbade non-U.S. countries to trade with Cuba, if a single part, say in an airplane made in France, came from the U.S.)

Aguilar explained that this was the second time in 30 years that Cuba had to restructure its economy. In the early 1960s, shortly after the revolution, Cuba lost 75% of its trading capacity when the United States first instituted the economic blockade. Of course, the blockade is what drove Cuba to depend so heavily on the Soviet block in the first place.

In the early 1990s, Cuba made several important economic decisions. Because of the low prices for sugar worldwide, they decided to cut back on sugar production, which had been their main export. They also decided to substantially expand several other areas of the economy--biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and tourism. According to Aguilar, the number of workers directly and indirectly involved in tourism increased from 78,000 in 1990 to 300,000 in 2000. They also decided to dollarize the economy, which means that most hotels and some stores and restaurants only accept dollars. In fact, what exists now are two economies side by side: one based on pesos, the other on the U.S. dollar. This was beginning to occur, but on a much smaller scale, in our previous trips.

Although the emphasis on tourism and dollarization has brought needed hard currency to the island, it has also brought contradictions. Cubans who have access to dollars, either through their work or through family remittances from outside the country are much better off than those who do not have access to dollars. Although people who work in tourist hotels get their salaries paid in pesos, they have access to dollars through tips. We were told that most hotels and restaurants pool their tips and then distribute them to all workers in the enterprise. This means that while hotel maids earn many fewer pesos than teachers or college professors, their tips in dollars make their total incomes considerably higher than teachers or college professors. The Cubans call this “the inverted pyramid.”

While some might interpret this as some kind of communist redistribution of income and economic status, it has certain ramifications. We heard about English teachers leaving their positions to work in the tourist industry. In addition, some young people may feel that they could do better hustling tourists than working in jobs that pay pesos. When tourists step out of their hotels,they are constantly approached by people offering to sell black market cigars; or show you the way to a restaurant or nightclub, for a tip; or to take you somewhere in an unlicensed and unmetered taxi.

In their attempt to increase tourism, the Cuban government has substantially upgraded the beach resort at Varedero. When we stayed there in one of our previous trips, the facilities were poor although the beach, itself, was beautiful. In 1997, a modern shopping center called the Plaza Americas was built. Several upscale hotels with beautiful swimming pools were also opened. The change was astonishing. During the day in Varadero on the recent trip, Fred was lured by the peaceful beach and did not conduct any social scientific investigations. However, Cubans were not even permitted to enter the Varadero area, except as workers. (This was also true of most of the tourist hotels in Havana and in other cities on the island.) We were told that this was for the convenience of the tourists. Most Cubans, of course, could not begin to afford the prices in Varadero, but it felt awkward to go to places where Cuban citizens were not permitted.

Cuban leaders and economists are aware of some of these contradictions but they say that the realities of the world left them no other choice. They are confident that once Cuba gets back on its feet, these contradictions will lessen. We hope that they are right.

Another economic issue arose in our visit to a sugar mill about one hour outside of Havana. The mill leadership explained that half of Cuba’s sugar mills had been closed during the past 10 years and only the most productive are still open. They described their technology as “average” but said that their workers are highly motivated. Since we visited on a weekend and after the harvest,there were no workers in the mill when we took the tour. There was, however, deteriorating asbestos everywhere! Much of the machinery dated back to the early 1900s. Given the age of the mill and the quantity of asbestos, we would guess that the only economic solution would be to close the mill, which would be highly detrimental to the economy. It is highly likely that the rest of the mills have the same problem.

When we asked the person taking us on the tour about the asbestos, he indicated that it was a problem and that they gave workers gloves to wear. A few days later, our group met with the head of Cuba’s trade unions and we asked the same question. The only thing he could say is that this problem needed a long-term solution. To be fair, he seemed as frustrated as we did. In the short run, however, the reality is that several hundred socialist workers and their families are regularly being exposed to a dangerous environment which cannot be effectively dealt with under current economic conditions. It is highly likely that similar problems exist in other industries.

CIVIL LIBERTIES/FREE SPEECH

Next is the issue of civil liberties, especially the ability to criticize the government. Since we arrived in Cuba a few months after the execution of three ferry hijackers and the imprisonment of 75 people who were opposed to Cuban government policy, many in our delegation had questions about the issue of dissent. A group of well-known, American left intellectuals (including Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky) had written an open letter criticizing the executions and long sentences for those imprisoned; and many in our group were critical of this open letter.

From the Cuban perspective, there has been a long history of terrorism from the United States and the Cuban exile community since the revolution. The war in Iraq, of course, made the Cubans wonder whether they would be next. Cuba had long since given up on its plan to develop nuclear energy, in part, because they did not want to provide the pretext for a U.S. attack.

There had been a number of hijacking attempts in Cuba prior to the one against the ferry and the Cubans believed that the United States saw these attempts as “destabilizing” for the region and might attack or further limit Cuba if the hijackings continued. They believed that swift, harsh punishment was the only way to stop future hijackings.

In a completely separate incident (which was conflated in the U.S. media), about 75 other people were imprisoned. They are called “dissidents” in the United States and “counterrevolutionaires” in Cuba. All of them were involved in groups that received money from the United States government and/or anti-Castro Cuban American groups, either directly or indirectly. These groups were also openly courted by the new head of the American Interest Section, James Cason. Prior to the arrests, Cason made many public visits to meetings of these groups and seemed to be unnecessarily provocative. Even though the Cuban government had undercover agents in all these groups and did not see them as an immediate threat, the government decided to reel them in.

Many in our delegation supported the actions of the Cuban government. Others of us did not and cited the writings of Wayne Smith, former head of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana. Smith argued that the Bush administration had been intentionally provocative in the hope that Cubans would act in a way that would damage their reputation in the United States and Europe. Clearly, and most unfortunately, the Cuban government went for the bait.

While the actions of the Bush administration are reprehensible the Cuban actions are troubling for several reasons. The trials were short and few details were released to the public. This is especially problematic in death penalty cases. Even Philip Agee, the former CIA agent who lives in Cuba and supports Cuba on most issues, called on the government to release details of the trials so that the issue of due-process can be independently evaluated. Agee spoke to our group and outlined the Cuban government position and rationale.

More importantly, the Cuban government action seems to reinforce the position that there was a price to be paid for opposition to government policies. As several Cuban intellectuals told us, disagreement within the revolution is acceptable but opposition to the revolution is not. Talking about the return of capitalism or challenging the leadership of the Communist Party is simply not acceptable discourse. Of course, the Cuban Communist Party has the power to determine whether a particular criticism is within the revolution or not. Unfortunately, this particular approach to political dissent did not work in the Soviet block and it does not work in China. We doubt that it will work in Cuba.

Since the early 1990s, the government has turned many state-owned farms into smaller cooperatively owned farms in order to increase incentives to peasants. They have also encouraged small-scale private enterprise in agriculture and in shoe and bicycle repair shops, private restaurants and the like. Although many of these enterprises are family businesses, it appears to be possible to have a few employees. Given the current economic problems facing Cuba, this seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Twenty years ago, when Cuba was influenced by the Soviet policy of large-scale state-owned farms and factories, much of this would have been seen as counterrevolutionary and anti-socialist. Today, Cuba is critical of this type of Soviet influence even though they failed to listen to critics at the time. When the government decides what is and what is not acceptable discussion, serious problems can arise since some options are automatically rejected.

Some of this filters down to the level of individual discussion. We were discussing a particular aspect of foreign policy with a Cuban who was strongly committed to the Cuban government and the revolution. However, she said that she could not get enough information on this issue from the official Cuban press and went to the internet for alternative views, which is legal and done in Cuba without negative consequences. “I just want to make up my own mind,” she said. Then, she turned and said “Please don’t quote me on this.”

Fred mentioned this during a question and answer session at the Institute of Philosophy during the last day of our trip. The first response concerned the “inside vs outside the revolution” argument and he assured them that this individual was not a counterrevolutionary.

Next came examples of how various domestic policies like an income tax or tuition for higher education had been heavily debated in popular organizations before they were officially rejected. Indeed, there often is a great deal of discussion of prospective policies at the grassroots level. This was followed by the comment that “Fear does not exist in terms of the relations between the people and their leaders” and that “foreigners were not equipped to assess this.”

During a coffee break, the Cubans had huddled and had more to say. After criticizing the capitalist media in the United States, one speaker said that the Cuban press has limited resources and concentrates on depth rather than immediacy. “We are unable to do a better job at this point. We try to educate the people, not just inform them.” One of his colleagues said that “The Cuban press is legitimate in the eyes of the people. If it appears in Granma, they know it is fact.” Somehow, none of these comments were particularly reassuring. We seriously doubt that a public opinion poll of Cubans would reveal that the majority believe everything that they read in the press.

We appreciate the real threat that Cuba faces from the United States and we are all too familiar with the corporate biases of the American “free” press. Yet, for a society to be truly democratic, the population must be able to critically assess a variety of viewpoints before arriving at a decision. In the U.S., it is certainly necessary go beyond the capitalist-owned media to a variety of alternative publications. In Cuba, there should be alternatives to the government-run media.

RACIAL INEQUALITY

The Cuban population comes in a variety of hues that reflect their African and Spanish heritages. The indigenous Indian population had virtually disappeared during the period of Spanish occupation. Prior to the revolution, there had been a long history of lighter skinned Cubans being the more privileged group that discriminated against darker skinned Cubans. After the revolution in 1959, the new constitution prohibited racial discrimination. During our early trips, we were told that there was no race discrimination and that people’s race did not matter. We saw a lot of racial intermingling and we did not give race a lot of attention.

During our recent trip, we expected that Cubans would present papers on racial issues but this was generally not the case. There was some concern with multiculturalism and with Afro-Cuban religious traditions, but there was little about the social construction of race or about racial inequality. Several people acknowledged that lighter-skinned Cubans were overrepresented in leadership positions, professional jobs and higher education student bodies, and that darker-skinned Cubans were overrepresented in less-skilled lower-paying jobs. However, little data on race are available although we were told that some recent census data will be released soon.

If the data were available, we would guess that racial inequality would be substantially lower than what exists in the United States. Any remaining racial inequality was often attributed to the “lower cultural level” of darker skinned Cubans and sometimes to the fact that darker skinned Cubans were less likely than lighter skinned Cubans to have families in the U.S. to provide them with much needed dollars through family remittances.

The only specifics we were able to get were several stories about tourism. Many of the hotels are joint-ventures between the Cuban government and foreign companies and cater to European tourists. The foreign companies assumed, perhaps correctly, that tourists would prefer associating with lighter skinned Cubans as translators, guides, maids, etc. so they began to hire mainly lighter skinned Cubans. Since access to dollars was a major source of economic privilege, the impact of this employment discrimination was quite significant. When this came to light, we were told, the Cuban government took over the hiring and did it in a non-discriminatory way. In fact, two of our main translators were dark-skinned.

Outlawing, and hopefully ending explicit racial discrimination is a monumental achievement of the Cuban revolution. However, attributing residual racial inequality to the lower cultural levels of dark-skinned Cubans is appallingly unsophisticated by progressive American standards. An American who explains black underrepresentation in American higher education this way would be accused of “blaming the victim” and “intellectual racism.” While the Cuban situation is not analogous to that of the United States, policy makers and social scientists could use some intense education on the complexities of race relations.

Another example of the subtle nature of racism concerns the policy on family remittances. As we mentioned earlier, they are being encouraged to bring badly needed hard currency to Cuba. This policy unintentionally exacerbates racial inequality since the mainly lighter-skinned privileged families who left after the revolution send money to their lighter-skinned families that remained in Cuba. Blacks have far fewer families with money in the U.S. to send them dollars.

Although we were told that members of the Institute of Anthropology were doing more in-depth research on racial issues, we were not able to make contact with them. We also brought back a special issue of Temas, one of the leading intellectual journals in Cuba, that had several articles on race. We have not yet gotten it translated.

GENDER INEQUALITY

Cuban society made great strides against sexism after the revolution of 1959. On our first trip we learned how prostitution had been abolished, primarily because jobs were now available for women in the new socialist economy that did not exist before. Moreover, day care centers were available for virtually all women who worked in the labor force and needed these services (although many had grandmothers who still cared for young children). On the other hand, the opportunity to desegregate labor did not occur.

After the revolution, Cuba restructured into its economy a gender-segregated occupational structure and domestic labor in the home. While many more women worked outside the home, they tended to work in jobs typically done by women–-e.g., in schools and in day care centers. On the other hand, women also benefitted from more universalistic policies like paying only 10 percent of their salaries for their state-owned apartments. What this meant was that if a woman got divorced,she did not lose her housing because her rent was lowered because of the loss of her husband’s salary.

To be sure, women have opportunities under socialism that they never had before the revolution: access to employment, free education, maternity leave provisions, pensions, health care, and childcare. And while more women are doctors, nurses and technicians today, men are still found in the highest levels of these occupations (Jackson, 2002). And today women are paid “equal wages for equal work.” However, the problem still exists that women tend not to be employed at “equal work” with men–-i.e., women still work in sex-segregated jobs, which some of the conference participants indicated, were paid less than typically male jobs. And even though women are now two-thirds of all professionals in Cuba, there was little discussion of the particular types of professional jobs women did as compared to the professional jobs men did. On the other hand, they were concerned that the professions and education (both elementary and higher education) were becoming “feminized” with so many women in them. As in the U.S., feminization of labor is both cause and consequence of labor that is being devalued–socially and economically. That fear was expressed by some of the Cuban women at the conference as well.

According to Milagros Martinez Reinosa (2001), in 1997 women were 42.5% of the labor force in the public sector, the primary employer of all Cubans, and 18% of the private sector; 65% of all technical and professional workers. Today, women are the heads of three ministries of the government, none of them traditionally female areas: Science, Technology, and the Environment; Interior Commerce; and Foreign Cooperatives and Investment.

It is in administrative positions where women are less likely to be found. Thus, 30 % of managers throughout the country are women. In addition, women are 24.5% of the central administrators of the state, 28 % in the Cuban Parliament, and only 16% of the Council of State. In the legal system, women do better: they are 35% managers in juridical system, 61% of the prosecutors, 49% of the professional judges, and 47% of magistrates of the Supreme Popular Tribunal. While women are 52.5% of union leaders, they are only 30% of the active Communist party members.

We found this sentiment that Cuban women are less likely to be administrators confirmed in our discussions with Cuban women at the Conference. They argued that despite many attempts by the Cuban government and its important Cuban Women’s Federation, the two most common criticisms for lingering female disadvantage were said to be deep seated holdovers of patriarchal culture and the “double” or “triple” day for women. The double day, of course, refers to the fact that women are responsible for jobs in the labor force and for most if not all the domestic work at home: childcare, home care, and husband care. The triple day adds to these responsibilities the political work women do in their communities and in their country.

The difficulties women experienced intensified during the “special period.” Some women lost jobs altogether, others lost positions at work and status; others often worked at more than one job (e.g., a professional job for which they were not able to be paid and a lower skilled or tourist job which provided some income); and many had elder care to do as well. Everything was much more difficult. Shirley Jackson (2002) talks about these increasing hardships from her trip in October of 2001:

The collapse of socialist countries has greatly impacted the economic situation in Cuba. Because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, some women have returned to the household. In part this is due to the disappearance of programs that had been created to assist women. Laundry services and daycare availability are two such programs that have limited the ability of women to work outside the home. Women were told that they were qualified for certain kinds of work and went back to work, but in jobs that were closer to home, some of which they were overqualified for.Factories had closed and there was little or no transportation” (p. 2).

At the conference, the Cuban women talked about the contradictions they live out between a socialist society built on principles of equality while facing the realities of the economic circumstances that force Cuba to incorporate alternative economic models (including tourism) which challenge socialist principles. They argue that the economic crisis has had an acute impact on women’s domestic work, paid work, prostitution, and violence against women (see Jennissen and Lundy, 2001).

Several of us presented papers on violence against women–in the U.S., Finland, Russia, and Cuba. Unfortunately, very little data are collected on violence against women in Cuba so that a meaningful picture could not be gotten. What was clear was that there is certainly abuse of women in the home, although the research reported on at the conference found that most of it is not said to be physical–but much more psychological and emotional. On the other hand, Cubans live in very tight spaces–usually with three generations together. The kind of abuse that occurs in isolated families is less likely to occur in Cuba because of the close living situation, but also because of the existence of block-wide Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) who are based in neighborhoods and are more attuned to fights that might go on. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Cuban women are just recently becoming aware of domestic violence as a real issue, they are very clear that it does exist and has probably been aggravated by the hardships of the special period.

CONCLUSION

As readers can see, we are still trying to sort out what we say and heard during our trip. One thing is for certain: Given the world that we live in, the process of socialist transformation is not a smooth one. We look forward to hearing people’s reactions to some of our observations.

References

* Jackson, Shirley A. (2002). Exploring the Status of Women in Cuba. Sex and Gender News, March, pp. 1-3.
* Jennissen, Therese, and Colleen Lundy (2001). Progress in the Face of Adversity: Cuban Women Entering the New Millennium. In C. Lundy and N. Vasallo Barrueta (Eds.), Cuban Women: History, Contradictions and Contemporary Challenges. (Canada), pp. 45-70.
* Martinez Reinosa, Milagros (2001). Women and Cuban Foreign Policy: An Approximation to the Study of the Topic in the Decade of the Nineties. In C. Lundy and N. Vasallo Barrueta (Eds.), Cuban Women: History, Contradictions and Contemporary Challenges. (Canada), pp. 83-92.

Fred L. Pincus is a sociologist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Natalie J. Sokoloff is a sociologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.