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This article summarizes the results of a case study I recently concluded with women professionals and technicians in Cuba during the crisis of the 1990s; it is part of a larger study on Cuban women and employment. I intend to argue that the process of women’s incorporation and retention in the labor force in Cuba did not stop during the crisis years of the 90s, nor did all the changes in gender ideology that women’s employment has promoted during the last forty years come to an end.

Cuba’s economic reform is one of the few experiments in socioeconomic change that currently defines itself as an alternative to neoliberal transformation that nearly exclusive and all-encompassing formula for structural readjustment to crises.  Even though the reform deals basically with economic mechanisms and unfolds on this terrain, its impact has a wider compass.  The systematic links among all spheres of social life and the very magnitude of the reform amplify the scope of the changes.  It therefore becomes increasingly urgent to explore the social effects of the readjustment, as the k

Looking at trends characterizing the century’s end, we can see that a new capitalist world order is emerging, clearly more unequal, more exclusionary, and more unstable than the postwar order. The traditional polarization of cold war rivalries has been replaced by a polarization between the developed and the underdeveloped worlds, between weak and strong states, and between nations at the center and those dependent on them. One of those poles is occupied by most of the world’s population and by the majority of nations, which are becoming increasingly marginalized.

Contemporary dilemmas in Cuba: an introduction

Transformations in Cuba during the 1990s have been analyzed by numerous specialists.  Among the changes in the agrarian sector, one of the most important was the creation of the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs) in September 1993, a change that has undoubtedly influenced the social organization of cultivation and processing of many of the country’s crops.  In more than a few cases, the search for economic sustainability together with the scarcity of resources have resulted in a return to traditional and ecological practices.  On the other hand, the creation and development of th

“Race,” an Afro-Cuban-American businessman wrote in the Miami press not long ago, “is at the heart of Cuba’s crisis.” Although statements like this are not unheard-of, most analyses of the Cuban transition or the so-called “special period” treat the country as if it were a racially-homogenous entity. This is not particularly surprising.

Cuba's agrarian reform of 1993-a result of change subsequent to the collapse of the Socialist Bloc-may turn out to be the most far-reaching since the first agrarian reform of 1959. The two articles in this section study this process and show that it is by no means completed. At stake, argues Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, a researcher from Hannover University in Germany who has done extensive study in Cuba, is no less than the solution to agrarian problems inherited from Cuba's old export-based sugar monoculture based on huge farms or latifundia.

The Cuban system of representative government, known as the Organs of People's Power (Órganos del Poder Popular or OPP), operates at three levels: the National Assembly, the provincial assemblies, and the municipal assemblies. The latter two are denominated the Local Organs of People's Power (Órganos Locales del Poder Popular or OLPP). Citizen participation is found mainly at the municipal level of government. Here candidates are chosen directly by the people in their respective electoral districts, and the elections are competitive.

Every Cuban felt the effect of the economic crisis following the collapse of the Eastern socialist bloc and the suspension of CMEA (socialist bloc common market) trading agreements. From 1990 to 1993, according to official statistics, the GNP fell by just under 35% and consumption plummeted (including such basics as food). The crisis affected not only living standards but social relations and political morale as well.