Science in Cuba and Puerto Rico

This article was published in La Escalera, Summer 1969

Many do not know it, but more than four centuries ago, Puerto Rico was at the forefront of science. The field that we know today as "operations research" has its origins in the famous monograph "Contributions around the hypothesis of Spanish immortality." presented by Urayoán, Agueybana and Salcedo in the first issue of the Taíno Journal of Social Physiology. In four centuries of colonization we have not recovered our leadership position.

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During the last few years I have had the privilege of teaching, carrying out research projects and participating in the struggles for educational reform at the universities of Puerto Rico and Havana.

Physically the two universities are very similar. The architectural style is similar. The Havana campus is smaller and has less vegetation, but the original buildings are located around a plaza (three faculties and the rector's office), like those here, and the University overflows the campus to occupy nearby buildings.

For most of their history, both universities have had much in common. Starting from a colonial-agrarian environment and a faculty of similar social background, they also shared an emphasis on the Humanities, the confrontation of a more or less corrupt administration with the student movement, and some outstanding scholars in a desert of mediocrity.

Each nation develops its own scientific personality as part of its social and political evolution within the context of its natural environment. In the colonies, science arrives with the colonizers, but that does not mean that it is a copy of the science of the metropolis.

In imperial Spain, with its lack of industrialization and its backward agrarian pattern, a science linked to production never emerged. Intellectual life revolved more around literature, history, philosophy, theology and politics. Science had neither much support nor much prestige.

The first conquest of America brought the Spaniard to a new environment: the tropical flora and fauna attracted his attention. One man alone, without the need for special equipment, was enough to make collections. Hence, biology in the colony began with systematics (the same happens in Europe, but in the colonies this stage is more prolonged). Then, when a new Creole class took shape under Spanish rule, it is not surprising that it began its intellectual life mainly in the Humanities and Law, and its scientific interest with systematics, medicine and, later, agriculture.

In this last aspect the colonies were ahead of Spain. A true feudalism was never implanted in America, even less so in the Caribbean. The landowners were bourgeois. In spite of all their feudal customs and styles in the internal life of the hacienda, they produced for the market; they did not despise enterprise; they were concerned with practical problems. With the founding of the Sociedad de Amigos de País in Puerto Rico we already see an incipient bourgeoisie, with collective class consciousness, which stimulates intellectual effort in the service of the economy. However, the man of science of the Spanish empire is typically solitary. He works alone, in fields that do not require much equipment or laboratory: systematic biology, mathematics, medicine.

With the second conquest of America comes the dominance of an industrial metropolis, with a very pragmatic science. Military medicine began to confront tropical diseases: Asford, Walter Reed, etc. (The same happened in Africa where the English military medical service was dedicated to the study of "sleeping sickness.") Geographical agencies prepare maps and expeditions and study geology. The New York Academy of Sciences prepares its "Scientific Survey of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands." For the participating scientists it was a unique opportunity in their field: for the conquistadors, an inventory of the new properties.

Since then we have had two scientific apparatuses in Puerto Rico: one federal and the other Puerto Rican. The federal apparatus, richer and with a program coming from the North, comes to dominate some fields of research and even manages to impose its political prejudices against some scientists. The two apparatuses sometimes collaborate, sometimes confluence. They respond to different motives, origins and centers of control.

In the subsequent development of Puerto Rican science we note some aspects of recruitment, scientific education and the organization of research.

Recruitment

University recruitment is still limited to a sector of the potential population--urban, coming mostly from the upper and middle classes and the upper strata of workers. But even within the university or pre-university population, recruitment to science is caught between two fires: On the one hand, the traditional Spanish preference for the humanities, reinforced in our time because young people with a greater sense of social responsibility tend to consider that the most urgent problems of the nation are not technical-scientific, but political and human. On the other hand, the new neocolonial tradition of instrumental education, which diverts large numbers towards commercial studies. This latter tendency is accentuated by the multiplication of commercial colleges, by the greater opportunities for employment in commerce than in science, and by the anti-intellectualism of the nouveau riche. Add to this that the College of Natural Sciences has the reputation of being difficult. Under conditions that stimulate intellectual interest or a desire to serve one's country, the difficulties of a course would serve as a challenge. In our environment they simply discourage.

In Cuba the situation is different. There are no economic obstacles for students. These, for the most part, are on scholarship and are fully supported by the University. Mass education campaigns have turned almost the entire population into potential university students. In addition to direct pre-university graduates, adults educated in the various revolutionary campaigns can enter the peasant-worker faculty. However, the level of public education is still very unequal in the different regions of the country, which means that opportunities are not yet equal for all.

Cuba has about 50,000 students at the university level. The "per capita" is lower than that of Puerto Rico. But, on the other hand, the pre-university students get the equivalent of our "basic course" to the University and at the end of the fifth year they have the equivalent of a good master's degree. Since there is no business school and very few study law, the number of students in truly academic fields is greater.

Cubans also recognize the role of science in the development of their country. The student enters the field of science not in search of an easy career--there is no such thing in Cuba: graduates all start with the same salary and, anyway, money is of little importance to them, but with the intention of contributing to the development of the country. That is why the University of Havana can recruit for the sciences a student body with a technical level more or less equal to those here, but with the advantage of greater social responsibility.

Science Education

Optimal conditions for science education are provided when university faculty are actively engaged in research, are enthusiastic about their work, and work with students as colleagues in a common enterprise. It requires a flexible but demanding curriculum, emphasizing conceptual problems rather than details, and many seminars and discussions. Much depends on the general atmosphere of society, the social position of the teachers and the role of research in society.

The Education of the Scientist

Sometimes truth takes precedence over courtesy: the education received here is a fraud.

It is fraudulent when compared to the requirements of a modern science. It is fraudulent when compared to the needs of the country. It is fraudulent when compared to the self-praise of window dressing and the glitz of modern equipment. And it is fraudulent when compared to potential human capabilities. Our University, our College of Natural Sciences, have been and are a crematorium of talents.

It is so despite the fact that a few professors have sacrificed their research careers to fight for the modernization of the College, despite the fact that dozens of proposals have already been submitted to the Administration--first out of hope, then out of a sense of duty, finally as a mere ritual.

This is so despite the able students we send away to study, who, while studying, talk about departmental deficiencies and the need to implement numerous changes, and then return with their doctorates and retire intellectually at 25--or leave--or jump prematurely into administrative positions, joining the showcase club, jumping from meeting to meeting, from committee to committee; making useless reports; talking about progress; and trying, like corporate executives, to get along with everyone.

In the eight years since I arrived here there has been much change, but little progress. The ecology program has disappeared, other fields have grown; but the percentage of Puerto Ricans on the faculty with their own serious research programs is about the same. The level of the graduate program remains more or less the same. During these eight years we acquired and lost a research vessel, raised and abandoned our drosophila laboratory, and held three times--in eight years--an annual biological research symposium. We move and stay in the same place.

Looked at closely, each failure has its particular explanation--a bumbling dean or a cowardly one, a change of leadership, a change of personnel, budget problems, personalisms, etc. But, let's take a step back to see the big picture: if a thousand roads lead to failure; if intelligence, dedication and effort do not result in progress, we must conclude that something is wrong and that something is fundamental.

The stagnation of science in our university is due to both internal and external factors. Among the internal ones:

1. The role of the Administration as a political body rather than as a national educational leader.

2. The vision of teaching as just another career in a society of careers, in a society that accepts half-heartedness and mediocrity if they look good, that corners enthusiasm, frustrates spirits and exalts verbiage.

3. The unsatisfied need for a faculty capable and willing to lead a modern teaching program. Otherwise, flexibility becomes downgrading, and the more modern the course, the less sense it makes to the students.

4. Pitiyanquismo--exemplified in the determination of the curriculum based on accreditation by North American universities; in that kind of cynical naiveté in the face of every adventurer who comes from the North to "advise" (with offers to obtain funds); in the constant recourse to American experts to evaluate the scientific reports of Puerto Ricans.

5. Lack of planning in science...

In Cuba the faculty consisted of two groups. The older ones were university professors or pre-university teachers before the Revolution. In their background and preparation they are like those here; however, in the last two years they have entered research--some for the first time--with admirable energy and enthusiasm. (That in itself is a hope for us. Our indifferent, apathetic, pompous faculty is not without latent capacities. They are just suppressed in the colonial atmosphere and will be resurrected once their efforts acquire social significance). Of the young generation, product of the Revolution, there is no need to talk about it. Moreover, the involvement of the University (faculty, students, drivers, deans and secretaries together) in agricultural work tends to break down the barriers of communication between the different sectors.

However, most of the best Cuban scientists work in the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, rather than at the University. Despite the institutes' curricula, there is still an underutilization of intellectual resources in teaching. In addition, the European tradition weighs more heavily on the University of Havana. As its Rector noted, "we are still producing encyclopedists instead of scholars."

Students have too many lecture hours, too few elective courses and, as a result of the blockade, an inadequate library. European professors--who predominate in the fifth year--tend to over-specialize students.

A few years ago, an academic reform was begun ("a reform," says the Rector of the University of Havana, "while the rest of the country is going through a revolution") The academic revolution has yet to be made. But they are forging it--not against a reactionary administration, but under the joint leadership of administrators, professors and students. The retarding factor is not the existence of an opposition, but limitations in facilities and expertise. In the meantime, they use the resources they have to the maximum. Although it may not seem like a fairy tale to us, the physical plant employees and office workers at the University of Havana conceive of their work as one that facilitates teaching and research. Hence, despite the country's shortages, university vehicles are always in a position to undertake scientific expeditions.

The same could not remotely be said of our situation at the University of Puerto Rico, despite having more abundant resources.

The Use of Science

Under capitalism, science has three types of application:

1. regime maintenance (military research, studies aimed at social manipulation, etc.).

2. profit enhancement (research generally carried out by private corporations), and

3. social utility. There is also fundamental research, not directed to immediate practical ends, which serves as a basis for the others.

Naturally, a given work may contribute to more than one end. The channeling of national effort to different ends is accomplished through money: competition between industries and universities, the availability of research funds, the conscious decisions of universities or departments to develop this or that field.

In colonies and small independent countries, the first type of application does not matter much--except when the metropolis uses the colony for its military research. But the second does. In Puerto Rico today, under the pressure of Fomento and the new government, it is logical to expect a greater emphasis on science applied to industry (engineering and industrial chemistry) and a continued disregard for science of social utility and fundamental science.

Imperialism also brings with it intellectual colonialism. It usually manifests itself in the following ways:

1. attracting the best scientists from the colony to the metropolis

2. Promoting the localization of basic science in the metropolis, while relegating the colony to doing applied or secondary work.

3. Limiting the scientist to an instrumentalist education, without allowing him to consider more broadly the history, philosophy and sociology of science.

4. Intellectually dominating scientists, imposing on them an anti-national, anti-political and pro-private enterprise ideology.

In general, in the absence of a national bread for science and in a commercial-charterist environment, scientific colonialization has been successful. Even within governmental scientific enterprises, the bureaucratic environment demoralizes creative effort and tends to impose mediocrity.

In Cuba, almost all students who go through science programs at the university later work in that field. There is already a scientific community of several hundred Cubans, made up of the 28 institutes of the Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Scientific Research (something like a university graduate school of science) and the medical and agricultural research centers. There are, of course, differences in quality. Among those I have visited, the oceanology and soil institutes stand out.

International scientific cooperation is mostly carried out through agreements between Cuban entities and those of other socialist countries or the United Nations. Foreign scientists establish research programs together with Cuban scientists. They then return to their homelands and are replaced by others. When the latter leave, the programs remain in Cuban hands. Thus, the Soil Institute was established with the collaboration of China; the Oceanology Institute with the University of Odessa; and the Tropical Studies Institute with the University of Germany. There are also individuals from capitalist countries working in the University and the institutes.

The European influence produces a competent, although sometimes narrow, scientific apparatus. The Revolution brings enthusiastic scientists, dedicated to their work and conscious of their role in the transformation of the Republic. If they fail in anything, it is that, in their willingness to work wherever they are needed, they sometimes accept positions in which they underutilize their talents. That was the situation months ago, but in Cuba things are not only changing, they are progressing.

A Plan for Science

It would be utopian to propose a plan for colonial science. However, it is essential to fight to defend our scientific resources; to begin to face the serious problems that arise when man modifies the environment irresponsibly; and to foster interests in science in order to create the scientific cadres that one day the Republic will need. That is why I propose the following fundamentals:

1. For a developing nation the main thing has to be a science directed towards the problems of the country.

2. But it is not possible to have a purely applied science, parasitic on the advances of other places. It demoralizes the scientist and his efforts to pale copies.

3. It is therefore necessary to develop applied research in a fundamental way; to convert organisms or formations of economic importance (the coffee butterfly, the sugar cane miner, the tropical forest, the mangrove, the lagoon) into objects of fundamental study.

4. A small nation cannot be at the forefront of all fields of science. But it can specialize in some. Thus, taking advantage of their natural environment, the Scandinavians have been pioneers in oceanology and forest genetics. The Danes, taking advantage of the accident of having particularly talented scientists, developed the theoretical physics of the Copenhagen school. And India, by a combination of personal accidents and agricultural needs, excels in statistics.

5. Modern science is not necessarily the science of complex and expensive apparatus. There is, for example, modern systematics using pins and cardboard boxes. We should not be carried away by fashionable comparisons.

6. Scientific research requires other types of personnel in addition to principal investigators. We must create schools and recognize the careers of research technicians, equipment maintainers and laboratory assistants.

7. We must develop public awareness of and concern for our natural environment--before the Republic inherits a desert.

8. We must fight for academic and administrative reform--probably at the graduate school level--that creates a counter-environment to vitriol, bureaucratism, and compadreria.

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And one day, when the political situation allows for the rational use of our natural and human resources, the Puerto Rican section of the Academy of Sciences of the Antillean Confederation will do its part.