CUBAN TRANSITIONS

Recent news coming out of Cuba shows promising signs for growth in Cuba’s economy. The two main markets that have been opened are in housing and car sales. This past November, Cuba lifted a half-century ban on the sale of used cars and the trading of properties on the island. The move by Raul Castro was an effort to try to improve the island’s dismal economy, one that has been dealing with shortages and blackouts since the topple of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the ‘Special Period’ of food rationing and cutbacks in 1990. The new measures demonstrate to the world Cuba’s growing interest in expanding its markets and bringing capitalism to the island for the first time in 50 years.

(Image source: New York Times)

However, while the United States is quick to celebrate any small move in the direction of free market economy and capitalistic exploits, there is a cautionary footnote that must be added onto these economic advancements. For one, while cars may now be more widely available to the public, it is important to note that the majority of Cubans, especially those working in government-controlled jobs, cannot afford the cars. Because of their value and rarity, used cars made after the 1959 revolution have extremely inflated price tags, selling for thousands and thousands of dollars above their market value. This makes the used car market an extremely elite enterprise considering that the average monthly income on the island is around $20, hardly enough to even cover the cost of gas. The same goes for the country’s real estate market. With poor construction and overcrowding as common problems in Cuba’s largest cities, only people with connections, resources, and money can really benefit from the opening of these markets.

Nonetheless, openings in the Cuban economy have spurred an increase in cash flow and a move towards entrepreneurial enterprises, giving certain members of the Cuban population a new chance to succeed in an economy that, for so long, gave little opportunity for upward mobility.

Sources:

Burnett, Victoria. “Relenting on Car Sales, Cuba Turns Notorious Clunkers Into Gold.” New York Times Nov. 5, 2011. March 2, 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/world/americas/relenting-on-car-sales-cuba-turns-notorious-clunkers-into-gold.html?ref=cuba>

Burnett, Victoria. “Cuba Unleashes the Pent-Up Energy of Real Estate Dreams.” New York Times Feb. 15, 2012. March 2, 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/americas/real-estate-fever-spreads-in-cuba.html?ref=cuba>

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Staying connected to friends, family, the media and the outside world is easier and faster than ever. Some people even experience withdrawals when they leave their phones at home or can’t connect to the internet. The citizens of Cuba do not have that problem. As being one of the least-connected countries in the world, many Cuban citizens have a hard time finding a computer and receiving internet access. The government first introduced the internet solely for the purpose of making their state run companies more competitive (Coté 161). According to the World Bank, in 2001 there were twenty personal computers to every 1,000 Cubans, with internet access restricted to foreigners, company executives and state officials (Coté 161).

Foreigners have to pay five dollars an hour to use a computer with internet access. Even if Cubans can afford the pay the five dollar an hour rate, they might still not be allowed to use the computer (Coté 164). The limited resources for internet and computer use have created a large black market full of computer parts and stolen access codes. Herrera, a young writer describes how in her world “pretty much everybody has black-market access” (Coté 166). The black market lets informáticos like Herrera to receive cheap and safe internet. Under the unlikely event of government internet approval, individuals have to pay a “prohibitively expensive” fee combined with the lost of anonymity (Coté 166). Purchasing internet is expensive, a computer even more so. Coté describes how “a Pentium III system with a CD-ROM, modem, and speakers would cost just over 2,000 dollars – more than double the price in the United States” (171). Unless received as gifts from abroad, access to a personal computer is a luxury.

Julia E. Sweig describes how there is an ongoing debate within the government about whether or not to allow popular access to the Internet. The government understands that “Cuba’s exposure to all things global and technological is recognized as inevitable” (Sweig 215). Schools, clubs and organizations in Cuba are realizing the importance of attaining computer skills in the global market. Clubs hold sessions to teach students how to work Windows, Word, Web design and other programs. (Coté 171). It appears that the Cuban government, while originally hesitant, is slowly opening up opportunities for popular internet access. A National Public Radio (NPR) report titled “In Cuba, Dial-Up Internet Is A Luxury by Nick Miroff” details how a government-run television newscast “extolled the virtues of social networking as a source of real-time alternative information.” After the Arab Spring events and the influential role that social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, played in the rebellions, one would expect Cuba to be hesitant about allowing easy access. Rolando García, a café manager, does not believe that greater Internet access would promote social change or social rebellion in Cuba. García declares that “the revolution isn’t afraid of this” (Coté 164). In accordance with García, government does not seem afraid of social media. The creation of a new, government hosted website called The Social Network, the Cuban version of Facebook, demonstrates just how unafraid the government is (Miroff). Even though the government seems to be taking steps in increasing popular internet access in Cuba, many Cubans are still without access.

Coté, John. “Cubans Log On Behind Castro’s Back.” Capitalism, God, and a Good Cigar: Cuba Enters the 21st Century. Ed. Lydia Chávez. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005. 160-73. Print.
Miroff, Nick. “In Cuba, Dial-Up Internet Is A Luxury.” NPR. NPR, 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2011/12/14/143721874/in-cuba-dial-up-internet-is-a-luxury>.
Sweig, Julia E. Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Despite the Special Period – a time marked by dramatic scarcity of resources, the rise of racial and social inequality, the emergence and normalization of black market activity, the exploitation of Cuban bodies and culture to attract and serve the tourist sector, censorship, limited mobility – one aspect of Cubanidad has survived and only seems to become more ingrained in Cuban psyche over time: devotion to la Revolución.

Redefinition has been crucial to its survival. While at one point the state condemned rap music, it now embraces it; it once criminalized homosexuality and now state-sponsored CENESEX promotes discourse on and provides resources to this part of the Cuban population. In its various incarnations, however, Fidel Castro has served as a constant of the revolution for over five decades.

Described by Michelle Chase as “charismatic” and “spontaneous,” Fidel, whom she calls a “crusader,” has succeeded in making “revolution” in Cuba as powerful and persistent a tenet of Cubanidad as the “American Dream” in the United States.

Despite his illness and consequent resignation of presidency in 2008, leaving his brother Raúl in his stead, Fidel continues to play an advisory role in Cuban affairs, acting as “great sage in chief [who] compels the new government to modulate its moves within a policy framework that will not excessively offend [his] sensibilities” (Sweig 226). While he has not made a public appearance in years, his presence remains ever felt, respected, and emulated. After all, he is “hardly one to go quietly” (2009:226).

Throughout his illness, Fidel (though Sweig casts doubt on whether Fidel himself is writing them) has published reflexiones, reflections, through which he preserves revolutionary zeal and devotion and reinforces the view that the revolution’s purpose lies largely in opposing the United States’ imperialist presence and actions. The U.S is a permanent enemy, one that reaffirms the need for continuing the revolution and instills pride in the achievements of that revolution.

On January 8, 2012, Fidel’s reflection criticizes the Tea Party, the fact that Obama’s realization of “the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. are light years further away than the Earth is from the nearest inhabitable planet,” and satirically muses that the United States’ biggest problem is “the absence in the White House of a robot capable of governing the United States and preventing a war that would put an end to the life of our species” – a robot he suspects registered “Hispanics, Afro-Americans and the growing numbers of the impoverished middle class” would vote for (CubaDebate).

His January 24, 2012 reflection, entitled “The Fruit That Did Not Fall,” is considerably less subtle and more indicative of the ideological fuel the United States’ failures provide for Cuban belief in la revolución. Beginning with an account of how “Cuba found itself forced to fight for its existence against an expansionist power,” he declares that “one cannot be a patriot or a revolutionary without thoroughly understanding” that Jose Marti’s fight was an effort to prevent the United States from expanding. He then declares:

“Current news from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, England, the Malvinas and several other parts of the planet are serious and all foretell political and economic disaster due to the foolhardiness of the United States and its allies.

…

I must point out that the campaign to select a Republican candidate as the possible future president of this globalized and far-reaching empire has become —I say this in all seriousness— the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been heard. But as I have things to do, I cannot dedicate any time to this topic. I knew it would be like this.

…

Bush and his stupidities reigned for eight years at a time when the Cuban Revolution had already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has never fallen into the lap of the empire. Cuba will never become another force used by the empire to expand over the people of the Americas. Marti’s blood will not have been shed in vain.”

Fidel has given Cuba a cause to trust and an enemy to despise, and the spirit of revolution pulses as vividly and angrily through him as it does through the Cuban people.

Now, what will happen when Fidel Castro dies; what will his legacy become? With Raúl’s liberal economic and ideological shifts away from “Cuba’s heroic struggle against imperialism and its bright socialist future” (Chase 2011), how drastically will the revolution be redefined? If Raúl’s governance fails to deliver the promise that “no one would be abandoned to their fate” and the conditions of the Special Period persist or worsen, Fidel’s words might leave Cubans yearning for the return of their charismatic revolutionary leader, one with determination and hope. If, however, he brings prosperity to the Cuban population in a more equitable and rapid fashion than that of the Special Period, Fidel’s Socialist fire might be reduced to ashes, once and for all.

Sources:

Julia Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Michelle Chase, Cuba Rethinks the Revolution (2011)

Fidel Castro, “The Fruit that Did Not Fall” [English Translation by CubaDebate]

http://en.cubadebate.cu/reflections-fidel/2012/01/26/fruit-that-did-not-fall/

Fidel Castro, “The Best President for the United States” [CubaDebate]

http://en.cubadebate.cu/reflections-fidel/2012/01/26/fruit-that-did-not-fall/

*Original Reflexiones are available on the Granma website:

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ref-fidel/index.html

Interestingly, in my research and thinking about Afro-Cuban women in art, W.E.B DuBois’s notion of “Twoness” continued to resurface and influence my thoughts. The notion refers to an African-American identity in which DuBois defines a struggle in consciousness between assimilating into white America and preserving African-roots. What DuBois’s discovered through this definition, was a greater movement towards whiteness where African-Americans began to completely abandon and in many cases despise their African heritage. I will not go further into DuBois’s theory, but I think that it is very usesful in understanding what happened to Afro-Cuban identity after the fall of the Soviet Bloc and Cuba’s transition into the “Special Period,” as well as what is continuing to happen in our present times.

In the Cuban context, it seems as if Afro-Cubans are being forced more and more to dissassociate with the African side of their Cuban identity for means of survival in their totalitarian society. In my recent examination of prominent female Afro-Cuban poets, writers, and filmmakers, I’ve uncovered some interesting relationships to African identity. I’ve found that some artists seem to avoid legitimizing their African heritage, while others fully recognize the burden that has come with the color of their skin and are working to give voice to those Afro-Cuban women who have been silenced. The internationally acclaimed Afro-Cuban poet Gloria Morejon said in an online statement, “ I am an indiviual, a unity, who cannot be subdivided into parts as one does when learning math..I am not more of a black person than a women. I am not more of a woman than a Cuban. I am a combustion of those factors.” Furthermore, a critic of her work described it as being, “a unifying stance, in which Spanish and African cultures fuse to make a new Cuban identity.” I have no problem with Morejon mutually acknowledging her mixed African and European lineage in which she is from, however I think that a problem arises when we unproblematize this new “Cuban identity.” If this is what Morejon chooses to endorse, then I think that in many ways she has endorsed a larger problem. How can we define this new Cuban identity? I personally would define many aspects of this new Cuban identity as being highly flawed. This was present in a 2002 census that surveyed 11.2 millon Cubans in which 1.1 million Cubans described themselves as black, while 2.8 million considered themselves “mulatto.” In my opinion this new Cuban identity has sought to completely do away with Africaness. It is an identity that has kept Afro-Cubans out of the tourist sector, and refused them access to jobs and basic forms of equality. Moreover, the new identity has reduced Afro-Cuban women to masculine beings and left them only with the hope of marrying a mulatto or a white Cuban in order to improve the social status of their children. We, need to locate the problems that lie within this new identity if we ever want it to change.

In a new society where female workers were seen as invaluable to the revolutionary cause, Cuban women were faced with what Julia E. Sweig refers to as the doble jornada or the double day. Women were expected to work hard during the day at their jobs and then come home at night and take care of their children and husbands. After the unfairness of this double standard was brought to public attention by the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, the Cuban government passed the 1975 Family Code into law. The purpose of this law was to legally mandate equality for women in the home. Sweig argues that the Family Code was able to create a noticeable change in the distribution of household labor with men taking on a greater share of chores than had been previously seen in Cuba.

Dreams do come true

While the enactment of the Family Code seems to be a pioneering step towards gender equality, certain aspects of the law serve to enforce stereotypical gender roles. As Smith and Padula point out, the greater goal of the Family Code was to strengthen the idea of the importance of the Cuban family and therefore heterosexual marriage. It is through this goal that an otherwise progressive law potentially functions to reinforce the notion that a women’s duty is to be a mother and wife even if these roles were more equitably defined then they had previously been. If, as the Family Code suggests, women and men can serve the revolution by joining together in marriage and produce children, then little room is left for women who don’t follow this path. Saunders outlines how Cuban lesbians are particularly affected by the Family Code. Because the Family Code incorporates heterosexual monogamy into the frame of Cuban morality, lesbian women are prevented from being moral citizens by nature of their homosexuality.

Sources:

Saunders, Tanya L. “Black Women, Gender and Families.” Project Muse 4.1, 2010. Print.

Smith,  Lois M., and Padula, Alfred. Sex and the Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

Sweig, Julia E. Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Coral reefs are fragile, slow growing but complex communities containing great biodiversity and serve as a source of food and habitat for marine life. Corals are able to thrive in nutrient poor water along the equator because they, the animal, hold a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae (yes, a plant lives inside an animal!!). The coral exchange some of their waste products for the basic building blocks of nutrients. In many areas agricultural runoff, overfishing, siltation, the occasional oil spill, but perhaps most dangerous, rising sea temperatures threaten that crucial symbiotic relationship.

A rise of just 2°C can make corals go from this:

to this:

in a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. Bleached corals are more susceptible to infections and are also very easily destroyed by passing storms. The destruction of the reefs has cascading consequences for the rest of the ecosystem. In the last several decades there has been a slow but steady increase in sea water temperatures  leading to the destruction of many reef systems. In 2002, for example, nearly 60% of the Great Barrier Reef suffered bleaching. The same pattern can be seen in the Pacific, the Florida Keys and in and around the Caribbean.

Characteristically of Cuba, Cuban corals seem to be an anomaly, stuck in a time warp that amazes coral biologist around the world. Species of fish and corals that were largely thought to be on the verge of extinction are thriving in Cuba’s reef system. Despite having to endure the same impact of rising sea temperatures, Cuban corals are healthy because they have been spared from the environmental impacts of overdevelopment, runoff from chemical fertilizers, marine tourism and overfishing that afflict so many other reef systems globally.

In our study of Cuba’s conservation policies one common theme that has emerged is whether the idea of conservation developed accidentally, a product of a US embargo, or whether the revolution seriously considered environmental and ecological issues something to be addressed. Certainly one must acknowledge the efforts of the revolution, in 1997 the Cuban government banned fishing over a 386-square-mile section of the area around Los Jardines de la Reina, creating the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean, but would the possible influx of American capital change the approach of the Cuban government? If the embargo was lifted, would Cuban corals suffer the same fate of the corals in the Florida Keys?

Certainly scientist would hope that the Cuban government would continue its conservation policies and sustainability practices if the embargo was lifted because as American scientist David Guggenheim states, in Cuba “we’ve got another chance to look at these reefs the way they used to be” and better understand the interactions that make Cuban corals super corals as compared to the rest of the world.

As a student who conducts her own research of coral symbiosis right here at Vassar, I can only hope that Cuban corals hold the key to saving the rest of the corals.

Sources:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121177851

http://rainforests.mongabay.com/09reefs.htm

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57344527/the-gardens-of-the-queen/

Religion transcends all barriers. We’ve known that for quite some time. Taking for example the religion of Santeria ( The Way of The Saints) (Alvarez, 1997). It was bought over by the slaves from Africa over to the New World. Majority of these slaves who were practicing this religion were shipped straight to the Carribean. Some of these followers were migrated to Cuba. As various other African families were brought to the New World through the slave trade, their religious practices became influenced by the surrounding beliefs, customs, and languages. This brought great diversity into the magical ceremonies of the African slaves. In Santeria, each person is born under a particular guardian saint (Orsha) that must be worshipped throughout life. (Bradley, 1996) The guardian saint is central to all rites and magic performed in Santeria. An essential part of those rituals involve the use of herbs, roots, flowers, plants, and animals.

In Cuba, Santeria or La Regla Lucumi, is a belief that helps its followers by providing them with guidance, wisdom and power in dealing with life’s hardships. Cuba nearly exists around Santeria. Santeria is a type of a syncretic religion due to its belief based on/around many religions. It has definitely become a strong symbol of the religious creativity of Afro-Cuban culture(Fernández Olmos, Margarite and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, 2011).

During the Special Period, many people were put in difficult situations…economy was bad, survival was difficult for all citizens in the country. This in turn affected their psychological and emotional reasoning. To live on and have a peace of mind, they had to rely on Santeria for solace; as did their ancestors. This religion is based around doing good deeds and sacrifice, as are many other faiths. But the traditions of Santeria are fully preserved in songs, language, and rites.

At first, there were issues with Santeria and its followers by Revolutionary Cuba. In class readings it was revealed that the Afro-Cuban culture has survived the discriminations against the European hegemony of religion and culture in Cuba (Saunders, 2010). At one point, it was considered as a religion of the poor and uneducated. In recent years, Cuba
has noticed a vast majority of professionals and educated people who also have listed Santeria as being practiced. (Alvarez, 1997) The educated in Cuba were given a full responsibility to carry out methods by which they
could make improvement in the lives of all citizens. Their work and ethics combined with what Santeria has instilled in them, helped to improve society.

Santeria allows its followers to understand life and have it coexist with nature and all higher powers combined.  It is  about peaceful coexistance among all life. All living and non-living beings exist in harmony.

Cuba’s political isolation and economic limitations have spelled success for its wildlife in the last 50 years. With Cuba’s limited ability to develop as other Caribbean nations have, and the continuing US embargo helping to keep Cuba in the past, Cuba’s natural resources have been preserved in a way not seen in most of the world. However, no embargo can last forever, and many believe that the US embargo will end soon. While some might look forward to celebrating the end to the hostility and the new potential to enrich the Cuban economy, others worry about the future of Cuba’s unique natural environment.

Like any other country, Cuba does have a history of environmental exploitation. Only a few years after Columbus’ “discovery,” Spanish settlers arrived and began to clear the land to establish plantations. This deforestation only worsened through the following centuries. Cuba’s original forest cover had been 90%. In 1959, it stood at a meager 14%. However, one of Fidel Castro’s priorities since 1959 has been to conserve Cuba’s natural resources. Since then, reforestation has slowly taken place, and today over 26% of the country is forested.

Although Castro, and Cuba as a whole, should be recognized for its dedication to conservation, in truth, a lot of the preservation of Cuba’s land has been due to Cuba’s inability to develop it as most first world countries would have done. With the withdrawal of support from the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba’s economy collapsed. Without access to modern technologies, Cuban turned to sustainable organic farming practices. Without capitalism driving its development, Cuba has avoided much of the environmental destruction seen in other first world countries.

Due to these political and economic factors, and also to the fact that Cuba is an island, Cuba has developed in a unique way. Cuba boasts incredible biodiversity and is home to more than 7,000 endemic species of plants and animals. One of these includes the bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in existence.

Cuba’s coral reefs are of particular excitement for marine scientists. As coral reefs worldwide have been suffering the effects of global warming, pollution, boats, and fishing, Cuba’s reefs have been the least affected.

Unfortunately, this paradise is threatened by many problems, despite efforts, including pollution, biodiversity loss, and deforestation. On top of this, threat of US tourism looms. If the embargo is lifted, US tourists will flood the island, promoting the construction of new resorts which will destroy beach habitats along the coasts. With the economy also flooded with US dollars, possibly pulling Cuba out of its economic downturn, will Cuba continue to refuse the tempting technologies which have devastated richer countries’ environments? With US companies eager to drill for oil off Cuba’s shores, putting pressure on the government to lift the embargo, this question becomes especially urgent.

To complicate matters further, environmentalists from both Cuba and the US are limited in the amount of work they can do by the embargo. Communication is tricky. Calls to the US in Cuba are expensive, while the internet is restricted to most Cubans. While scientists can sometimes receive academic permits to study in Cuba, the US rarely allows Cuban scientists to enter the country. Although lifting the embargo would end these problems, as well as enriching the Cuban economy, the question is, as always, would the environmental degradation be worth it? As it moves forward, is there a way that Cuba can preserve its unique environment?

Sources:

“Caribbean Islands.” Diversity Hotspots. Conservation International <http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/hotspots/caribbean/pages/biodiversity.aspx>.

Cuba: The Accidental Eden. PBS, 27 Sept. 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/cuba-the-accidental-eden/video-full-episode/5834>.

“Cuba.” The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html>.

Dean, Cornelia. “Conserving Cuba, After the Embargo.” The New York Times, 25 Dec. 2007. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25cuba.html?pagewanted=all>.

“Forest, Grasslands, and Drylands – Cuba.” County Profiles. EarthTrends, 2003 <http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/for_cou_192.pdf>

After Castro’s revolution overthrew Batista’s oppressive, fundamentally capitalist regime, one of the goals of the new order was to create a society where everyone were completely equal regardless of income, race, background, anything. It is understandable to see how these thoughts were generally accepted by Cuba’s new leaders. After all, as a Spanish colony and as a semi-colony of the United States, most of the population was left to be marginalized either through slavery, poverty or other types of oppression. A hierarchy existed in Cuba where the white elites were privileged at the top and the poor Afro-Cubanos were at the bottom. Therefore, after the revolution, the new government wanted to promote a raceless Cuba, a society where race did not matter and everyone was equal. Those who promoted this idea probably thought that racism and discrimination would cease to exist.

However, as Sujatha Fernandes and other scholars point out, a raceless society did not completely solve the issues that Afro-Cubanos faced. By promoting a raceless Cuba and completely ignoring race does not solve racism and instead marginalizes any issue regarding this subject. Therefore, instead of dealing with the issues and promoting justice, discrimination remains and Afro-Cubanos remain oppressed. This is why the hip hop movement has begun to spring up in Cuba among the Afro-Cubano community. Through hip hop and rap, Afro-Cubanos have found a means to use their voice to express their disdain with society as they continue to be plagued by racial discrimination that some Cubans want to ignore through their raceless Cuba.

As Fernandes points out, the plight of the Afro-Cubanos through hip hop and rap cannot be repressed and ignored as the Cuban government has tried to do before. Race cannot be ignored especially since there is a long history of oppression against black peoples worldwide. A society where equal treatment is the norm should be much more appealing than a society that completely ignores race. Although, everyone deserves equal treatment, people are not all equal and parts of their identities cannot be cast aside to the background.

One thing that is problematic is the fact that Afro-Cubanos have started using hip hop and rap but these genres originated in the United States, which is Cuba’s historical foe. This circumstance is oppositional to the Cuban government’s anti-United States rhetoric. Although, this is an issue, the Afro-Cubano people are using the genre to express themselves and the government cannot completely disregard the movement. Instead, this can serve Cuba in their anti-United States stance by promoting a racially equal society, one where races are respected but everyone is treated equally. Promotion of this idea would demonstrate that Cuba is moving to a more just society unlike the racially unequal society of the United States.

Source: Sujatha Fernandes, “Fear of a Black Nation: Local Rappers, Transnational Crossings, and State Power.” Anthropological Quarterly 76:4 (Fall 2003), 575-608.

Public health is a facet of Cuban culture that the government has not hesitated to fully fund and support. It is especially important to focus on Cuba’s programs for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, which have been globally recognized for their success.

Cuba rapidly responded to knowledge of the disease’s existence in 1983 with the establishment of the National Commission on AIDS, prior to Cuba identifying any Cuban citizens with HIV or AIDS (Barksdale 2009). Two years later, large-scale testing of the population began, and condoms were introduced as a method of HIV-AIDS prevention. In addition to taking swift action to combat the disease, Cuba has been able to obtain and produce seven of their own anti-viral medications. This is impressive considering the U.S. embargo which restricts trade of antibiotics and other prescription medications (Barksdale 2009).

Jorge Perez MD

A key figure in Cuba’s HIV-AIDS prevention is Jorge Perez, M.D., an infectious disease expert trained at McGill University. Though it was unclear whether the disease behaved like a normal virus and spread through normal viral transmission, Perez had an “educated hunch” that HIV transmission through blood was possible, and thence ordered that all foreign-derived blood products to be eliminated in 1983, two years before Cuba would have any citizens diagnosed as HIV-positive. This preemptive measure enabled Cuba to avoid what could have been a disastrous spread of the virus to blood transfusion recipients.

AIDS Campaign Poster

Cuba’s approach to its HIV-positive citizens has been meticulous and vigilant, yet also holistic and accepting. In the 1990’s, Cuba followed classic public health procedures and instituted a quarantine of HIV-positive patients as well as mandatory testing – processes which included the education of patients and their families about HIV. Though the strict quarantining received criticism for being extreme, it effectively contained the spread of HIV/AIDS. In 1994, Jorge Perez successfully urged the government to terminate the stringent quarantine policy and personally oversaw that the locations of HIV/AIDS sanatoriums were convenient and optimal for patients. Though long-term residence at sanatoriums is voluntary, patients there benefit from readily available and government subsidized “proper nutrition, shelter and medication dispensation.” Although its merits were highly debated, the initial quarantine of HIV-positive patients was crucial to combating the spread of HIV. Subsequent HIV/AIDS care facilities however, were and are still are highly adequate means of supporting and caring for HIV/AIDS patients.

Cuba’s low rate of mother-to-child transmission can be attributed to the government’s provision of universal antiretroviral therapy and the careful testing and monitoring of pregnant women. To ensure HIV-negative children, a sizeable portion of the $150 million annually spent on various HIV programs is a allotted to the mandatory testing of all pregnant women. HIV-positive women are also assisted by health care promoters who work to “study HIV-positive women of childbearing age and inform them when their viral levels are undetectable…and therefore at a good point to get pregnant if they wish to,” (Ravsberg 2012). Such precautions have been undeniably effective in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS; In 2011, 93 HIV-positive women gave birth, and 92 of those children were healthy, effectively bringing the infection rate down to less than 2 percent.

Not only has the Cuban government recognized the importance of meticulous record-keeping, HIV education and treatment facilities, but it has also largely destigmatized HIV-AIDS. Perez has been highly influential in portraying HIV-positive patients as capable individuals who are able to and should be integrated into work, school, and ambulatory settings. HIV/AIDS programs also acknowledge the need for support to patients and their families through “nutrition, education, prevention and caring, partnered with preventive or interventional therapeutics,” (Barksdale).

Through its immediate and effective HIV/AIDS policies, Cuba has kept its rate of infection down and prevented the widespread outbreaks seen in other islands in the Caribbean. Cuba has “the lowest percentage of its population, a total of 11,243,00 people, infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the Western Hemisphere,” despite the U.S. embargo and other restrictions under which its health care system must operate. In this way, Cuba has effectively addressed the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and has truly demonstrated its egalitarian public health policies in this area.

Sources:

1. Julia Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)

2. Barksdale, Byron L. <http://www.prairiefirenewspaper.com/2009/02/success-story-of-hiv-and-aids-control-in-cuba>. February 21 2012.

3. Ravsberg, Fernando. “Cuba: Fighting Against and With HIV-AIDS.” Havana Times. HavanaTimes.org, 23 Feb. 2012. Web. 1 Mar. 2012. <http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=62728>.