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Satellite map of Havana
En Español
Research Site Manager: Elizabeth Kath
As the island's capital, Havana is the hub of many of the
transformations occurring in Cuba. A walk through its streets captures
some of the complexity of Cuban community life. Children run through
the streets playing; friends set up makeshift tables on footpaths to
play dominoes; salsa music blasts from every angle, and nobody is
afraid to dance along. There is a strong atmosphere of street-life
familiarity not always apparent in other parts of the metropolitan
world. It is commonplace for neighbours to chat in each other's
doorways and holler to each other from balconies and for parents to
pass their babies to the lap of a stranger while climbing into a
crowded bus. Thus, Havana in its political and economic isolation is a
city that offers a unique vantage point from which to observe a very
atypical approach taken by communities in dealing with the changes
produced by globalization.
Understanding Havana means understanding Cuba's recent political
history, especially its troubled relationship with the neighbouring
world superpower, the United States, and changes in global geopolitics.
Cuba's determination to pursue a socialist alternative to the US-led
global climate of neoliberalism (partly because it perceives its
bilateral relations with the USA as a threat to national independence)
has meant Cuba's place in the world is a secluded one with no formal
model of development to follow. As a consequence, many of its
approaches to economic, social and other problems have been quite
distinctive, and the nature of the problems it faces is similarly
unique. Researching Cuban life thus provides the opportunity to observe
an untrialed story - along with all of the mixed successes and failures
that brings.
A significant example is the way in which the country has dealt and
continues to deal with the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. Some have
described the tiny Caribbean island's unconventional recovery and
unexpected survival as an independent nation in the face of that crisis
as the 'Cuban miracle'. While living standards have not yet recovered
to 1989 levels and the availability of commodities is still by
international standards extremely limited, the economic activity on
Cuban streets today bears no resemblance to the critical situation of
degrading scarcity and depression in the 1990s called the 'Special
Period'.
While, in conventional Western contexts, social or welfare benefits
would have been the first to be cut in such a severe economic crisis,
Cuba on the contrary managed to maintain its extensive system of social
provisions including its achievements of universally-free health and
education. The restructuring undertaken to survive the crisis -
including the introduction of tourism and the circulation of the US
dollar, now fully replaced by the convertible peso - gave way, however,
to a range of new complications. The double currency created economic
inequalities on a scale that did not exist previously, since some
people, especially those working in tourism and those residing in the
Havana district, now had access to US dollars while others who
continued to earn only pesos did not. This provided an incentive for
Cubans to pursue lower-skilled jobs in tourism that provide access to
dollars rather than the professions that pay in pesos. In turn, this
impacted on the country's tertiary enrolment levels, threatening to
decrease its high levels of intellectual training. An increasing
inconsistency between salaries and living costs resulting from the
double currency, combined with restrictions on individuals'
accumulation of capital, has increased low-level corruption as many
state-employed Cubans seek an 'alternative income' to make ends meet.
Moonlighting as taxi drivers or selling random goods illegally on the
street is not uncommon.
The presence of international tourists has also brought significant
changes to social dynamics. After years of material shortages, exposure
to twenty-first century consumer goods brought by Westerners can be
seductive to some Cubans. Problems such as prostitution, hustling and
drug trafficking, typical of many of the world's tourist zones, have
re-emerged as have efforts of the Cuban government to control them
through new laws, penalties and re-education. The recent opening of a
new school for social workers is one example of these efforts.
In the areas of health and education, though, Cuba continues to
demonstrate outstanding results including some of the developing
world's highest literacy rates, enrolment rates and lowest mortality
rates. Its maternal mortality rates, for example, are significantly
lower than others throughout Latin America and its infant mortality
rates compare closely with developed world standards. There are
contradictions, however. For instance, despite these results and the
country's supposed advancement in gender relations, men have only
recently gained permission to accompany their wives in childbirth, and
only in some maternal hospitals. Similarly, while the attendance by
skilled health professionals of all births (almost 100 percent) is a
significant achievement, state demands to birth safely also mean the
role of women themselves in deciding where, with whom, and under what
conditions they give birth is still very limited.
Critical Reference Group
For more details see, Collaborating Researchers
Dr. María del Carmen Zabala Argüelles (University of Havana)
Reynaldo Jiménez Guethón (MSc) (Teacher and Researcher - FLACSO)
Susan Hurlich (Journalist and International Aid worker)
Elizabeth Kath (PhD candidate, University of Queensland)
Dr. Marta Rosa Muños (Teacher and Researcher - FLACSO)
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