Unity

From Unity, 21 March 2009

Celebrating the Revolution

Nancy Coro Aguiar visited Ireland this month to speak at a series of meetings to mark International Women’s Day. She met politicians and spoke at well-attended CPI meetings in Dublin and Belfast and also at meetings in Derry and Sligo. She was given a standing ovation when she spoke at the ICTU Women’s Seminar in Belfast. Here Nancy looks at the situation in Cuba today.

On speaking about the situation of women in Cuba, I must say that the achievements attained by us in these first fifty years of the Revolution are really visible in the fields of medical science, health care, sport and culture, social security, and education.
     However, although we have reversed the state of poverty and backwardness of 1959, we cannot say that we have materialised our foreseen dreams.
     There have been multiple factors which have hindered the economic take-off, including the economic warfare waged by the United States since 1959, which was tightened even more with the approval of the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, which prevent u
s from having access to credits and make difficult trading with US companies and their branches, while putting pressure on third countries not to trade with Cuba.
     During these fifty years of the Revolution more than three thousand people have lost their lives and another two thousand have been injured, as a result of which most of them are disabled people now, because of the terrorist actions of the counter-revolutionary organisations based in Miami and very well known by the government of the United States.
     Cuba is constantly attacked by counter-revolutionary propaganda. More than two thousand hours daily of propaganda against the Revolution are broadcast from different radio stations based mainly in Miami and supported by the US government.
     The collapse of the Socialist community meant another challenge for the Revolution. The import capacity decreased by 85 per cent. Industries stopped working, livestock and agriculture lost essential supplies for their activity, and exports diminished.
     In general, the GDP declined by around 35 per cent, a figure that by itself would have led to the collapse of any government in an underdeveloped country.
     At that time Cuba faced a dilemma: annexation or the nation.
     And the Cuban people set to the task of resisting and safeguarding what had been attained by our socialism.
     Almost twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, the survival and patient and continuing development of the Cuban Revolution reaffirms its authenticity.
     On marking this anniversary of the Revolution, many friends and even enemies ask themselves how Cuba has been able to keep its independence and sovereignty, being located only ninety miles away from the biggest power in history, which has always had the desire to control.
     The answer to that question could be found in the historical, ideological and cultural roots of a revolutionary process that dates from the nineteenth century.
     The work of these fifty years of the Revolution is highly assessed and treasured by the majority of Cubans, in which our women have played an outstanding role; so, as figures talk by themselves:
     In Cuba women comprise:
• 46 per cent of the labour force;
• 65.6 per cent of all professional and technicians;
• 72 per cent of the labour force in the educational sector;
• 70 per cent in the health sector;
• 63.8 per cent of general doctors;
• 51.6 per cent of all researchers in the scientific sector;
• 65 per cent of all university graduates. Life expectancy of women is 80 years (men are 76).
     In politics:
• 43.3 per cent of women in Parliament (Cuba occupies third place in the world);
• 38 per cent of the leading positions:
           • 7 Ministers
           • 46 Deputy ministers
• 48 out of the 199 scientific research centres we have in Cuba are headed by women.
     Maternity leave was renovated in the year 2003, extending it until the baby is a year old, preserving their jobs and salaries. It establishes the possibility of sharing it between mother and father.
     Women are guaranteed the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, including the free and responsible choice of their fertility. Abortion is a free health service.
     Women and men enjoy the necessary services of family planning.
     That is why Cuba is so scaring for imperialism and the reality of Cuba is constantly distorted by the big multinationals of information.
     However, I must tell you that Cuba is not a perfect society.
     Our socialism is a process not finished; it is a constant battle to transform not only economic relations but relations between people, to improve the conditions of the population step by step, to steadily eradicate the poisonous legacy of capitalist culture and ideas.
     Despite the many results that have been achieved by women in Cuba, there is still much to do, since the changes that depend on social awareness do not result automatically in the transformations of the economic and legal structure.
     The sexist stereotypes, prejudices, behaviour and value judgements rooted in the traditions of a patriarchal culture should be modified in a complex process of rethinking concepts in which the political will, legislation, mass media, school, family, individual subjectivity—in sum, the whole society—are involved.
     On marking its fiftieth anniversary, the Cuban Revolution faces new challenges, and the main one is to guarantee its continuity once the historical generation that is guiding us today is not there any more.
     On the other hand, the US administration also poses an ideological challenge, because, although portraying itself as less hostile, it pursues the same objective to ignore the example that the existence of the Cuban Revolution represents for the world.
     We are prepared for both tests, and we are taking the necessary measures in the economic and cultural fields.
     We also count on the solidarity of our friends in the world, and on those who favour peace and progress.
     we count on women who love justice and sisterhood among peoples.

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