A glimpse of the complexities
From
Havana Read Spanish Version
A
glimpse of the complexities
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
maprogre@gmail.com
A few
weeks ago, in my column "From Havana" ("Cuba:
Risks and Hopes," Progreso
Weekly, Aug. 2, 2007) I wrote that today’s Cuban society would not
accept simple answers or dogma disguised as information. It could not
be prevented from stating opinions, criteria and valid discrepancies,
from a socialist and revolutionary point of view. In sum, it demanded
real and effective participation.
I opined
that Cuban society is complex and that it is going through the
passage from one generation to another in the leadership of the
country. The historic DNA is indelible in the new waves of young
people, but there is no chance of generational cloning, which, even
if possible, would amount to historical-political suicide, not to say
antidialectical, a fashionable concept in the debates and exchanges
found daily on the Internet.
Some
readers asked me to write about some aspects of the complexity of
today’s Cuba beyond the 70 percent of Cubans born after the beginning
of the revolutionary process, even the high percentage of those born
after 1989. For them, here’s a brief sample, in connection with the
47th anniversary of the Cuban Women’s Federation on Aug. 23.
In 1970,
women constituted 18.03 percent of the active labor force; in 2006,
46 percent. This index of incorporation not only affects the labor
force but also modifies a society that is changing from
male-dominated to egalitarian.
A woman
(single, married and mother, or single mother) goes from being
dependent to free and liberating, from a wife who produces children
to a woman who decides how many children she will have and when she
will have them. These are decisions typical of women in the so-called
First World, but in the case of Cuba they are also influenced by the
shortage of housing.
That
shortage, which is one of the aspects causing a reduction in the
number of births, also contributes to the fact that by 2025 Cuba will
have the oldest population in our continent.
If to
the impressive rise of women in the active labor force we add the
fact that 67.1 percent of college graduates are women, we realize
that women carry a significant intellectual weight in society. They
are thinking women, able to analyze from their perspective the
general problems of the nation and to appreciate them beyond their
specific nature as women.
Cuban
women have a vision of our problems, difficulties and errors from
multiple points of view, because they live those points of view. In
addition to being salaried workers, they bear the brunt of keeping a
home and find that supplies and money are not sufficient to cover all
necessities. Or they experience first-hand the difficulties that
exist in many daycare centers, in urban transportation, and (often)
life in crowded housing projects.
In
addition, they must decide how best to satisfy society’s demands when
they are asked to participate in international missions. Women
account for 52.1 percent of the doctors and health technicians who
serve in various countries, away from home.
Women in
Cuba have much to say and the figures quoted above are evidence of
the development that coexists with underdevelopment in our country.
They are a feature and a symbol of the complexity of a society that
is also going through transcendental times.
Yes,
many of our women have much to say and contribute to the new breezes
that blow, which cannot be stopped although they can be slowed down,
with a high degree of risk. Historically, changes that have been
postponed and halted before being implemented go beyond what’s
desirable, rational and convenient for all.
Not
opening the windows in the house we all share could lead to collapse,
to a crumbling of the foundations. Worse yet, to the purchase or
seizure of the house by the use of money or alleged "higher
values." The former socialist camp was dismantled, spiritually
and ideologically, and seized without the firing of a single missile.
No one
is more privileged than Cuban women when it comes to taking exact
measures other than kitchen recipes. Because of the ancestral
instinct of security that is their real symbol of care and
protection, they know exactly how far to demand changes while still
preserving the country, the revolutionary process and the children
they bear every day and teach (because women account for 70.1 percent
of the educational sector.)
By a
mystery of their marvelous condition, they know the limits they
safeguard, the alchemy of the proportions that are indispensable in
revolutionary social engineering. They also have the reasoned
boldness to define those limits with clarity and to act on the front
lines.
Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the English-language edition of Progreso
Weekly.
