Cuban Economists on the Cuban Economy

6. Fighting Poverty: Cuba’s Experience

6 Fighting Poverty Cuba’s Experience Ángela Ferriol The main goal of the Cuban economic model since 1959 has been to build a society marked by equity and social justice in which every person has the right to satisfy his or her basic needs, not as a consumer but as a citizen. The objective was to build a society based on the principle of equality of opportunity and the practice of solidarity as the essential criterion for distribution. With regard to policies, this model sought to strengthen social, economic, and political connections in order to create a virtuous cycle conducive to accelerated development , where the state would be the principal agent that would guarantee this objective. In 1953 Fidel Castro outlined the major problems facing Cuba in his historic legal defense speech, “History Will Absolve Me”: “The problem of land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment , the problem of education, and the problem of health for the people: those are the six points that our efforts would have resolutely determined to address, along with the achievement of public freedoms and political democracy.”1 Cuba’s strategies of political, economic, and social development in the 1960s focused on eliminating the mechanisms that caused extreme economic inequality and, along with it, acute social stratification. This was the key prerequisite for the new model that was to distinguish the subsequent Cuban social and economic performance from the rest of Latin America. Transformations in the system of ownership and the active role of social policies were the main axes of the revolutionary strategy. The combined effects of economic and social policies sought to ensure the population’s well-being by guaranteeing full employment, equity in income distribution, a gradual increase in individual consumption, and the satisfaction of basic needs through the state provision of free health care, education, and social security services, among others. Poverty, in particular, was to be eradicated from Cuban society. 166 Ángela Ferriol The 1959–1989 Period The transformations in Cuban society in the 1960s after the victory of the Revolution included changes in economic structure, operation of the labor market, and distribution of property and wealth, among other aspects. These structural changes had a profound social impact. The Eradication of Poverty in Cuba (1983), by J. L. Rodríguez and G. Carriazo, was the first study of poverty published in the country after 1959.2 Their analysis demonstrated the elimination of that scourge by providing carefully documented information on both the poverty-eradication policies that had been implemented and their positive effects. It also highlighted popular participation in health-care and educational campaigns and other specific programs as a distinct feature of the Cuban model that contributed to its efficacy. The key to Cuba’s achievements from 1959 to 1989 was its implementation of social policies. At the most basic and immediate level, policies were enacted to quickly eradicate blatant evils such as organized crime, corruption, prostitution, child abuse, and drug addiction. But the goals of Cuba’s overall social policy were much more profound than these immediate issues. At their heart was the human condition. On one level they addressed the essential issue of improving the people’s material standard of living and well-being, first and foremost by eliminating poverty. But beyond that, they included the goals of increased social equity and the transformation of values, behaviors, and social relations. In particular they aimed at building new human relations based on the value of solidarity, where improved individual well-being for every citizen was to be created as part of building social well-being for all citizens. All these nonmaterial goals themselves had implications for material well-being and the end of poverty. Guaranteeing education, health care, and employment have always been three top priorities among Cuba’s social goals. It is an important reflection of the Island’s overall social policy and the very nature of its revolutionary society that Cuba in its constitution guarantees the right to free health care and to free education at all levels and, in turn, defines work as both a duty and a right, which subsumes rights to rest and to work-related safety, security, and health care. The concern with solidarity is reflected in the right to not be socially abandoned. All these rights are guaranteed to everyone, without discrimination based on gender, skin color, national origin, or religious beliefs.3 Other important subjects of Cuba’s social policies include food, water and...