Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development (review)

The question of civil society in Cuba since 1959 has long been a contentious one, fueled by a debate too often marred, even within the academic realm, by ideological arguments over and against balanced and nuanced research and assessment or evaluation. Recent work by scholars such as Mona Rosendahl, Sujatha Fernandes, and others have provided refreshing and important contributions to this debate in a way that forces (or should force) those interested in the issue of Cuban civil society to seriously consider (or reconsider) the complexity and even fluidity of the always-evolving relationship between the Cuban state and civil society. Anthropologist Adrian Hearn’s study represents another recent and welcome contribution to this debate.

Based on years of research in Cuba, Hearn undertook extensive ethnographic work within the poorer and largely African-Cuban communities of Old Havana and Santiago de Cuba, where he resided in two Santería temple houses, each of which served as a base for what has become a nuanced, thoughtful, and sophisticated study of the complex and dynamic relationship between the Cuban state and local society, here represented by African-Cuban religious communities. Set against the backdrop of the socioeconomic struggles of the “special period in time of peace,” the Cuban state’s dual efforts to perpetuate the revolution and merge with the global economy, and the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the author focuses on the tensions, problems, and prospects of civil society under the Cuban revolution. Using the concept of social capital, Hearn argues that, increasingly, and perhaps most dramatically since the crisis of the post-Soviet 1990s, the Cuban state has gradually but progressively conceded more autonomy to local activists and organizations in a manner that has paradoxically served to foster closer, more cooperative relationships between the state and the grassroots, to generate local solutions for socioeconomic welfare, and to forge a potentially more dynamic civil society in Cuba. Autonomy, however, is qualified by a relationship marked by “an interpenetration of state authority and independent action in a civil sphere that is more ‘mixed’ than elsewhere” (p. 182).

It is important that social development as negotiated between the Cuban state and African- Cuban communities proceeds largely within the framework of the Revolution. At the same time, as Hearn’s study suggests, this relationship and its increasingly productive results possess implications for a “revolution within the revolution.” Active collaboration between Havana’s Office of the Historian and the local African-Cuban community in Old Havana in projects ranging from health education to the construction of clinics and schools is demonstrative of the potential accomplishments of mutual cooperation between state institutions and the grassroots.

Yet this is, of course, not a process without its tensions and contradictions. On one hand, the Cuban state recognizes the active role of local communities and organizations as increasingly essential to the provision of services that the state is having increased difficulty in administering. Yet the security and commercial or revenue concerns of the Cuban state have imposed potentially deleterious restrictions on the efforts of local communities and organizations to manage local projects, resolve problems, and develop more vibrant communities. The Cuban state’s tendency, for example, toward favoring commercialization of Santería rituals in order to augment tourism has tended to demean the spiritual significance and legitimacy of these practices at the same time that it sometimes negatively affects social welfare projects. While the state struggles to reconcile its preference to retain power with the need to delegate more local authority, local African-Cuban activists and their communities are increasingly taking the initiative, a process in which, while the Cuban state sometimes reacts in authoritarian fashion, it also appears to be increasingly acquiescent.

Having marshaled a wide array of evidence and executed a nuanced, sophisticated analysis, Hearn argues convincingly for a Cuban state and Revolution that continue to change as they continue to struggle, and that the grassroots of the Revolution will increasingly insist, formally and informally, on...