Re: Cuban Women: Randall's Reassessment

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I want to thank Yoshie for this very assiduous and well-researched post
that repeats arguments already made and some new ones (abortion, gays,
etc.) that seem uncontroversial. Since I know that Mine has said all she
wants to say on the matter and that nobody else seems motivated to continue
this thread, I will allow Yoshie to have the final word.


At 11:27 AM 9/24/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Lou:
>
>> >I would have advocated offering family stipends, educational
>> >opportunities, better economic alternatives, etc. _without_
>> >threatening prostitutes with imprisonment and medicalization.
>>
>>Okay, no imprisonment. I am not sure what medicalization is however. It
>>sounds pretty bad, so I guess I am against it. In any case, since you seem
>>to have no objection to Cuban prostitutes being required to go to the farms
>>described in the interview for job training, etc., then that's that.
>
>I'm glad you are against threats of imprisonment and medicalization.
>There is no reason to approve of every little thing that a socialist
>government happens to do through its trials and errors.  Just because
>a government & its leaders are socialist doesn't mean that they are
>free from bourgeois moralism.
>
>As for the claim that the Cuban policy on prostitution was dictated
>by an urgency to increase female labor (or labor in general) on the
>farms & firms, however, I do not find it persuasive, because the
>early years of the Cuban revolution took many urban women away from
>work and allowed them to stay at home (outside of the labor force):
>
>*****   But contrary to the hopes of the revolution, often women's
>motivation for seeking -- or not seeking -- employment was purely
>economic [hence moral exhortations for labor, paid or unpaid,
>produced only very limited results].  In the early 1960s the onset of
>rationing (1962) and the lack of consumer goods meant there was
>little incentive for women to work.  Between 1959 and 1964 only about
>eight thousand women per year joined the workforce.  Minister of
>Labor Agosto Martinez Sanchez concluded that women's poor response
>was due not only to Cuba's "underdeveloped economy," but also to the
>revolution's inability to provide sufficient day care centers, school
>and workers' cafeterias, laundromats, and other needed services.[17]
>
>Ironically, some working women found that the revolution's generous
>social policies [toward male workers] made it possible for them to
>stop working outside the home.  For example, in 1969 only one-quarter
>of the women in the Havana neighborhood of Buena Ventura were
>employed, whereas more than 90 percent had worked prior to the
>revolution.[18]
>
>[17]  Augusto Martinez Sanchez, _Trabajo_, September 1964.
>[18]  Douglas Butterworth, _The People of Buenaventura_ (Urbana:
>University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 34.
>
>(Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, _Sex and Revolution: Women in
>Socialist Cuba_, NY & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996 p.99)   *****
>
>So, the early years' moral mobilization of labor (especially women's
>labor) did not produce the results that the Cuban government wished
>for.  The success didn't come until the Cuban government set aside
>the focus on morality:
>
>*****   The failure of the ten million-ton harvest led to dramatic
>changes in the Cuban economy.  The moral incentives of the 1960s were
>put aside in favor of material incentives.  Soviet advisors were
>added to every ministry.  Then, in a serendipitous fillip, the price
>of sugar began to climb.  The improving economy of the 1970s prompted
>a boom in women's employment.  More than 350,000 new women workers
>entered the labor force, and most stayed.  The percentage of women of
>work age in the labor force jumped from 24.9 in 1970 to 44.5 in 1979.
>At the end of the decade women represented 30 percent of Cuban
>workers. [34]
>
>[34]  Claes Brundenius, _Revolutionary Cuba: The Challenge of
>Economic Growth with Equity_ (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1983).
>
>(Smith and Padula, p. 101)   *****
>
>In other words, the Cuban government learned from its mistakes: from
>moralism to economism.
>
>The difference between the Cuban government's attitudes toward
>prostitutes and female workers who are not labeled prostitutes, I
>believe, originated in the government's ideas of sex, gender, &
>sexuality in the early moralist fervor of Cuban socialism, and
>repressive attitudes toward prostitutes are similar to repressive
>attitudes toward gay men (and to the lesser extent lesbians -- I've
>already discussed this) and abortion and other services for
>reproductive rights and freedoms (on this question, see below).
>Moreover, in the 60s, the Cuban government closed down not just
>bordellos, sex shows, etc. but also nightclubs and dance halls, which
>the Cuban people missed (Smith and Padula, p. 178).
>
>> >What you say above, though, basically confirms oft-cited feminist
>> >complaints that socialist men are not interested in women's
>> >emancipation _unless_ it is good for socialist men's notion of the
>> >good & transient necessities (actual or perceived) of national
>> >exigencies.
>>
>>I am sorry, Yoshie. "National exigency" misrepresents what I wrote. Cuba
>>had a socialist revolution. It was a big brothel for tourists from
>>imperialist countries. "Godfather II" was an accurate description of what
>>Cuba had to offer: big-assed, rumba-dancing, bandanna-topped mulattos (in
>>Margaret Randall's words) who would fuck or give you a blow job for a
>>dollar. If the Cuban government did not take forceful steps to change this
>>immediately, then the revolution would have no credibility. Accepting the
>>status quo in terms of "the right of women to decide" would have undermined
>>the revolution from day one.
>
>The idea that prostitutes mainly served dollar-bearing foreign
>tourists before the Revolution cracked down on prostitution is a myth:
>
>*****   By claiming that North American visitors were the principal
>exploiters of Cuban women, the revolution avoided any serious
>analysis of sexuality and social power.  In truth the principal
>clientele of Cuba's sex industry was Cubans themselves.  Indeed the
>euphoria of the revolutionary triumph of 1959 reportedly brought a
>boom in business for Cuba's thirty to forty thousand prostitutes. [37]
>
>[37]  Oscar Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon, _Four Women_
>(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1977), p. 277.
>
>(Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, _Sex and Revolution: Women in
>Socialist Cuba_, NY & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 40-41)   *****
>
>The main clientele were _Cuban men_ and only secondarily tourists.
>The idea that only foreigners visited prostitutes conveniently
>sidestepped the need for the frontal attack on local sexism.
>Besides, professional prostitutes constituted only a _tiny_ segment
>of the island's female labor force & population.  The credibility of
>the revolution in its early days would have been enhanced if the
>government had gone easy on moralism & devised effective programs of
>economic incentives to bring more women into the labor force (which
>the government eventually did), while cracking down on sexism &
>homophobia (which it has yet to do successfully).
>
>In other words, moralism (repression of abortion, prostitutes, gay
>men & lesbians, nightclubs & dance halls, etc.) was a detour -- it
>didn't work, so the government changed its course.
>
>> >Now, negating women's self-emancipation or subordinating
>> >women's needs & desires to the program of national survival (e.g.,
>> >denying women reproductive rights & freedoms in the interest of
>> >pro-natalist policy in order to increase labor supply, especially in
>> >Romania) may look convenient in the short term, but in the long term
>> >it is counter-productive, threatening not just women but also the
>> >very viability of socialism.  Denial of women's self-emancipation
>> >sows the seeds of counter-revolution & capitalist restoration.
>>
>>Why introduce the right to an abortion. This is just a red herring. The
>>right to make a living as a whore is not the same thing.
>
>It's your single-minded focus on prostitutes that is a red herring --
>surely women's rights encompass more than the right not to be a
>prostitute (in the early days of the Cuban revolution, it was not a
>right, however -- it was a state-imposed duty not to be a
>prostitute).  As I mentioned, attitudes toward sexuality encompass
>not just attitudes toward prostitution but those toward abortion,
>homosexuality, etc.  The early Cuban moralism attacked _all_ of them.
>
>*****   The early years of the revolution were marked by great
>confusion in the contraceptive realm.  As a Cuban demographer later
>remarked, the revolutionary government "made the prevention of births
>difficult."[13]  It began rigorously to enforce existing antiabortion
>laws....
>
>Contraceptive materials remained in short supply throughout the first
>decade of the revolution.  Condoms from China were of poor quality,
>and imported birth control pills were too expensive.  Given the
>dearth of birth control options, the government made female
>sterilization available free of charge to anyone who wanted the
>operation.[15]...
>
>...The revolution was at first reluctant to promote family planning.
>Some Latin American nationalists perceived family planning as an
>imperialist plot to hinder population growth.  During the 1960s
>doctors were authorized to respond to specific birth control
>questions by patients, but they did not offer unsolicited information
>or contraceptive devices.[17]
>
>[13]  Barent F. Landstreet, "Cuban Population Issues in Historical
>and Comparative Perspective" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1976),
>p. 199.
>[15]  It is unclear why or how it was possible to offer tubal
>ligations but not abortions.
>[17]  Elizabeth Sutherland, _The Youngest Revolution: A Personal
>Report on Cuba_ (London: Pittman Publishing, 1969), p. 178.
>
>(Smith and Padula, p. 71)   *****
>
>Again, during the 70s, the government changed its mind & began to
>urge contraceptive use.  As for abortion, "Abortion had been illegal
>in Cuba since the imposition of the Spanish penal code in 1879.
>Under the 1938 criminal code, which remained in force until 1979,
>abortion was allowed in only three circumstances: to save the life of
>the mother, when the pregnancy was the result of rape, and to avoid
>birth defects due to hereditary sickness or contagious disease.  A
>decision to abort had to be approved by two physicians..." (Smith and
>Padula, p. 73).  Increased enforcement of antiabortion legislations,
>along with the flight of many Cuban doctors, made the early years of
>the revolution difficult for women who wanted to avoid pregnancy and
>childbirth or to space birthing effectively.  Needless to say, the
>lack of reproductive rights and freedoms in those days flew in the
>face of the government's need & desire to bring more women into the
>labor force (how can you expect women to work when you deprive them
>of control over reproduction?).  Moralism went against not only
>women's rights but also economic rationality.
>
>As I mentioned, changes in the 70s made abortion very popular.  "In
>the early 1970s the legal abortion rate rose sharply, then leveled.
>By 1979, 40 percent of all pregnancy ended in abortion....In the
>1980s abortion was available to Cuban women without charge through
>the tenth week of pregnancy....In 1989 there were 160,000 abortions
>and some 200,000 live births" (Smith and Padula, p. 74).  While
>liberalization of abortion laws was all well and good, the high rate
>of abortion is a result of continued inadequacy of sex education and
>family planning.
>
>Worse yet, with the recent rapprochement with the Pope & resurgence
>of religion, the Cuban attitudes toward abortion, once again, have
>begun to turn repressive, though they have yet to have an impact upon
>the rate & number of abortions.
>
>> >BTW, being under the guns of imperialism does not explain changing
>> >Cuban attitudes to prostitution.  The government tried to abolish it
>> >then; now it tolerates it shamefacedly, without regulating it in the
>> >formal economy, because it has come to rely on tourism.  At both
>> >points in history, Cuba has been under the guns.
>>
>>The presence of prostitution in Cuba today is a terrible shame. It simply
>>represents the power of the marketplace in the socialist world, just as the
>>massive entrance of Russian and Eastern European women into the sex
>>business marks it in the postsocialist world. Frankly, it seems beyond the
>>power of the Cuban government to change this. In any case, there is no
>>possible way to put a 'feminist' spin on this, is there?
>>
>> >Lastly, shamefaced toleration is as bad as top-down abolition with a
>> >threat of imprisonment.  Since Cuban prostitutes exist under the
>> >shadow of informal economy, they do not enjoy government protection.
>> >If the government is going to tolerate it, it might as well bring it
>> >into the light of formal economy where prostitutes would be safer &
>> >less exploited.
>>
>>I think Cuban socialism faces a dilemma on this question. Creating Nevada
>>style brothels would represent a step backward. I suspect that if the Cuban
>>economy continues to recover, then fewer women will be willing to sell
>>their body. This is just one of those things, like defecting athletes, that
>>reflect a poor relationship of forces economically and socially. The goal
>>is not to cave in to the status quo but to change it.
>
>I'm saying that if the government is going to tolerate it, it might
>as well bring it into the light of formal economy where prostitutes
>would be safer & less exploited.  While the government is unlikely to
>be able to decrease the number of prostitutes, it is _within its
>power_ to admit the existence of prostitution officially,
>decriminalize it, and regulate this sector just like any other sector
>of commerce.  It is better for prostitutes to work in the formal
>economy than to work in the underground economy.  Workers in the
>underground economy have few rights, whereas workers in the formal
>economy are covered by labor legislations.  Alternatively, the
>government might discourage tourism, which it is very unlikely to do
>since it needs foreign currencies that tourism can bring.
>
>Don't tell me that national pride doesn't allow the government to
>admit the existence of prostitution officially & _deal with it
>rationally_.  Hypocrisy is an enemy of women.  The government already
>legalized dollars & reconciled with the Pope, which, to me, are
>bigger problems than prostitution.
>
>Yoshie
>

Louis Proyect
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