[NYTr] Dateline Havana: A Glimpse of the Complexities Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:15 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [A wonderful column by Ramy that barely scratches the surface, but zeros in on one of the core explanations for the remarkable society that Cuba is, the vision, humanity and wisdom of its values, and the flexibility and enduring strength of its revolution. -NY Transfer] Progreso Weekly - Aug 30, 2007 http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=122&Itemid=1 Dateline Havana A glimpse of the complexities By Manuel Alberto Ramy 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.] * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . 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