Violencia y homicidio

methods. Deliberate attempts by the United States to influence the course of events on the island continued, as in 1958 when Washington endeavoured to prevent Fidel Castro's victory by withdrawing support from Batista, in the hope that a more acceptable leader would emerge. The United States continued to hover over Cuba, distorting not only political culture and economic development, but also the very attempt to define an independent national identity as the split between those who admired the United States and those who decried U.S. imperialism deepened.

Free, universal, secular public education, proclaimed as the cornerstone of Cuba Libre for so long, remained a cherished but unfulfilled aspiration. No serious attempt at implementing this vision of education had ever been made. Private schools multiplied extraordinarily, impervious to state direction or control. Cuba's middle class struggled to finance secondary and university education for its children. For Cuba's miserable poor, the completion o f even primary education continued to be only a remote possibility. Meanwhile, the official neglect of education contrasted with the promotion of schooling by the rebels in the Sierra Maestra.

Fidel Castro and his followers understood the disillusionment, cynicism and frustration afflicting the country. They took up the cry of the nation's past liberators and, when futile peaceful protest against Batista exposed the sham of the republic's institutions, they turned to the long tradition of armed struggle for the sake o f Cuba Libre. Castro claimed for his movement the legacy of Cuba's apostle, José Marti. He reminded the country o f Marti's words. "An educated people," Marti had believed, "will always be strong and f r e e " . 5 9

During his trial after the unsuccessful assault on the Moncada barracks, Castro exposed the island's misery. "Our educational system is a perfect complement to our other problems," he declared. "In a country where the farmer is not the owner o f the land, why should any man want agricultural schools? In a city where there is no industry, what need is there for technical or industrial schools? ...Less than half of the children o f school age attend rural public schools, and those who do are barefoot, half naked, and undernourished. Many times it is the teacher who buys the necessary school materials with his own salary. Is this the way to make a nation g r e a t ? C u b a n s agreed that it was not. When the fid elista s offered them a new dream of Cuba Libre, it is little wonder they followed.

59 José Marti, On Education: Articles on Educational Theory and Pedagogy and Writings for Children from The Age o f Gold, Philip S. Foner, ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979) p. 35. Originally

from Guatemala, Jasmary 1878.

^ Fidel Castro, "History Will Absolve Me" in Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdés, Revolutionary Struggle: The Selected Works o f Fidel Castro, vol. 1, 1947-1958 (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,

Miracles are not to be expected from schools: they cannot themselves compensate for everything that is wrong in a society. But what must be emphasized is that, whether by default or by explicit action, every society chooses either to perpetuate and intensify its divisions in its schools or to make some effort to overcome them,^

For many years, theorists of different disciplines have argued that a country's school system "reflects the greater issues of economic and political power in the society Whoever determines educational aims, however oblique they may be, and controls access to education, however indirectly applied, exercises significant power "over the quality of life, the work opportunities of men and women, and the ultimate question o f how to utilize...human resources".^ If the educational system is defined as important within a society where one group or class imposes its interests on another, it will, however egalitarian the principles upon which it is founded, become a forum for the application of those interests. Clearly, the imposition of power through the educational system is not straightforward. It is equally clear, however, that the presence of an educational system in an unequal society does not in itself establish or even promise equality. "Throughout the whole history of human society," a Cuban government report to UNESCO in 1962 argued, "education has been a product of the social classes which dominated at each stage. The context and orientation of education are therefore determined by the social classes which are in power.

In capitalist societies, education (usually defined as schooling) is popularly believed to be a means of overcoming economic and social disparities, allowing even the most disadvantaged a chance of success, should they work hard enough and demonstrate ability. In other words, the responsibility for success or failure within the educational system is placed upon the individual. This belief assumes that schooling is somehow neutral, objective, context free, capable of operating in a detached way, separate from the world around it. Allocation of responsibility in this way obscures the power relationship between classes, the conflict between class interests, and how these factors impact upon the educational system. Individual ability cannot guarantee success in a system where some

^ Brian Barry, "The Continuing Relevance of Socialism" in Democracy, Power and Justice: Essays in Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 536.

2 Martin Camoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, (New York: David MacKay, 1974), p. 323. 3 Asunciôn Lavrin, "Some Final Considerations on Trends and Issues in Latin American Women's History", in Asunciôn Lavrin, ed., Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 305.

^Quoted in Martin Camoy and Jorge Werthein, Cuba: Economic Change and Education Reform, 1955- 1974 (Washington, D C.: World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 317), p. 573.

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participants begin with, and retain throughout their lives, material and social advantage over others. Therefore, "rather than being the means through which individuals fulfill their potential...schools are reduced to being largely selectors and socializers".^

In a capitalist society, the assumption that education equals progress, that it is somehow neutral and objective, means that any dislocation between the educational system and the economy, such as high levels of unemployment or low numbers in school, is blamed on the educational system, rather than on economic relationships. In the Cuban case, reformers argued that rectification of the shortcomings in public education would provide Cuba with the means to overcome economic weakness. The World Bank mission concluded that "unless and until drastic improvements [in the educational system] are effected, the Cuban people cannot hope effectively to develop their country".^ Yet, within a dependent economic order, higher levels of educational attainment are no more likely to diversify the economy or promote national development than to improve the lot o f the individual.

José Martf warned that the nation that buys, commands and the nation that sells, serves - that only diversified trade would guarantee liberty, or independence. Cuba's overwhelming reliance on one crop to generate wealth, and the sale of that crop to one country, proved Martfs point. The fact that Cuba's economic base was dominated by foreign capital compounded her dependence. In addition to one class imposing its interests on another within a national context, the economy, with the collusion o f the dominant national class, was geared to external interests and benefit. No amount o f training could compensate for the absence of employment opportunities which resulted from this arrangement. No amount of administrative reform could overcome systemic corruption.

Had Cuba been able to fulfil José Martfs vision of universal and relevant education, or the World Bank's prescription of better technical and vocational instruction, she might well have lost her newly trained sons and daughters to other lands where employment prospects could more realistically meet their expectations and exploit their skills. With such an education, "discontent and an aversion to agriculture might be instilled in those whose proper role in life was to use their muscles and not their minds".^ Yet, in the context o f economic dependence, Cuba's educational system performed its function successfully. As Martin Camoy and Jorge Werthein have argued, "education in Cuba was organized to reproduce a dependent capitalist organization of production, both through meeting the needs of that system for a limited quantity o f skilled labor and domestically trained managers and professionals, and through socializing the mass of workers into an

^ Camoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, p. 57.

^ International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Report on Cuba (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1951), p. 18.

^ Donald Wood, Trinidad in Transition: The Years After Slavery (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 214.

economy dominated by foreign capital, foreign products, high unemployment, and a highly unequal distribution of income"

Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain included an analysis o f the relationship between education and colonialism. Independentistas accurately identified the role education played in preventing Cubans from recognizing the possibility o f change. Even with this history, Cubans were slow to make the same connections once the republic had been established. They tended to believe, at least initially, that political independence equalled national sovereignty as defined by the vision o f Cuba L ib re. From this assumption flowed a number of others. Belief in the power of education as a force for liberation, rather than control, was directly associated with the understanding that independence had been achieved. Cuba's insertion into the world capitalist system under the aegis o f the United States did not receive widespread attention for the same reason. When awareness of compromised sovereignty grew in the 1920s, the political implications of the Platt Amendment consumed nationalist energy, and many were wrongly assured of self-determination following the "revolution" o f 1933 and the abrogation o f the Amendment.

The association of secular public education with Cuba Libre was so strong in republican Cuba that support for public instruction became a vital component of nationalism. It is significant that when Ramiro Guerra warned of increasing illiteracy in 1910, he was pilloried not for inaccuracy, but for being unpatriotic. Nationalism alone could not provide the political analysis capable of making sense of the failure of public education, however. Although the growth of nationalism potentially involved a challenge to the political and economic order, competing claims to the nationalist vision meant that it also acted as a diversion.

The conflicts over private education highlight the limits o f the nationalist response in identifying the causes of the problems in Cuba's educational system and thus in proposing strategies to overcome them. The primary focus o f anxiety was not private education per se but religious. Catholic education, so closely associated with colonial subjugation. Consequently, rather than addressing how public and private education reflected power imbalances in Cuban society, the debates centred on the extent of nationalist expression within private schools; hence the proposed solution o f regulation. Given the acceptance of the principle of private education, however, no amount of nationalist teaching or regulation could overcome the economic and racial divisions which private schools exemplified and propagated. Had Fernando Ortiz' bill, or the legislative framework to implement the provisions of the 1940 Constitution, been passed, and proved enforceable, the prejudice and privilege reinforced by private institutions would nonetheless have remained untouched. Regulation did not address the fact that in practice private

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schooling was open only to those who had the financial resources to purchase it. This condition alone conflicted directly with the establishment of the genuinely democratic educational system, and nation, promised by Cuba Libre.

The real issue in the debate over private education was not nationalism or the lack of it in private schools, but the abysmal conditions in the public system and why those who could afford to, and many who could not, opted out of it; why even bad private schools were regarded as preferable to education in the public system, and why the latter ultimately provided schools for working class and rural children only. To maintain, as did many nationalists, that the public system required good, regulated private schools as a complement, particularly in times of political and social upheaval, was to beg the question o f why the public system needed complementing at all. The enthusiasm and commitment which went into the nationalist battle to regulate private schools, in spite o f its good intentions, was in itself an excellent example of how private education diverted the energies o f those best placed to pressure successfully for meaningful change in public education.

In many ways, however, the dispute over private education presaged the national struggle between those who argued for reform of the existing system and those who called for revolution. The repeated frustration of nationalist ambitions contributed to the revolutionary drive, and those frustrations were consistently evident in the debates over the role of private education in Cuban society. The failure of the public educational system to fulfil nationalist demands, the inequalities and class conflict which the public/private educational split revealed so starkly, and the implacable resistance of powerful elements in Cuban society to any change, contributed to the general perception of the failure o f reforms in the republic, and thus of the failure of the republic itself.

Assumptions about the neutrality of education break down if the educational system or other agents create aspirations on a scale which the economic structure cannot meet. An educational system embodies a contradiction between schooling as capable o f fostering change (although not designed to) because of the very meritocracy which it espouses, while at the same time perpetuating and reproducing inequalities in society. Cuba's educational system contributed to one of the tasks demanded of it by Cuba Libre: fostering love of p a tria and commitment to an independent, democratic nation amongst the island's inhabitants. As this vision remained so blatantly unfulfilled by the leaders who claimed to support it, to the immense cost of the majority of their compatriots, it was only a matter of time before Cubans would recognize the lies upon which the republic was based. Revolution swept across Cuba in 1958 because Cubans understood that only by dismantling the island's existing structures could the vision of Cuba Libre ever be fulfilled. In pre-revolutionary Cuba, in spite of the fact that educational provision and excellence had been a primary and widespread concern throughout sixty years o f independence, the educational system remained a source of bitter complaint. One o f the

extraordinary aspects of the debates over education was that, despite the range o f opinions and ideologies expressed, nobody truly believed the educational system to be satisfactory. By the standards set by the myth of education within the context o f Cuba Libre, public education in Cuba between 1899 and 1958 failed miserably to measure up. Although literacy improved, the educational system did not provide Cubans with regular, sustained work with adequate remuneration in their own country, nor did it ensure the island's equitable economic development, or guarantee political democracy. If progress could be assessed by the number of television sets per capita, then Cuba did indeed progress in sixty y ears.^ Such a measurement, however, is misconceived. As Hugh Thomas heis argued, ownership o f consumer durables reveals "less about the actual standard o f living in Cuba than the ease with which the Cuban market could be penetrated by North American salesm anship".10 The vision of Cuba Libre required more exacting standards in determining accomplishment.

Cuba's educational system was a product of its political economy, and its political economy was shaped by the island's relationship with the United States. Just as labour's disputes in pre-revolutionary Cuba ultimately involved taking on the might o f U.S. capital, so too did a genuine transformation of the Cuban educational system. The education demanded by Cuba Libre could not exist within the context of a dependent relationship upon another country and the inequalities inherent in such a relationship. The revolution's emphasis on education as the key to creating a new Cuba, through its role in promoting national goals and values, stems from a long Cuban tradition. In less than thirty years, the revolutionary government transformed Cuba from a country o f failed educational aspirations to one which not only meets its own educational needs but exports educational expertise. This metamorphosis, one of the widely acknowledged successes o f the revolution, simply could not have occurred without a concomitant transformation of the island's political economy. Without a revolution, the quest for Cuba Libre and the fulfillment o f its vision of education could never have been anything more than a dream.

^ Cuba had the highest ratio of television sets to population - one per twenty-five inhabitants - in Latin America. Louis A. Pérez Jr., Between Reform and Revolution York:. Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 296.

Hugh Thomas, "Middle Class Politics and the Cuban Revolution" in Claudio Veliz, ed., The Politics o f Conformity in Latin America (London: Oxford Univesity Press, 1967), p. 255.

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Table 1

Percentage of literates