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‘El Salario no Alcanzaba’: The Salary Did Not Stretch

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Women’s Work in Special Period Cuba

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Abstract

This chapter provides an economic perspective by discussing the dramatic deterioration in the quality of daily life after the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and subsequent near collapse of the Cuban economy. Through an original combined analysis of press sources and oral history interview testimonies, Jerónimo Kersh gives meaning to the pragmatic importance of wages and disposable income with regard to choosing a form of employment during the Special Period. By exploring the complexities of extreme shortages of food and reduced access to consumer goods, ‘El Salario no Alcanzaba’ illustrates how and why Cuban women needed an alternative form of income above their state wage in order to survive such a hostile economic climate characterized by emerging inequalities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Susan Eckstein, 1994 & 2003 editions, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro, New York, Routledge, p. 219.

  2. 2.

    Thomas E Skidmore, and Peter H. Smith, 1997, Modem Latin America, New York, Oxford University Press, p. 288.

  3. 3.

    ‘Información a la población’, author unknown, 29/8/90, Granma, p. 1.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., p. 106.

    ‘¿Cuándo termina el periodo especial?’, author unknown, 14/1/2000, Bohemia , pp. 27–32.

  5. 5.

    Fifty-five percent of those interviewed in a Bohemia magazine survey said that they had noticed a deterioration—Alberto Salazar, 13/5/94, ‘Las medidas: voces en un coro’, Bohemia , pp. 27–30.

  6. 6.

    Jorge F.Pérez-López, 1995, Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage, New Brunswick, Transaction, p. 137.

  7. 7.

    CEE . Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1998, Annual Issues. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba. La Habana, Editorial Estadística, p. 107.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 107.

  9. 9.

    Ruth Pearson, 1998, Economic Area Reform and Women’s Employment in Cuba, Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire, p. 685.

    Carmelo Mesa-Lago, 2000, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies: Comparative Policy and Performance: Chile, Cuba, and Costa Rica, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 309.

  10. 10.

    Caridad Carrobello, 14/10/94, ‘Mercado agropecuario: comprar sin susto’, Bohemia, pp. 34–6.

  11. 11.

    Raimundo Diaz Rosell, 24/11/95, ‘Empleo y seguridad social: No vamos a crear un estado de incertidumbre’, Bohemia, pp. 32–5.

  12. 12.

    Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy, pp. 142–3.

  13. 13.

    Elisa Facio, 2000, ‘Jineterismo During the Special Period’, in Eloise Linger and John Cotman (eds), Cuban Transitions at the Millennium, Maryland, International Development Options, p. 59.

  14. 14.

    Salazar, ‘Las medidas: voces en un coro’.

  15. 15.

    Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, 26/11/93 ‘Dedo en la llaga’, Bohemia, pp. 40–2.

  16. 16.

    120:1—Pearson, Economic area reform and Women’s Employment in Cuba, p. 8, 150:1—Steve Ludlam, 2009, ‘Cuban Labor at 50: What About the Workers?’ Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 28, No. 4, p. 547.

    ‘El tema de los temas’, author unknown, 20/4/01, Bohemia, pp. 29–33.

  17. 17.

    Eckstein, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro, p. 125.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 125.

  19. 19.

    Ludlam, ‘Cuban Labor at 50: What About the Workers’, p. 549.

    Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb, 2009, Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, p. 23.

  20. 20.

    Throughout the book, I will refer to the second currency as ‘hard currency’ or divisa to avoid confusion, as well as maintaining the 25:1 official conversion of pesos to divisa .

  21. 21.

    Tourist industry jobs provided access to hard-currency tips and a hard-currency monthly bonus—see Chap. 6.

    Self-employment was also introduced in 1993—see Chap. 7.

  22. 22.

    There were already close to a million Cubans and their decedents in the US prior to the crisis.

  23. 23.

    Sergio Díaz-Briquets, & Jorge Pérez-López, 1997, ‘Refugee Remittances: Conceptual Issues and the Cuban and Nicaraguan Experiences’, International Migration Review, 31:2, p. 432.

  24. 24.

    Sarah A Blue, 2004, ‘State Policy, Economic Crisis, Gender, and Family Ties: Determinants of Family Remittances to Cuba’, Economic Geography, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan), p. 72.

  25. 25.

    Frances Alia Spiegel, 2004, Cuban Americans on Remittances and the Embargo, Miami, Florida International University, p. 40.

  26. 26.

    Eckstein, Back from the Future, p. 226.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 226.

    Spiegel, Cuban Americans on Remittances…, p. 68.

  28. 28.

    Mario González-Corzo & Scott Larson, 2007, ‘Dominican Policies to Attract Remittances: Economic Impact and Lessons for Cuba’, Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), November 30—https://www.ascecuba.org/asce_proceedings/dominican-policies-to-attract-remittances-economic-impact-and-lessons-for-cuba/—last visited 9/6/18.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Interview took place on 29/11/13 in Rodríguez Calderón’s home, Vedado, Havana.

  31. 31.

    Interview with Sara Más took place 2/12/13 in the Mujeres magazine offices in Habana Vieja.

  32. 32.

    Cubans were given the leases to their rented accommodation after the revolution, and in 1984 rents were converted into mortgage payments, which could lead to outright ownership—Staten, Clifford L, 2015, The History of Cuba, California, Greenwood, p. 132.

  33. 33.

    Miguel Angel Centeno, 2004, ‘The Return of Cuba to Latin America; the End of Cuban Exceptionalism?’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol 23, No 4, October, p. 405.

  34. 34.

    Luis F. Lopez-Calva, and Nora Lustig, 2010, Declining Inequality in Latin America: A Decade of Progress?, Baltimore, Brookings Institution Press, p. 1.

  35. 35.

    From 100 pesos to 225 pesos per month ‘Carrobello, El monedero suena’.

  36. 36.

    Interview took place on 29/11/13 in Nuñez Sarmiento’s home, Miramar, Havana.

  37. 37.

    Mark Q. Sawyer, 2006, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 111.

    Nadine T. Fernandez, 2010, Revolutionizing Romance; Interracial Couple in Contemporary Cuba, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, p. 130.

  38. 38.

    Amalia L. Cabezas, 2009, Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, p. 80.

  39. 39.

    Alejandro de La Fuente, 2001, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba, Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press, p. 309.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 309.

  41. 41.

    Sawyer, Racial Politics, p. 69.

  42. 42.

    In 1991 Census—Ronald M. Schneider, 1996, Brazil: Culture and Politics in a New Industrial Powerhouse, Colorado, Westview Press, p. 183.

  43. 43.

    In 1981 Census—De la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 309.

  44. 44.

    Edward E. Telles, 2004, Race in Another America: the Significance of Skin Colour in Brazil, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 172.

    Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimaraes, 2003, ‘The Race Issue in Brazilian Politics’ in Brazil since 1985: Economy, Polity and Society’, María D’Alva, G Kinzo and James Dunkerley (eds), London, Institute of Latin American Studies, pg. 268

  45. 45.

    Schneider, 1996, Brazil, p. 182.

    Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 1992, Death Without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, Berkley, University of California Press, p. 543.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., p. 543.

    Peter Fry, 2000, ‘Politics, Nationality, and the Meaning of “Race” in Brazil’, Daedalus, Spring 2000, p. 92.

  47. 47.

    Telles, Race in Another America, p. 115.

  48. 48.

    De la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 321.

  49. 49.

    Sawyer, Racial Politics, p. 140.

  50. 50.

    De la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 320.

    Fernandez, Revolutionising Romance, p. 130.

  51. 51.

    Mette Louise Berg, 2004, ‘Sleeping with the Enemy: Jineterismo, “Cultural Level” and “Antisocial Behaviour” in 1990s Cuba’ in Sandra Courtman (ed), Beyond the Blood, the Beach, and the Banana, Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, pp. 186–204.

    Kaifa L. Roland, 2011, Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha—An Ethnography of Racial Meanings, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

  52. 52.

    María Isabel Domínguez, 2005, ‘Cuban Youth: Aspirations, Social Perceptions, and Identity’, in Tulchin, Joseph H, Bobea, Lilian, Espina Prieto, Mayara P, Hernández, Rafael and Bryan, Elizabeth (eds) Changes in Cuban Society Since the Nineties, Washington, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, p. 293.

  53. 53.

    Caridad Carrobello, 9/12/05 ‘El monedero suena’, Bohemia, pp. 36–7.

  54. 54.

    Lynn A. Bolles, 1986, ‘Economic Crisis and Female Headed Households in Urban Jamaica’, in June Nash and Helen Safa (eds) Women and Change in Latin America, Massachusetts, Bergin & Garvey, pp. 78–9.

  55. 55.

    Vladia Rubio, y Sara Mas, 9/3/93, ‘Presencia femenina para el desarrollo’, Granma, p. 1.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., p. 1.

    Silvia Martínez, 8/3/97, ‘Derechos preservados’, Granma, p. 3.

    ‘Mujeres europeas perciben menor salario que los hombres’, author unknown, 9/6/1999, Granma, p. 7.

    ‘Jamás seremos esclavas de una potencia extranjera o de un patrón capitalista’, author unknown, 7/3/90, Granma, pp. 4–5.

    Alina, M. Lotti, April 1998 ‘Tan iguales y tan diferentes’ Mujeres en campaña, p. 5.

    Eduardo Montes de Oca, 2/7/99, ‘Violencia contra la mujer: ¿frágil costilla de Adán?’, Bohemia, pp. 15–8.

    ‘Necesario resolver con urgencia la grave situación de la mujer y la familia en el mundo…’, author unknown, 27/2/92, Granma, p. 4.

    Sara Mas, 8/10/1994, ‘Destaca Vilma postura de las mujeres latinoamericanas’—Granma, p. 2.

  57. 57.

    Christina Witchterich, 14/8/92 ‘Ellas pagan altos precios’, Bohemia, pp. 16–9.

    Lotti, ‘Tan iguales y tan diferentes’.

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  1. Richmond, The American International University, London, UK

    Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

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Jerónimo Kersh, D. (2019). ‘El Salario no Alcanzaba’: The Salary Did Not Stretch. In: Women’s Work in Special Period Cuba. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05630-8_3

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