Triplett on Bayard de Volo, ‘Women and the Cuban Insurrection: How Gender Shaped Castro’s Victory’ H-LatAm H-Net

This is a country, let’s say, not so socially innocuous for women in terms of gender-based violence and security; things that for someone who comes from a context like Cuba are very terrifying. Belkis Ayón was one of Cuba’s most prominent artists, known best for her stark black-and-white images based on the age-old Abakua society. The strictly-male secret club, which originated in Nigeria and traveled to Cuba through slavery, intrigued Ayón, who resignified its myths and symbols in her art to comment subtlely on society and machismo. Her prints, imbued with feminist undertones, were displayed internationally, including the Venice Biennele, although the Afro-Cuban artist attracted more interest after her death. Celia Cruz is a household name in just about any Latin American and Latinx family. A natural singer, Cruz is said to have discovered her talent at a young age, singing in school assemblies and neighborhood parties. Her first taste of fame came as the front singer of Sonora Matancera, an acclaimed orchestra known for its repertoire of Afro-Cuban styles.

• In chapter 8, Bayard de Volo returns to the historical narrative and shifts her focus from examining femininity and the role of women in the insurrection to analyzing the role of masculinity in the successes and failures of the general strike of April 1958.
• With regard to political rights, Cuban women received the vote in 1934.
• As if moving down a reception line, each girl takes Raffi’s hand and touches her left cheek to his, then her right cheek to his, then takes my hand and does the same.
• Nicole “Nikki” Wadley graduated from Georgetown College in 2017 with a major in history and concentrations in the Latin American and European regions.
• Alina Herrera Fuentes goes through all these identities; and in them her existence is intertwined with that of her women ancestors, although she knows perfectly well how to enter and how to leave; she knows where Alina is in the midst of all the clothes she wears.

Indeed, more than 90 percent of all domestic workers were female. Fewer than 3 percent of Cuban women, however, worked in agricultural, fishing, construction, and transport industries.

When I arrived and discovered all the multidimensionality of the Mexica, Mayan, Aztec and Nahuatl worldview, I found it fascinating. I loved the “doñitas,” who tell you through their orality how wonderful and profound the indigenous worldview is here. It’s something that when they tell you the history of America and Mexico in Cuba they don’t even come close. In these ten years that I have been away from Cuba, where I have spent the most time was in a town where I was not close to any person practicing my religion. The truth is that now, knowing that they are here, I feel less alone than before.

“That’s a question I ask myself every day.” He says Marti would have wanted the revolution and the good things it brought—free education and health care for everyone. 5.2.1 Proportion of ever-partnered women and girls subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months. On the other hand, I feel that in addition to my Afro-Cuban rituals, I am steeped in Mexican spirituality, its rites, and its worldview.

Cuba returns to an infant mortality of the last century

In 1934 the percentages of Cuban women working outside the home, attending school, and practicing birth control surpassed the corresponding percentages in nearly every other Latin American country. To be sure, prerevolutionary society retained certain extreme inequalities between https://www.santamarcelinacultura.org.br/2023/01/25/cali-women/ the sexes. Despite the early date in obtaining relatively advanced legal rights, prerevolutionary women were far from equal partners in governing the state. Women “seldom for office nor they appear often as members of boards, commissions, or other appointive positions at the policy-making level.” Nearly all women in politics or public office found themselves relegated chiefly to subordinate roles.

But growing access to the internet – which only recently became commonplace on the island, as well as cultural exchange through the island’s tourism industry have increasingly exposed the population to practices like tattoo art so common elsewhere. Cuba’s government maintains a list of approved, private-sector trades, and “tattoo artist” is not among them. Though the practice is not explicitly outlawed either, the legal limbo has long forced the art to remain in the shadows. The nearly 200-member woman´s association, called Erias, was founded in July 2021, and is the first to actively and openly promote body art on the island, a practice for decades considered taboo in Cuba, especially among women. As of 2011, women in Cuba made up more than 80% of university students and around 68% of university graduates.

Along with Afro-Cuban https://absolute-woman.com/latin-women/cuban-women/ women, women in Cuba, formerly a marginalized group, were able to gain higher educational levels and equal advancements in their respective careers. The 1975 Family Code was designed to allow Cuban women to share the household duties fairly with their spouses. Job opportunities were available in the cities and as a result, many Cuban women left the countryside to work and live in the cities.

Specifically, it is the absence of certain narratives that grabs Bayard de Volo’s attention. Whereas “tactical femininity” is lifted up as a desirable ideal, war stories surrounding women’s involvement in bombings and as victims of sexual assault are backgrounded in the Cuban War Story. What Bayard de Volo’s historical evidence allows her to demonstrate, then, is that “the urban underground used traditional femininity—particularly notions of women as passive and politically and sexually innocent—as a tactic of war” (p. 133). Unlike what is claimed by the Cuban government, gender equality is a long way off in Cuba. Unfortunately, most Cubans do not believe sexism exists because they grow up hearing that it was eradicated by the revolution.

Women in the Cuban labor force

The Cuban War Story is one that has been cultivated and preserved for nearly sixty years, by both the Cuban state itself and the attendant historiography. So, on the one hand, in social and public life it was funny and sometimes even flattering that my identity aroused so much curiosity and so many looks; on the other, in other areas such as work it was very uncomfortable because it always put me on alert. And it’s not that harassment does not exist in Cuba, it does exist and is as real as in Mexico, but at least I had never had an experience of this type in my workplace until I emigrated.

Reproductive health

The United Nations Population Policy data bank states that between 1968 and 1974, the rate of legal abortion went from 16.5 to 69.5 legal abortions performed per 1,000 women of reproductive age. Currently, the estimate is around 47 and 62 legal abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age. “During the 1990s, when subsidies from the Soviet Union ended, the maintenance of social services often fell back on women as mothers, wives, and caregivers, indicative that Cuba had not fully equalized gender responsibilities.” Many Cuban girls speak English well, it’s a second language at school, and Cuban education is really good.

There are multiple websites with Latina women, but the thing is, men often make the same mistake and choose the first random site that seems to be https://lifeisgoodshirt.com/costa-rican-women-all-about-dating-costa-rican-women/ visually good enough. The truth is that a good ad or the first position on Google search results doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a place where you can meet legit Cuban ladies.