NACLA Report on the Americas, March-April 1999 v32 i5 p34(2)

Inequality and anomie in Cuba. Guillermo C. Milan.

Abstract: Social disorientation has increased in virtually all sectors of Cuban society as more and more Cubans lose faith in the country's ability to overcome economic crisis. The inversion of the social pyramid in the 1990s, the shift away from egalitarianism, and the growing acceptance of capitalist endeavour have all contributed to this sense of anomie in Cuba's social and economic life. Surveys of Cubans provide strong support for this view that a pervasive sense of disorientation has overtaken the country, as the economic crisis continues to worsen and the public mood becomes more pessimistic.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 North American Congress on Latin America Inc. (NACLA) During the first three decades of the revolution, there was a gradual transformation of the Cuban population's values in favor of the revolutionary process, but transformation has come much faster than ever before in the last few years of economic and social crisis. The international shocks of the current decade have generated processes not before known in revolutionary Cuba. These processes have brought with them new social phenomena, some of them deeply troubling to the generation of Cubans who had grown accustomed to living in a highly egalitarian society in which the state, not the market, was the principal regulator of social and economic life.

This has had a dramatic effect on the psycho-social sphere of life - the conscious and emotional ways in which people take on certain personality traits and forms of interacting within their social milieu. The current situation appears to be generating different forms of psycho-social dissatisfaction that often come about when culturally sanctioned means are not adequate to achieve culturally established goals. This is a situation known in the sociological tradition as "anomie."

Survey research conducted in Havana between 1994 and 1998 by the author and two colleagues from the Cuban Institute of Philosophy, Moraima Diaz and Lourdes Urrutia, found attitudes indicating the emergence of social anomie in Cuba.

First, our surveys indicate distressing signs of economic polarization. Fifteen percent of individuals interviewed in Havana consider themselves "extremely needy," while only 4% claim to have no unmet material needs at all. Of the unmet needs mentioned by the individuals interviewed, those most frequently mentioned were economic necessities associated with declining living standards. Insufficient wages, the high costs of daily life, inadequate transportation and housing - in that order - were the dissatisfactions indicated by over half the respondents. Other needs which occupy a somewhat lower but still significant level are those associated with health, job stability, professional and technical development and, in one out of five people surveyed, marital stability.

Perceptions expressed about how one achieves success in life fell into two distinct groups: one in which respondents gave priority to individual efforts and one in which they emphasized the political and economic conditions of the country. Significantly, among both groups, only a third of those surveyed expressed any optimism about their own future. About half of all expectations of improvement were based on individual solutions like self-employment, overcoming professional barriers and individual effort. This indicates that at the psychosocial level, a sense of life based on the individual, the career and the family is becoming increasingly legitimate.

As for the obstacles to achieving success in individual projects, 30% said that the obstacles lay in the inadequacies of society itself, while 10% link these deficiencies to individuals, saying that society presents no such obstacles. These results reveal a perception among some sectors that some sort of dysfunctionatity exists in Cuban society which prevents individuals from achieving some sense of self-fulfillment. This perception presumably underlies the fact that around 30% of the respondents said they valued capitalism as the social alternative which would allow one to develop as an individual. One of the social consequences of the current economic crisis is that values associated with individual economic struggle are increasingly gaining acceptance among the Cuban population.

Indeed, it is of interest to note that the population is increasingly tolerant of ideas such as the free use of property and the buying and selling of individual labor power within the impersonal principles of the labor market, with no norms regulating wages and no sanctions against those who violate labor laws. A significant portion of those surveyed during this period indicate the growth of a tacit agreement to leave unreported deeds which might violate existing regulations, to accede without prejudice to goods of dubious origin or known to be stolen, to allow emigration in any of its forms, legal or otherwise, and to accept suicide as a solution to individual and family problems.

A significant number of respondents favor the privatization of some sectors, greater freedom of individual employment, increased foreign and national investment, and the idea that personal work effort and creative capacity be recognized as an organizing principle of distribution. There is clear opposition to paternalism, egalitarianism, privilege and the lack of urgency and social discipline.

In this sense, we can verify a trend toward a reorientation of psycho-social identity and of moral and ideological values that broadly corresponds with societal transformations. The socio-economic crisis and the inversion of the social pyramid - in which the skilled workers and professionals are rewarded less than unskilled workers and others who have access to dollars - have brought about a kind of social disorientation, or anomie.

It is among those who have the least confidence in the socio-economic solutions proposed by Cuba's political leadership that anomie is most evident. Emigration, suicide, and the breaking of social norms involving both criminal and noncriminal behavior all correlate with a strong lack of confidence in the political system.

At the same time, however, there are some very positive findings, such as strong support among all sectors for values like economic stability. "living in a world of harmony and peace" and "living in an independent country." The most desirable behavioral traits mentioned were confidence and self-respect, personal honesty, and "having the determination to see through one's objectives." What stands out is a trend toward values and a sense of life that includes self-fulfillment, the full self-expression of personality, and a reaffirmation of the values of life, democracy and social participation. There remains a genuine ideological vision of an independent country that is searching to reaffirm its identity as a unified nation.

Guillermo C. Milan is a social researcher at the Institute of Philosophy in Havana.

Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.