Cuba’s Life Task: Lessons in Gendered Climate Change Resilience
Over the course of a month, supported by various research grants, Caitlan Read and Marta Santivañez and I travelled around Cuba to record the ways in which the country’s women are responding to climate change with a typically Cuban spirit of resilience.
Though it falls within the category commonly known as ‘Small Island Developing States’ (SIDS), the island of Cuba, with its history and socio-political system, nevertheless stands alone. The legacy of Spanish and American colonialism is evident across the island, from the architecture of Old Havana to the spruced-up, brightly coloured Chevies that dot the roads. The history of the island is one of histrionics, from the Socialist Revolution to the downfall of the Soviet Union, the Special Period and finally, Obama’s arrival. Life, for most Cubans, is organised by these events; to resist them and to thrive because of, or despite them, is a social fact of Cubanism. Acts of resistance are, therefore, a defining factor of Cuban life.
Now, as the island enters a new crisis, derived from the depreciation of oil, the loss of support from Venezuela, and tightening economic restrictions at the hands of the Trump administration in the US, Cubans are forced to resist yet another challenge – climate change. Ever more frequent and more intense weather events, primarily hurricanes, have left Cubans facing unprecedented flooding, soil salinisation and threatened food security. This vulnerability to the impacts of climate change has been further exacerbated by the country’s debilitated economy, weak infrastructure and restricted access to food.
Paradoxically, these factors and the legacy of the Cuban Revolution have pushed women, often considered to be the most vulnerable group to the impacts of climate change, to the forefront of climate action on the island. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), founded by Fidel Castro in 1960, has been essential in advancing gender equality across the island. Its principles of community organisation and resistance are reflected in the numbers of women who have mobilised in support of the country’s national plan for climate action: Tarea Vida – ‘Life Task’. In August 2019, in the midst of a global call for gender-sensitive approaches to climate change, our team conducted fieldwork in Cuba to examine the socio-political factors that affect Cuban women’s experiences of climate change and their contribution to Tarea Vida.
Over the span of one month we spoke to government officials and civil society representatives in three different areas of Cuba. A key word in our academic and grant proposals – ‘resilience’ – was a recurrent theme in every interview we conducted. Understanding what resilience means for these women and how it translates into daily action became the core of our work. What follows are the stories of three women fighting to address the impacts of climate change, in the face of undeniable adversity.
ISIS MARIA SALCINES:
Fighting food insecurity with urban farming
Striving to launch a socio-economic revolution in Cuba’s agricultural industry is Isis Maria Salcines. Based at the Organopónico Vivero Alamar, a cooperative urban farm in East Havana, she is part of a new generation of farmers pushing Cuba out of its precarious over-reliance on food imports and into an agriculturally sustainable future. East Havana’s Organopónico was first established by a group of Cubans, including Isis’ father, Miguel Salcines, in the so-called ‘Special Period’ of the 1990s. This period, which followed the collapse of the USSR, pushed Cuba – fully dependent on Soviet imports – into economic crisis. Castro’s government reacted by implementing food rationing schedules, but the immediate need to produce food in Cuba led to the creation of urban farms. Soon enough however, Cuba found new allies to replace the USSR and continued the same level of dependence on imports to feed its population. While the Organopónico remains a working farm, Cuba still imports more than 80 per cent of its food.
As Isis tells us: ‘Social processes are slow, but in Cuba they are slower.’ Striving to provide a healthier and homegrown diet is challenging when Cubans are so used to a diet of imported rice, beans and meats, and ‘don’t like vegetables’. Yet this is a challenge that Isis, a mother of two and a fierce optimist, has dedicated her career to overcoming. Though she grew up the daughter of a farmer, Isis trained to become an agronomy engineer and is well aware of the adverse conditions facing farmers in Cuba. She shows us nets riddled with holes used to ‘cover’ plants, and the rusting aluminium structures holding up the greenhouses. She adds that many plants were lost during Hurricane Irma in September 2017.
Yet, while the impact of extreme weather is one part of the struggle, perhaps an even larger part is the impact of the US embargo. Preventing the importation of key materials, including seedling houses, irrigation systems, and even simple tools, Cuban farmers work under challenging conditions. Repairs must be done ‘without having any of the materials necessary’, a situation worsened today by limited access to electricity and oil following the loss of the ‘special relationship’ with Venezuela.
A woman sorting seeds at the Organopónico.
Isis is optimistic that a change in leadership in the US would lead to a weakening of the extreme restrictions. But regardless, she is ploughing ahead, taking proactive steps to change attitudes in Cuba and perceptions of Cuba abroad. ‘In Cuba we have two blockades, the one from the US and the one in our heads,’ she says. To raises awareness about Cuba’s agricultural sector with foreign tourists, Isis conducts tours of the Organopónico, and also invites Cuban school groups, in order to educate children about farming and to encourage healthier eating habits. The philosophy of the farm has always been to facilitate access to healthy food at affordable prices. In true Cuban fashion, Isis’ resilience rings out, louder than the struggles she inevitably faces as a farmer in East Havana. While all she can do is remain hopeful that the US embargo will one day be lifted, she plunges head-first into the challenge of ending the ‘internal blockade’.
MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES:
Sharing community-led mapping to prepare for hurricanes
Infrastructure in Cuba is infamous for its state of decay and disrepair due to a lack of access to resources and funding. Sixty per cent of buildings are at risk of collapse; Cuba’s Juventud Rebelde newspaper estimates that 28,000 people in Havana alone live in dangerously crumbling buildings. With climate change increasing the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, this issue is becoming more and more pressing. In March 2018, about 100 buildings subsided and were lost to flooding in the city and the number of residents in provisional housing has risen to over 116,000. Many of them have spent more than seven years, some more than 20, in what was supposed to be ‘temporary’ accommodation.
With these challenges at the core of her work, María de los Ángeles, director of the Centro Félix Varela (CFV), has dedicated her life to strengthening community resilience and environmentally responsible citizenship. Spearheading an almost exclusively female team of researchers and social workers, she is in charge of carrying on the legacy of Félix Varela, a monk and staunch advocate of freedom from Spanish control and slave emancipation. María has conducted participatory vulnerability mapping in nearly all neighborhoods of Havana and across the entire island. The approach is simple, yet effective: capitalising on the knowledge that individuals living in areas at risk from hurricanes hold about their own community. The points marked on each map include: where the elderly live, which buildings are most at risk, which households have the most children, which ones have drinking water, which ones don’t.
A house in Havana starts collapsing as plants
weaken its structure.
With this information in mind, María helps plot vulnerable homes and families as well as the locations of natural, cultural and sustainable resources such as food, heritage sites, community gardens, toxic waste sites and tools. Affected communities become participants in the development and transformation of their own neighborhoods, shifting from passive disaster victims to active agents of resilience-building and preparation. On several occasions, United Nations officials have pointed to Cuba as a model for developing countries preparing for hurricanes and other natural disasters. Fewer lives are lost in Cuba following extreme weather events than in any other Caribbean SIDS, indicating that successful approaches to natural hazards might not necessarily be based on the income level of countries, nor on the degree of investment in disaster risk management: it is community, as María points out repeatedly.
In a place like Cuba, where infrastructure is fragile, access to resources restricted, and help from the international realm scarce, people have learnt that the best way to survive is to help each other. Cubans do this not only by sharing all they have, but also by breathing life into the places that have been turned into nothing but rubble through music, art and dance. María makes these intangible aspects of community-resilience visible by putting them on a map.
GEISY GUIA DELIS:
Providing a voice for those affected by the impacts of climate change
Misinformation and lack of transparency are everyday occurrences in Cuba, where the strong hand of the state keeps journalists and researchers alike away from pursuing investigations that challenge the status quo. Attempting to rigorously examine the narratives of mainstream media stands, defiant, Geisy Guia Delis, a member of the editorial board at Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism). Led by Elaine Díaz Rodríguez, a former Nieman Fellow, Periodismo de Barrio is an independent enterprise that conducts investigative journalism on climate change and its effects on vulnerable groups in Cuba.
‘We began covering stories on climate change because we realised they were relevant, they were noticeable and they were not too political,’ Geisy explains while sipping coffee in a small café in Old Havana. The team pursue stories that speak of everyday occurrences, which has allowed them to build strong connections with local communities. Through this slow process, Geisy and the other journalists have been able to uncover the challenges faced by thousands of Cubans, and have moved these concerns into the public sphere: ‘We learned first-hand that women take on the full responsibility of the family at their homes,’ she recounts. ‘We learned of a mother and daughter who had to dig a well a couple of kilometres away from their home in order to get water. We are learning about the challenges of accessing potable water.’
The team works despite limited resources and nonexistent access to experts and local government representatives, who will not talk to them without adequate authorisations. Geisy describes how the economic situation in Cuba is so dire that most people they talk to feel they don’t have time to be concerned with the environment, a mantra she hears so regularly it reassures her of the need to tell these stories. ‘Now the local paper covers the environment, too!’ she declares, grinning with satisfaction. Similarly, she has noticed an increase in government policies targeting the environment, and while the team cannot trace this directly back to their stories, they are certain they have played a role in bringing these issues to the attention of politicians.
Geisy is optimistic about the future for an independent organisation such as Periodismo de Barrio. A year ago, Cuba finally introduced a data network on the island, and while internet connection is still very limited, there is now a public sphere that did not exist before. Cubans are organising to protest independently from the state for the first time since 1959.
A man walks past a shop in Havana that distributes food rations.
Lessons we can learn from Cuba
We returned to the UK with the insight that in Cuba, women are spearheading environmental initiatives and disaster recovery efforts after extreme weather events, in spite of the socioeconomic barriers they as Cubans and as women face. The ideological power of their identity as revolutionaries and as residents of a politically isolated Small Island Developing Nation is the main driver behind their leadership, self-sufficiency and innovation mindset. It is paramount that we learn from these approaches to climate change resilience, particularly those developed under adverse conditions and in different socio-political contexts. After all, climate change is a Life Task faced not only by Cuba but by the global community as a whole. A one-size-fits-all approach will not work for everyone.
