“Cuba is not the country it used to be. If you were a Cuban born on the island in the
vicinity of 1975, you grew up with the promise of equality. You remember watching
your classmates eating identical sandwiches and feeling: ‘We are all part of the
whole’” (p. 1). These are the opening words of the late Elizabeth Dore’s splendid last
book. They highlight cross-time empirical comparisons as well as moods of loss. She
argues that “The government’s pro-market policies culminated in a historic declara-
tion. Raúl Castro announced that egalitarianism, widely considered the Revolution’s
greatest achievement, was in fact one of its greatest errors” (p. 2). Your wealthy
family fellow student’s sandwiches had become much better than yours.
Dore conceived the project as an oral history; the book enables individual
Cubans to speak for themselves. In presenting the spoken testimonies of ordi-
nary Cubans, Dore marshals a powerful critique of government policies from the
egalitarian Left. Much of the text quotes from the interview transcripts. Readers
may, thus, decide for themselves.
Starting in 2004, Dore’s research spanned over 15 years, including Raúl
Castro’s entire presidency. She and her team interviewed and observed 124 people
in eight provinces, though half were from Havana. Dore appears to have made
provisions for the audio and the transcripts to become available at some point.
Faithful to the norms of oral histories, Dore selected seven individuals out of
the 124, born between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, to report their views
in extensive verbatim detail regarding three moments. They were interviewed
multiple times across the years. The text first portrays the 1980s as a time of
revolutionary success and equality. The 1990–2006 years featured the Soviet
Union’s collapse and ended with an ill Fidel Castro turning over the presidency
to his brother Raúl. Those pages explore what Dore calls “the collapse”, which
connects the end of communist regimes in Europe with Cuba’s hardships and the
flagging of the revolutionary spirit. The third part, on 2006–2020, explores the
consolidation of inequality, as a lived experience and as a consequence of Raúl
Castro’s decisions, which the Cuban Communist Party endorsed. Dore insists
that “the majority of the people we interviewed expressed similar hopes and
grievances”, arguing that the divide between supporters and opponents of the
government is “greatly exaggerated” (pp. 10–11).
The risk of official censorship shadowed the project. Dore’s initial efforts to
launch it got nowhere: “remember Oscar Lewis. In Cuba oral history is taboo”,
a friendly vice-minister told her. In 1968, Fidel Castro invited Oscar Lewis to
undertake a large-scale oral history project but terminated it 18 months later. At
a time of economic hardship, having failed to reach the goal of 10 million tons
of sugar for the 1970 harvest, the leadership did not want a record of Cubans
complaining.
Dore appealed to Mariela Castro, Raúl Castro’s daughter and the director of
the National Centre for Sex Education, who secured approval after a year.
However, upon listening to black-marketeer Esteban’s interview, Mariela Castro
suspended the project. Following a six-month interval, the project was reauthor-
ised. Nevertheless, Dore decided not to report the real names of the seven
star-interviewees, even though one – a self-identified regime opponent – wanted
his name mentioned because he was public in his opposition. In the end, neither
Dore nor his interviewees were intimidated; we hear her respondents in their
eloquence, hope, and sadness.
Mario, a black IT expert, director, and Communist Party member, may have
expressed the views closest to Dore’s own. Mario celebrates the school snacks (la
merienda) of the 1980s when, he reported, there was “prosperity and equality”
while “dressing the same as everyone else was a source of satisfaction and equal-
ity.” However, decades later, “now it’s the opposite” (pp. 24–26). “The thread
of equality is broken” (p. 212), Mario regretted, although he remained a loyal
communist party member, even deploying the new official language against egal-
itarianism – prompting Dore’s comment, “and this I find unsettling” (p. 228).
Dore and Mario agreed on much, however; she lists “openness, rights, free
debate, consensual politics, accountability and difference”, though she adds, “all
the things Cuba’s leaders regarded as subversive” (p. 221). Through Mario,
Dore reveals herself as an egalitarian socialist and as a democrat.
Other interviewees fill out the opinion range. Esteban, a black man and a
black marketeer, described himself as “a Cuban anarchist” (p. 164) and behaved
accordingly. Juan, black and poor in 2005, by 2016 had become president of his
neighbourhood’s Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, echoing official
slogans, yet also reporting “the biggest problem [is] the lack of food” (p. 258).
Barbara, also black, agreed with Mario that “economic changes were generating
inequality” (p. 71) and “considered voluntary labour and solidarity fun, and lamented their demise” (p. 74). Her loyalty strengthened when the government
gave her family a new home (p. 287).
Alina, a documentary filmmaker focused on illegal migration within Cuba,
had been hassled repeatedly by state security, which first banned her film; in due
course, her film won an official award – a trajectory of official repression and
official endorsement. Pavel had come from a revolutionary family but changed
his views to become a public opposition activist. Asked about “his dreams for
the future he answered with one word: steak” (p. 94). Alejandro, an industrial
engineer at a state job who had graduated first in his university class, joined the
Communist Youth Union, yet also launched a side black-market business selling
pirated digital entertainment (p. 187). Alejandro agreed with Raúl Castro that
egalitarianism and universal social provision were mistakes; he criticised “dissi-
dent nonsense” (p. 314) because “what matters is putting food on the table each
and every day” (p. 315). He emigrated in 2016.
This brief summary illustrates various conflicting themes. There is evidence of
social mobility – Juan rises to lead a local CDR, Mario is promoted to IT direc-
tor, and Barbara gets a house. And yet, the constraints on daily living routines,
especially the nearly incessant worries about food, leave everyone uncertain and
frustrated. There is evidence of official repression but also of official amends:
Alina’s film went from being banned from winning a prize. The word “contra-
dictions” is insufficient to capture this social complexity.
Among Dore’s many career accomplishments, she was an incisive scholar of
race and gender. However, she found it nearly impossible to persuade her Cuban
interviewees to discuss racism. Barbara even stood up to stop the interview when
asked about racism (p. 174). Not even Mario could connect inequality with rac-
ism, notwithstanding his analytical skills. Racism in contemporary Cuba, Dore
observed, is a social fact, but also the one topic not to be discussed.
Gender issues appear infrequently, typically through Dore’s analytical com-
mentary that brings out persistent patriarchal features of Cuba’s society (pp.
175, 194), even though the interviewees do not raise these issues. Part of this
lack stemmed from Dore’s decision to feature five men but only two women
among her narrators.
One criticism of the book is its jumbled account of national policy trends. On
the Prologue’s first page, Dore writes, “the leadership that came to power after
Fidel introduced market measures.” That is true but is also true that Fidel intro-
duced many market measures, including those that Dore appears to pin exclusively,
and inaccurately, on Fidel’s successors – tourism, the encouragement of small pri-
vate businesses, and accepting the diaspora’s remittances. It is true that Fidel set
limits to the market openings that he initiated, but it is equally true that Raúl
Castro did the same from late 2015 through 2019. Greater nuance – a trait that long and laudably marked Dore’s scholarship – would have led her to report the his-
torical trajectory with greater care.
The book’s conclusions on page 320 are searing. “The magic that kept the
Cuban system going has evaporated”, asserting that the capital-R Revolution
had given many Cubans “their life meaning” through “the struggle for national
dignity”, including foundational features such as Fidel Castro’s role, the 1961
literacy campaign, and the defeat of the 1961 US-sponsored exile invasion at
Playa Girón. In contrast, the book’s interviewees were younger Cubans who did
not live through those foundational moments. Dore writes that her respondents
were more familiar with blackouts, shortages, low pay, inequality, and friends
who emigrated.
“Cuba had lost the promise of equality and Cubans lost their desire for it.”
Dore had noted one example of an odd consensus: “Mario, a Party member, and
Pavel, a dissident, both espoused the Communist Party’s new policy of equality
of opportunities” (p. 301), albeit for differing reasons – Mario’s loyalty to the
Communist Party, Pavel’s opposition to the legacies of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Her own critique of the Cuban government and Communist Party, let it be
clear, focuses on the policy shift toward greater reliance on freer markets and pri-
vate undertakings. For some, that economic freedom worked. However, for many
Cubans, she tells us, “They were free to be poor and hungry.” “When it became
clear that market forces would not improve the lives of more than a tiny minority
of the population, the leadership relied on repression and emigration to maintain
control” (p. 3), referring to the repression of protests in 2020 and 2021.
As a result, “Socialism in Cuba is over …” This is surely not how Dore once
might have wished to finish her book, and a hint of that comes from completing
that sentence: “… at least for the time being” (pp. 320–321). Socialism and
democracy in Cuba had been part of her vision, a vision that many Cubans once
shared and vigorously defended, a vision that she says has faded and perhaps
vanished.
