Political Culture and Ordinary Crime in Cuba Deobrah M

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Brooklyn Law School: BrooklynWorks Brooklyn Journal of International Law Volume 35 | Issue 2 Article 1 2010 The orM al Politics of Social Control: Political Culture and Ordinary Crime in Cuba Deobrah M. Weissman Marsha Weissman Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil Recommended Citation Deobrah M. Weissman & Marsha Weissman, The Moral Politics of Social Control: Political Culture and Ordinary Crime in Cuba, 35 Brook. J. Int'l L. (2010). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol35/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brooklyn Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. THE MORAL POLITICS OF SOCIAL CONTROL: POLITICAL CULTURE AND ORDINARY CRIME IN CUBA Deborah M. Weissman & Marsha Weissman* [Y]our ideals are too high . An idea that is so high that it is beyond reach of the real is not very useful . What you need here among the Cubans is a desire to make money, to found great enterprises, and to carry on the prosperity of this beautiful island, and the young Cubans ought, most of them, to begin in business . The right of property and the motive for accumulation, next to the right of liberty, is the basis of all modern, successful civilization, and until you have a community of political influence and control which is affected by the conserving influences of property and property ownership, successful popular government is impossible.1 [T]he moral factors, the factors of conscience, the cultural factors are irreplaceable under socialism. We should not think, even for a minute, that we are going to solve with money those problems that only the conscience can resolve. What we should do is use material incentives intelligently and combine them with moral stimuli, use them as rein- forcers. We should not believe for an instant that now we can manage today’s man, the socialist man, by virtue of material incentives exclusively, because material incentives do not have the attraction here that they have under capitalism where everything depends—life and 2 death—upon the money in one’s pocket. * Deborah M. Weissman, Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law, Univer- sity of North Carolina School of Law; Marsha Weissman, Ph.D, Founder and Executive Director, Center for Community Alternatives. The authors wish to thank Dr. Caridad Navarette Calderón at the Center for Juridical Research, Ministry of Justice, Havana, Cuba to whom we owe an enormous debt for providing us with her papers, research ma- terials, and introducing us to scholars, jurists, and attorneys from all over Cuba. Gladys Marel García and Fidel Requeijo also provided invaluable and continuing support during our research in Havana and Yaguajay. The authors gratefully acknowledge Maxine Eich- ner, Barbara Fedders, and Louis Pérez, Jr. for their support and insightful observations and suggestions, as well as the participants of the Duke-UNC summer faculty workshop. Jina Dillon, Liz Irvin, and Lisa Weissman-Ward provided excellent research assistance. 1. William Howard Taft, Provisional Governor of Cuba, Address at the Opening Exercises of the National University of Habana (Oct. 1, 1906). 2. Fidel Castro, Cuban Prime Minister, Address at the Closing Ceremony of the 13th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (Nov. 16, 1973). 312 BROOK. J. INT’L L. [Vol. 35:2 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 313 I. THE DETERMINANTS OF CUBAN SOCIAL CONTROL .......................... 316 A. Moralism as Political Culture ...................................................... 317 B. Moralism Actualized: Participation as Moral Social Conduct .... 319 II. THE MACHINERY OF SOCIAL CONTROL ........................................... 320 A. Social Controls and Ordinary Crime in Cuba ............................. 321 B. Participatory Mechanisms as a Means of Social Control ............ 325 1. Overview of Cuban Organizations ........................................... 325 2. Social Capital and Crime Prevention through Distribution of Public Goods ....................................................... 327 3. Collective Supervision and the Complexities of Categorizing Deviance ............................................................. 329 III. ORDINARY CRIME: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY ...................................................................................... 333 A. Domestic Violence ........................................................................ 334 1. Gender Equality as a Framework ............................................. 334 2. Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention...................... 337 a. Definitions and Determinants .............................................. 337 b. Cuban Responses to Domestic Violence .............................. 339 (1) Research and Policy Initiatives ...................................... 339 (2) Controlling Domestic Violence through Participatory Mechanisms ................................................... 342 c. Legal Responses ................................................................... 343 B. Juvenile Delinquency ................................................................... 346 1. Youth in Cuba: “If The Youth Fail, We All Fail” .................... 346 2. Cuban Approaches to Juvenile Delinquency ........................... 348 a. “Preventive Work, Not Repression” .................................... 349 b. Socialization and Social Work: Cuba’s Social Work Brigades .............................................................. 352 c. Legal Responses ................................................................... 353 IV. POLITICAL CULTURE AND ORDINARY CRIME: SOME COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA .................. 356 A. Paradigms of Modern U.S. Criminology ..................................... 357 1. Fear and Loathing: The Carceral State ..................................... 357 2. The Dissipation of Social Capital ............................................. 362 3. ATIs: Arrested Development and Net-Widening ..................... 364 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 366 2010] SOCIAL CONTROL AND CRIME IN CUBA 313 INTRODUCTION The Cuban revolution has been described as “the longest running social experiment” in history—one not well-received in the United States.3 The U.S. government responded to the revolution first with suspicion and then with hostility. Initially, the United States was most concerned by the close geographical proximity of a Soviet Union-allied socialist government, as well as the possibility of Cuban influence in Latin America. In the post-Cold War years, journalists and pundits focused their commen- tary on Cuba’s lack of democratic political institutions, human rights vi- olations, and a pathological obsession with the Castro brothers.4 Even though the current administration has acknowledged the failure of U.S. policy with respect to Cuba, no substantive changes have been announced.5 As a result, the narrative of Cuba in the United States contin- ues to dwell almost exclusively on political repression and economic failure.6 The Cuban revolution, however, is a complex process—one that defies facile explanations. Subscribing to the perspective offered by social scientists who urge “a more nuanced view” of Cuba,7 we undertake an examination of a specific facet of the Cuban revolution in this Article: the Cuban approach to ordinary crime. While other scholars have ad- dressed Cuba’s criminal justice system by focusing on formal legal sub- stance, procedural matters, and socialist legality, this Article provides an alternative opportunity to examine commonly held views about socialist governance.8 Perhaps more importantly, it provides insights into the 3. The Cuba Studies Trust, International Institute for the Study of Cuba, http://www.cubastudiestrust.org/plan.html (last visited Feb. 11, 2010). 4. See Saul Landau, U.S. Media Images of Postrevolutionary Cuba: Shaped by Gov- ernment Policy and Commercial Grammar, LATIN AM. PERSP., July 2006, at 118. 5. On April 13, 2009, the White House announced the easing of some travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban-American families. Press Release, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Fact Sheet: Reaching Out to the Cuban People (Apr. 13, 2009), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Fact-Sheet-Reaching- out-to-the-Cuban-people/; see also Mark Landler, Clinton Impresses Foreign Audiences by Saying U.S. Policies Have Failed, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 18, 2009, at A4. 6. Landau, supra note 4, at 122 (critiquing reports that “pose outdated and ethnocen- tric questions” related to Cuba’s failure to adopt U.S. standards); see also Associated Press, Cuba: Dispute on Castro’s Intent, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 23, 2009, at A13 (noting current U.S. demands that Cuba address human rights and political prisoners). 7. Alexander I. Gray & Antoni Kapcia, Introduction: Responding to Crisis at the Grass Roots, in THE CHANGING DYNAMIC OF CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY 1, 8 (Alexander I. Gray & Antoni Kapcia eds., 2008). 8. See Gerard J. Clark, The Legal Profession in Cuba, 23 SUFFOLK TRANSNAT’L L. REV. 413, 436; Erik Luna, Cuban Criminal Justice and the Ideal of Good Governance, 14 314 BROOK. J. INT’L L. [Vol.

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