Slum Clearance in Havana in an Age of Revolution, 1930-65
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SLEEPING ON THE ASHES: SLUM CLEARANCE IN HAVANA IN AN AGE OF REVOLUTION, 1930-65 by Jesse Lewis Horst Bachelor of Arts, St. Olaf College, 2006 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jesse Horst It was defended on July 28, 2016 and approved by Scott Morgenstern, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Edward Muller, Professor, Department of History Lara Putnam, Professor and Chair, Department of History Co-Chair: George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor, Department of History Co-Chair: Alejandro de la Fuente, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Department of History, Harvard University ii Copyright © by Jesse Horst 2016 iii SLEEPING ON THE ASHES: SLUM CLEARANCE IN HAVANA IN AN AGE OF REVOLUTION, 1930-65 Jesse Horst, M.A., PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 This dissertation examines the relationship between poor, informally housed communities and the state in Havana, Cuba, from 1930 to 1965, before and after the first socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. It challenges the notion of a “great divide” between Republic and Revolution by tracing contentious interactions between technocrats, politicians, and financial elites on one hand, and mobilized, mostly-Afro-descended tenants and shantytown residents on the other hand. The dynamics of housing inequality in Havana not only reflected existing socio- racial hierarchies but also produced and reconfigured them in ways that have not been systematically researched. As the urban poor resisted evictions, they utilized the legal and political systems to draw their neighborhoods into contact with the welfare state. Not merely co- opted by politicians, tenants and shantytown residents claimed housing as a citizenship right and played a decisive role in centralizing and expanding state institutions before and after the 1959 Revolution. Far from giving the urban poor free rein over their destinies, however, their tight relationships with the Cuban state impelled officials to implement new policies drawn from abroad. Public debates over slum clearance reinforced the social-scientific discourse of a “culture of poverty” in ways that ultimately blended with the incipient socialist system. This discourse was embedded in the most beneficial interventions of the revolutionary welfare state but in ways iv that perpetuated racism and social exclusion. By the early 1960s, then, slum policy in Havana represented a dynamic interaction between residents, social scientists, and state bureaucrats. The urban poor shaped the Revolution, even as the Revolution sought to manage them. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... XI 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW .............................................................................. 8 1.2 CUBAN HISTORIOGRAPHY ......................................................................... 14 1.3 CORE ARGUMENTS ....................................................................................... 18 1.4 WIDER SIGNIFICANCE ................................................................................. 21 1.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY ................................................................................... 25 1.6 A NOTE ON LANGUAGE ............................................................................... 27 1.7 A NOTE ON GEOGRAPHY ............................................................................ 28 2.0 “THE PROBLEM OF LA HATA”: AGRARIAN REFORM AND URBAN INFORMALITY IN HAVANA, 1930-1947 .............................................................................. 30 2.1 THE CITY OF REPARTOS ............................................................................. 33 2.2 PUBLIC WELFARE AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION ...................................... 36 2.3 RIGHTS TO THE CITY ................................................................................... 42 2.4 STATE LANDS IN CUBAN LAW .................................................................. 45 2.5 LAND WARS ..................................................................................................... 53 2.6 THE PROBLEM OF LA HATA ...................................................................... 63 2.7 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 68 vi 3.0 “THE FIRES OF ROME”: SHANTYTOWN NETWORKS AND THE STATE, 1931-1950 ..................................................................................................................................... 70 3.1 BETWEEN FIRE AND FREEDOM ............................................................... 74 3.2 MAKING CLAIMS ........................................................................................... 83 3.3 PROPERTY RIGHTS IN LAS YAGUAS ....................................................... 89 3.4 A LANGUAGE OF CONTENTION ............................................................... 94 3.5 URBAN INFORMALITY ON BEHALF OF THE STATE .......................... 98 3.6 A CURE WORSE THAN SICKNESS ........................................................... 102 3.7 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 110 4.0 “FACTORIES OF MEN”: NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE CULTURE OF POVERTY, 1924-1963................................................................................... 112 4.1 FORERUNNER LUIS BAY SEVILLA ......................................................... 116 4.2 “BARRIOS DE INDIGENTES” .................................................................... 121 4.3 THE INDIGENT HOME: “BARRIOS DE INDIGENTES” IN SOCIAL SCIENCE .......................................................................................................................... 125 4.4 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE STATE ........................................................ 129 4.5 “SCRATCHING THE URBAN SURFACE”: “BARRIOS DE INDIGENTES” AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ................................................ 133 4.6 SOCIAL WORK AND THE CULTURE OF POVERTY ........................... 142 4.7 A NEW MAN ................................................................................................... 146 4.8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 150 5.0 A CONSTRUCTIVE REVOLUTION: RENT CONTROL AND PRIVATE INVESTMENT IN HAVANA’S HOUSING MARKET, 1939-1963 .................................... 152 vii 5.1 RENT CONTROL ........................................................................................... 155 5.2 RENT CONTROL IN PRACTICE, 1939-1945 ............................................ 161 5.3 MORALITY AND RACE ............................................................................... 169 5.4 MORALITY AND THE MARKET ............................................................... 174 5.5 PUBLIC HOUSING, 1940-1952 ..................................................................... 180 5.6 BATISTA’S HOUSING PROGRAM ............................................................ 184 5.7 HOUSING AND THE REVOLUTION ......................................................... 191 5.8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 196 6.0 “THEY ARE CUBANS TOO”: SLUM CLEARANCE BETWEEN REPUBLIC AND REVOLUTION, 1950-1963 ............................................................................................ 199 6.1 OUR JOSÉ MARTÍ ......................................................................................... 202 6.2 TOWARDS A DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ACTION ............................. 205 6.3 BEYOND POLITICS: SOCIAL WORKERS IN ISLA DE PINOS ........... 211 6.4 A NEW REGIME ............................................................................................ 215 6.5 THE NATIONAL HOUSING COMMISSION ............................................ 219 6.6 LAS YAGUAS .................................................................................................. 227 6.7 THE REVOLUTION IN LAS YAGUAS ...................................................... 230 6.8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 244 7.0 EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSION ......................................................................... 247 7.1 SOCIALISM .................................................................................................... 251 7.2 THE SPECIAL PERIOD AND BEYOND .................................................... 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 256 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Percentage of Families Renting Their Home, by Race, 1943. ................................ 174 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Las Yaguas juxtaposed against the partially completed public housing project known as the Barrio Obrero (Worker’s Neighborhood) in 1947. ................................................................... 7 Figure 2: Selected municipalities and shantytowns