A Thesis

entitled

What Women Want: Emancipation, Cuban Women, and the New Man Ideology

by

Alysia Shaffer

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master of Arts Degree in History

Dr. Charles Beatty-Medina, Committee Chair

Dr. Amanda Bryant-Friedrich, Dean College of Graduate Studies

The University of Toledo December 2017

An Abstract of

What Women Want: Emancipation, Cuban Women, and the New Man Ideology

by

Alysia Shaffer

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in History

The University of Toledo December 2017

Historians often marginalize Cuban women’s contributions to the development of

Cuban society throughout the 20th century. Though not as predominant as men, women fought and sacrificed for Cuban Independence. When Cuba gained independence, women were still second class citizens; however, through women’s organizations, they pushed for social change as well as challenged the government in favor of their own emancipation. Later, in the struggle against the Batista regime, despite participating as guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra and urban and underground activists, scholars sideline

Cuban women in favor of their male counterparts, los barbudos— “the bearded ones.”

When the Cuban Revolution succeeded in ousting Fulgencio Batista from power, women remained vocal among supporters and were drivers of change in Revolutionary Cuba.

Latest historiographical trends seek to recapture the role Cuban women played in their country’s liberation as well as their own emancipation. My research posits Cuban women progressively assumed qualities which made them influential actors of nation-building as well as the embodiment of the Cuban new man. This project examines women’s changing roles from the late 1890s until 1975, and it explores women’s agency and activism.

iii

For José—my Über driver in Miami—and my seventh grade English teacher. You’ve both inspired me to do my all: one encouraged me to keep studying the Cuban Revolution and the other told me I wouldn’t make much of myself because of being soft-spoken.

Contents

Abstract ii

Contents iv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 13

Chapter 2 34

Chapter 3 54

Conclusion 80

Bibliography 83

i 1

Introduction

As Cuban society changed in the years following the Cuban Revolution, Che

Guevara noted the importance for Cuban citizens to transform into hardworking egalitarian figures, or the Cuban new man, who would meet the challenges of their evolving country. These individuals would be selfless, politically conscious, and willing to better themselves and their fellow countrymen. My research posits Cuban women progressively assumed qualities which made them influential actors of nation-building as well as the embodiment of the Cuban new man. Prior to the Revolution, distinctions among class and race informed the means in which women participated in change and the degree of visibility they received. However, with the fall of the Fulgencio Batista regime in 1959, women became more active in education, the workforce, and pushing

Revolutionary ideals. Che stressed the concept of voluntarism which provided a framework for women’s integration within the new man ideology.1 Using voluntarism as a rallying cry, Guevara called for the Cuban people to become vanguards of their country and continue the revolution which Fidel Castro began and spearheaded. Women, plenty

1 According to Samuel Farber, voluntarism is “the idea that human will and consciousness can by itself overcome any objective, material obstacles.” Cuban voluntarism finds its roots in the writings and speeches of Mao Zedong. William A. Joseph posits that voluntarism was “one of the defining characteristics of Mao.” For Guevara, this concept not only explained the success behind the Cuban Revolution, but it also laid the groundwork for the transformation of Cuban society through the development of the new man.

1 2 of whom had fought alongside Castro and Guevara in the Sierra Maestra, answered this call in earnest. Those who had been guerilla fighters or underground combatants in the late 1950s took on more transparent political roles and responsibilities by the 1960s to contribute to rebuilding the Cuban nation. Furthermore, following the triumph of the

Revolution, women’s enrollment in revolutionary institutions—whether academic or vocational—increased and surpassed their male counterparts, and their involvement in the workforce reflects this drive to embody the goals of the Cuban Revolution. In the course of seventy years, beginning around 1890, Cuban women transformed their status from “impediments” in the struggle for independence to “revolutionary vanguards” within Castro’s Cuba.

Socioeconomic status conditioned women’s agency and determined the role they could play in the early Republic of Cuba. Upper-class white educated Cuban women were able to articulate the female experience through prose and poetry; or, more broadly, those women who had access to wealth and status hosted fundraisers or sent jewels and money to line the pockets of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC).2 On the other hand, middle- and popular-class women were more likely to participate in strikes and protests to achieve better working conditions or higher wages.3 Furthermore, the struggle for women’s suffrage in the Early Republic showcased the competing definitions of womanhood and the extent to which women ought to participate in social and political

2 Lillian Guerra, The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth- Century Cuba (UNC Press, 2005), 78. 3 K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman’s Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Duke University Press: 1991), 169.

2 3 reform. Here, higher class women dominated the leadership of women’s organizations and often times closed their ranks to lower class and Afro-Cuban women.

Cuban women had greater visibility at the forefront of Cuba as the nation evolved from a neocolonial playground of the United States to Castro’s Revolutionary Cuba. In addition to a rise in female employment, women were also more directly involved with shaping the future of Cuba through platforms like the Literacy Campaign, in which volunteers from urban cities dispersed throughout the island to confront Cuba’s problem of illiteracy. Many were also active members of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), an organization that promoted women as agents of society. However, the underlying morality sets these mediums apart from past attempts to include women in society.4

Where feminist movements before the Revolution worked within the male-dominated system and “preserve family and Hispanic morality,”5 the wave of female revolutionaries after 1959 broke down these ties to a patriarchal power structure and “mounted measures for equalizing sex roles.”6

My research analyzes women’s role in Cuba from 1898 with the end of the

Spanish American War/Cuban War of Independence until 1975 when the Cuban government enacted the Family Code. The end of the Spanish American War began a period of intranational tensions for Cuba where different strands of nationalism competed for cubanidad, or the Cuban identity. Though not always welcomed or visible in their aid, women regularly engaged in activities that supported the identity they identified with. It

4 Louis Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford University Press: 2014), 261. 5 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 193. 6 Pérez, Cuba, 294.

3 4 was often the case that class and ethnicity largely informed women’s cubanidad. Women who participated in the Cuban Revolution also came from diverse backgrounds and walks of life, but united under Castro’s charisma and vision of Cuba free from the puppet regime. Sixteen years after the Cuban Revolution ousted Batista, the Revolutionary government passed the Family Code into law, which served as a statement of the

Revolution’s support of women and “put the full moral and legal force of the revolution behind the long-standing demands of working women.”7 I veer from the current historiography on the Cuban new man, because it does not give much attention to women’s agency. However, to do this, I synthesize the literature on the new man with two historiographical threads of Cuban feminist historiography that tend to focus on women in Cuba either before or after the Cuban Revolution.

Historians Yinghong Cheng and Richard Fagen represent the new man historiography. In Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist

Realities, Cheng argues the 20th century witnessed successful communist revolutions that utilized state policy to secure a place for the new man in history. His work focuses on the

Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions and specifically on the “interaction between revolutionary change and human nature.” The former two provide ideological background on how previous communist regimes approached the formation of the new man. Guevara’s notion of the new man differs from the Soviets and the Chinese, because the Cuban new man was gender inclusive and well defined while also upholding a “mass line mentality.”8 Cheng examines how the Cuban Revolution differed from the classical

7 Pérez, Cuba, 294. 8 Foremost, in the Soviet Union, there was a gender divide between the new Soviet man and the new Soviet woman (collectively known as the new Soviet Persons), but each new

4 5

Marxist idea of revolution as the Castro-Guevarist model of revolution perpetuated the need for a strong vanguard, rather than socioeconomic clarity, to inspire revolutionary consciousness.

Within his discussion of the Cuba’s perception of a new man, Cheng claims the revolutionary voluntarism laid the groundwork for the success of the Cuban Revolution during and after the fight in the Sierra Maestra. Cuba’s socialist revolution, in accordance with the classical Marxist interpretation, should not have been possible. Cuba never experienced an abundance of industrialization and development of a proletariat capitalist wealth, yet it went through a dramatic change from a post-hegemonic nation to a socialist society. This, Cheng argues, required revolutionary leaders place heavy importance on the vanguard to inspire the new man within their fellow countrymen. Cheng states, “the

1960s witnessed a surge in revolutionary models of the new man, created for the purpose of mass emulation.”9 Fagen agrees with Cheng but elaborates on what it means to be a new man in Cuba. He claims, “It follows that the new man is, above all, a new citizen.

His primary role is that of a participant in the transformation of the social order; he must

Soviet was expected to put the Soviet before Russia. According to Barbara Evans Clement, the new Soviet man “resembled both the respectable worker ideal of the pre- revolutionary era and still older paragons,” and he would provide for his family as he did before the formation of the Soviet Union. The new Soviet woman also maintained a balance between old ideals of family and the revolutionary ones of a working class, pro- Soviet woman. At the same time, this new set of values required the new Soviet woman be ready to give up her family and answer the call to fight or work for the Soviet Union. Although there was no “Chinese new man” as there was the new Cuban and new Soviet, revolutionary ideology in China espoused a mass line system. This concept relied on dialect between the masses and the vanguard. Sujian Guo argues “Mao emphasized the importance of ‘mass line’…because the masses are the real driving forces of history and the revolutionary movement and because ‘policy comes from the masses and goes back to the masses.’” 9 Yinghong Cheng, Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (University of Hawaii Press: 2009), 175.

5 6 be a new political man.”10 In his own work, The Transformation of Political Culture in

Cuba, Fagen further coincides with Cheng as he explores the revolutionary institutions which implemented the changes and promoted the new man in Cuba after the

Revolution’s success.

Fagen argues revolutionary institutions mobilized and transformed the political culture of Cuba, and events like the Literacy Campaign reinforced revolutionary commitment. While Fagen’s primary focus is not on the Cuban new man, his research on the programs which carried out the Revolution’s aims and teachings show a continued reinforcement of the ideals the vanguard possessed and the revolutionary leaders wished to instill within the masses. Furthermore, Fagen’s inclusion of the Literacy Campaign is equally as important as Cheng’s mention of it: while neither explore female participation, the Literacy Campaign greatly affected women as they made up a majority of the volunteers as well as the Cubans who benefited from the teachings.

K. Lynn Stoner and Lilian Guerra represent the first major trend in Cuban feminist historiography which tracks the female experience before the Cuban Revolution.

In her work From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman’s Movement for Legal

Reform, 1898–1940, Stoner argues, after the War of Independence, because of their ability to maneuver alliances, work within the patriarchal system, and their perception of feminism, women made great legal strides towards reform. However, despite their attempts to foster equality among women, “class and ethnicity were maintained as means of social discrimination.”11 Black Cuban women, on the other hand, attempted not only to

10 Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford University Press: 1969), 15. 11 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 195.

6 7 incorporate their gender into the national narrative, but they also fought against the racial oppression black Cubans still faced in the first half of the 20th century.

Guerra’s The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-

Century Cuba explores the differing interpretations of what it meant to be Cuban in the

War of Independence era. She posits that after the War of Independence, Cuba faced different definitions of what it meant to be a nation, because competing factions interpreted José Martí and his writings in ways which conflicted with each other. Within this argument, Guerra examines the role of women in the struggle and how they participated in establishing or reaffirming cubanidad. Guerra elaborates on the discrimination, which Stoner discussed, and depicts differences in their actions. As upper-class and middle- and popular-class women participated in Cuban society and the fight for defining ‘Cuba’, black Cuban women also emerged as activists. During rebellions in the first decade of the 20th century, black women formed an organization named “’Missionaries of Progress’ to supply rebels in the field,” and “they asserted any

[‘innate’ feminine] weakness they might have as women derived from society’s oppression of them, not from any law of nature.”12 While these discriminations aided in bridling the full potential of the early feminist movements in Cuba, they demonstrated women were not inherently passive and would readily support their country’s sovereignty and their fellow Cubans—a vital trait in the Cuban New Man. Furthermore, their actions showed Cuban women had been working for their equality before the triumph of the

Cuban Revolution.

12 Guerra, The Myth of José Martí, 240.

7 8

Michelle Chase represents the second trend in Cuban feminist historiography. Her

Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962 posits women actively participated in the transformation of Cuban society, and while not always on the frontlines, they did not simply wait for liberation to be handed to them. She critiques the juxtaposition of the barbudo, or the bearded, and the veneration of “rural guerilla warfare,” claiming this view belittles the importance of civic activism in favor of revolutionary violence.13 Where Stoner explored the legal reforms women fought for,

Chase examines the insurrections women participated in throughout the Batista era, how their mobilization reflected the old ideal of moral authority, and also the challenge to the predominant and romanticized top-down approach to women’s emancipation and the

Cuban Revolution.

Acting as a bridge between research on Cuban women during the Cuban

Revolution and Cuban women after the triumph, Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula discuss the connection between women and the changing Cuban society. Smith and

Padula argue the changes women experienced, and those they fought for, after the Cuban

Revolution were more complex developments than a revolution within a revolution. More importantly, they posit women’s support for the July 26th Movement was “important for the survival of the new regime.” 14The authors examine the interplay among sex, gender, race, and power in a budding socialist nation, and they demonstrate how women benefitted from the July 26th Movement but also their challenges. Additionally, Smith

13 Michelle Chase, Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962 (UNC Press Books: 2015), 2. 14 Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (Oxford: 1996), 33.

8 9 and Padula do not solely rely on the words of revolutionary stars like Vilma Espín and

Celia Sanchez. Instead, they include narratives from average Cuban citizens—some who

Fidel Castro had inspired early on in his rebel activity and others who found their voice after Batista had fled the country—

Louis Pérez’s Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution complements Chase’s perspective and incorporates both trends in feminist historiography. Pérez also gives due consideration to the new man ideology. He argues Cuban revolutionary leaders focused on mobilizing the masses through a change of consciousness that not only bettered the individual but also advanced society. Additionally, Pérez examines how women participated as political actors through inclusion in guerilla warfare and, later, national organizations such as the FMC, while they also challenged traditional gender roles through demanding distribution of familial roles. He agrees with Chase and believes women played a crucial role in sustaining revolutionary ideals after the success in the

Sierra Maestra; however, Pérez goes even further and discusses the consequences of those new roles in society and how the government met the demands of women through laws like “Maternity of the Working Woman.” Pérez also disagrees with Fagen’s view that the new man must be a new political man, stating the change is fundamentally deeper. He claims, “Cubans were exhorted to subscribe to a new code, nothing less than a new morality…the creation of a new consciousness that would lead to a new revolutionary ethic.”15 Though political beliefs certainly would change, for Pérez it took a transfer of consciousness to embody the new man.

15 Pérez, Cuba, 270.

9 10

Selected works of Che, Vilma Espín, and Haydée Santamaria’s make up the bulk of my primary sources, although several other works come from average Cubans (or, those not consider among the cadre). I use Che Guevara’s writings and speeches to synthesize new man historiography and feminist historiography. In the span of roughly ten years, Che outlined what it meant to be a vanguard of the revolution. For example,

Che’s work “Socialism and man in Cuba” and “Rebel Army Notes” provided strong support on the role of the vanguard in Cuba and how the individual could become a new man. Additionally, the articles from the Dysis Guira Collection shed light on everyday female involvement in revolutionary movements during the Revolution and women’s participation as noncombatants during the struggle. Haydée Santamaria’s written works and Vilma Espin’s speeches and writings complement Che’s publications. Each of them fought in the Sierra Maestra, and each is considered a vanguard of the Revolution; but

Santamaria and Espin’s works emphasize the female perspective and women’s identification with a new Cuba as a Cuban new “man.”

My project is divided into three chapters, representing three distinct time periods in Cuban history.

Chapter 1 discusses the role of women in Cuba prior to the Cuban Revolution, which begins with the assault on the Moncada Garrison in 1953. This chapter argues

Cuba’s early feminist movement’s competing factions reflected the nation’s own competing definitions of cubanidad, or the Cuban identity. After taking up support roles in the Wars of Cuban Independence—spanning from 1868 to 1901 with the Ten Years’

War, the Little War, the Cuban War of Independence, and the Spanish-American War— women struggled with competing ideas of liberation in post-colonial Cuba. Women’s

10 11 groups, particularly those that came into fruition at the end of the 1910s and throughout the 1920s, focused their attention on social and political reform. These groups viewed

Cuban women as mothers of the nation who needed to guide Cuba morally. While identity markers divided Cuban women in the Early Republic, their activism and political engagement showed women were capable and willing to act as forces of change in Cuba.

Chapter 2, which examines the Cuban Revolution years from 1953 to 1959, posits

Cuban women were integral to the success of the Cuban Revolution. In these years, women embodied what would later become Che’s Cuban New Man. Originally, with the

Moncada Garrison Assault, Fidel Castro was adamant that women would not be combatants in the Revolution. Women close to him had to argue simply to be included in the Moncada Attack, and Castro did not permit them to fight in armed combat until 1958.

Despite his early exclusion of them, though, women readily found ways to participate in the Revolution. They made up a significant part of the urban insurrectionists and the underground movement. Through these sectors, they took up roles are protestors, couriers, spies, medics, and teachers. Women ensured information, arms, food, and other requisitions made it to the Sierra Maestra after Castro’s Rebel Army landed in December of 1956, and they operated within gendered stereotypes to bypass checkpoints and creatively carry items to their destinations.

Lastly, Chapter 3 explores the intersection between Cuban women and the Cuban

‘new man’. This chapter argues Cuban women were the new man. Che Guevara’s beliefs were important in the formation of Revolutionary Cuba, and he understood the importance of creating a new individual for a new Cuba. His concept of the Cuban new man, put into publication in 1965, remained intentionally gender neutral as to expect all

11 12 able-bodied Cuban citizens to participate in the construction of a socialist society through education, political consciousness, labor, and selfless devotion to Cuban development.

However, long before “Socialism and Man in Cuba” hit the press, Cuban women were already exemplifying the ideals packed into the piece. Women enthusiastically participated in mobilization campaigns to help the masses; they entered the labor workforce to meet the call of industrialization; and they enrolled in schools and universities to further their own education. They fought to overcome old ways of thinking about the citizen and her role in society and gender discrimination.

Women have always participated in societal change in Cuba. The success of the

Cuban Revolution did not spark an interest in them to start participating. However, the growing socialist ideologies of the July 26th Movement’s leadership helped prevent women’s contributions from being overlooked or made light of. Women’s roles as mothers, daughters, and wives no longer exclusively informed their position in society.

Instead, what became important was their efforts to improve Revolutionary Cuba as well as themselves: an effort they excelled at.

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Chapter 1

As the Cuban Republic came into formation at the turn of the 20th century, Cuban women remained outliers within the country despite contributing to the nation’s independence. Women fought alongside men in the Cuba’s Wars of Independence16; however, their status in the post-war nation still reflected colonial values. Despite their inclusion in the War of Independence and their vociferous cries for social progress, the laws of the new Cuban Republic did not reflect women’s participation in building the nation.17 Cuban men who recognized their contribution in the fight thought little more than flowery prose was sufficient thanks. When the United States replaced Spain as the hegemonic power in Cuba, Washington D.C. officials with influence in the nation considered women among the “rabble” unless they belonged to Cuba’s elite.18

Additionally, the exclusive nature of the early feminist movements—which advocated for women’s suffrage, improvement of health and social institutions, and, at times, the dismantling of Eurocentric social structures—showcased the racial and socioeconomic

16 Cuba’s struggle for independence from the Spain took place throughout a thirty-year time period. This timeline covers four major conflicts: the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), the Little War (1879-1880), the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898), and the Spanish American War (1898). However, as the liberation effort was an ongoing struggle, within this chapter, I will refer to them collectively as the War of Independence unless otherwise stated; Lillian Guerra, The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth Century Cuba (UNC Press, 2005), 59. 17 K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman’s Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Duke University Press: 1991), 34. 18 Louis A. Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford University Press: 2014), 145.

13 14 disparity between the major voices of the movement and the rest of the female Cuban population. Upper and middle class women typically made up the membership of these organizations, and they recruited women of like stations. In these decades of burgeoning nationalism, women’s roles as mothers, daughters, and wives informed their status and representation in Cuban society prior to the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

Before Cuba gained its independence from Spain in 1898, the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown influenced how women viewed themselves in relation to society.

The Crown barred Spanish women from emigrating to Cuba unless they were accompanying their husbands or fathers, reinforcing the expectancy that women cater to and depend upon men. Furthermore, women were expected to contribute to the family unit by passing on Church teachings to their sons and daughters. These teachings promoted women’s subservience to men, known as hembrismo, and the gender dichotomy between men and women, or the virtues of machismo versus those of marianismo.19 Spanish troops left Cuba early in 1899, but the end of Spanish colonization did little to change the gendered norms already in place. In post as in pre-Independence

Cuba, the family served as the central authority in society. Although the State and Church influenced many Cubans’ ideals and morality, the importance of the family took

19 A widely-accepted definition of machismo came from Evelyn Stevens in her 1973 article entitled “Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo”. Stevens claims machismo is a “cult of virility,” which panders to “exaggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male interpersonal relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in male-to- female relationships.” In this same work, Stevens goes on to define marianismo as “the cult of feminine spiritual superiority, which teaches that women are semidivine [sic], morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men.” Hembrismo supplemented marianismo, and the combination of the two complemented machismo. In her 1955 book, La vida familiar del mexicano, María Elvira Bermúdez stated hembrismo “entailed exaggerated feminine characteristics—weakness, acquiescence, and inertia…it spelled out powerlessness and dependency.”

14 15 precedence over the others. To early 20th century Cubans, a nation made of up strong families would lead to a strong country. Marrying well was one of the only ways women could benefit from this system which put respectable families on a pedestal. However, many women began to question their place in Cuba and among each other as proto- feminist thoughts permeated the upper and middle classes.

Women’s suffrage in Cuba best exemplifies the struggle Cuban women faced in trying to establish their significance in society. Feminist groups spearheaded the movement and were most active in garnering support from other political organizations and representation in the government. While the women within the feminist groups claimed to be a mouthpiece for all Cuban women, their rhetoric often reflected their privilege. Organizations like the Feminist National Alliance (Alianza Nacional

Feminista, ANF), which Pilar Jorge de Tella and Ofelia Domínguez Navarro established in approximately 1927, favored women’s suffrage and participation in society. However, the ANF relied on elite Cuban women for leadership and, though never outright stating so, the exclusion of working class women. Another early feminist organization, the

Women’s Labor Union (Unión Laborista de Mujeres), formed in 1928 under the direction of ex-ANF co-founder Ofelia Domínguez Navarro, denounced the elitism apparent in the ANF and its use of suffrage as a core tenet. According to Domínguez

Navarro, organizations structured around suffrage were only pandering to President

Gerardo Machado’s repressive government, because, to secure his power, Machado had promised his support for women’s right to vote after the Second National Cuban

Women’s Congress in 1925.20 Instead, the Union prioritized social reform over political

20 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 70.

15 16 participation, and its leadership believed ousting the United States authorities from Cuban domestic affairs would help to achieve this. Despite the Union’s arguments against organizations like the ANF, though, working class women were still sidelined within the group as the Union did not “accept the Marxist tenet that women could be liberated as part of the proletariat.”21 With the Union’s ideals being the most radical in pre-

Revolution Cuba, no organization fought for the complete emancipation of women or challenged class and racial attitudes.22

This chapter posits the competing factions of Cuba’s early women’s movements reflected the nation’s own competing definitions of cubanidad. Like Jose Martí, organizations used ambiguous rhetoric to attract various groups to their cause.

Additionally, as race and class informed Cubans’ ideas of what it meant to be Cuban, they also informed women’s notions of womanhood. To argue this, I focus on three points in early Cuban history: the relationship between women and the Church, as an institution which influenced gender norms, in colonial Cuba; the differences among women’s participation in the Wars of Independence, which include the Ten Years’ War in 1868, the Little War from 1879 to1880, and the Cuban War of Independence from

1895 to 1898; and, perhaps the clearest example of the divide, women’s movements between the formation of an independent Cuba and the ratification of suffrage in 1940.

My chapter concludes that while Cuban women’s situation was more advanced than other

21 Stoner, From the House, 75. 22 This project considers complete liberation to mean the unconditional and codified legal recognition that guarantees women the ability and opportunity to participate equally in Cuban political, social, and economic affairs as citizens.

16 17

Latin American countries, former systems of oppression prevented women from fully utilizing the opportunities available to them.

Before the wars brought a push for women’s autonomy, the Catholic Church was a major influence in gendered expectations in colonial Cuba. Prior to the 19th century,

Spain considered Cuba little more than a “colonial backwater.”23 As a result, the Catholic

Church and its appointed officials were directly involved with most social aspects of colonial Cuba. For women, this meant “Church teachings, social custom, and man-made laws” regulated what it meant to be a proper woman in Cuban society.24 Naturally, the

Virgin Mary represented the ideal for Cuban women. Through her, “religion allowed

Cubans simultaneously to lower the status of women, as original sin called for, and to elevate them through veneration of Mary…Just as Mary washed away the stain of original sin from her hands through motherhood, so too did Cuban women.”25 Thus, the

Church served as the “prime educational and social welfare agency in Cuba, as well as a mediator of social conflicts, an avenue for socioeconomic mobility for poor Cuban

[males] who entered the priesthood, and a promoter of national identity.”26 Despite their interaction with the Cubans, the demographics represented in their parishes reflected

Cuban Catholicism’s elite culture. More importantly, the Church worked to maintain

Cuba’s then-current state of affairs, so Cuba’s Catholic Church overlooked the need for

23 Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Catholicism in Cuba,” in Cuban Studies no. 19 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 4. 24 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 14. 25 Sarah L. Franklin, Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-century Colonial Cuba (University Rochester Press, 2012), 22. 26 Mesa-Lago, “Catholicism in Cuba,” 4.

17 18 social change affecting the colony’s disenfranchised.27 Cubans clearly saw that the

Church “favored the middle and upper classes,” and a gendered disparity as “women

[had] still not found in the church an adequate position that reflects their dignity and fundamental equality.”28 The disconnect between the Church and the Cuban reality reinforced anticlerical sentiments in many Cubans, particularly among the lower strata of society.

As a result of the Church’s favoritism of the middle and upper class Cubans, services and the institution itself was not accessible—or desirable—to the working class and peasantry. Wealthy and white Cubans were typically the only ones who actively participated in Church activities. Additionally, churches had strong bases in urban locations, so while “the great majority of the population was nominally Catholic…most peasants and rural workers had little contact with Catholic churches.”29 Moreover, those without access to the Church saw it as an extension of the Spanish monarchy before the

War of Independence and, afterwards, anachronistic. Some rural Cubans integrated strands of various African religious beliefs into their worship, and others outright denied

Catholicism, instead “[finding] their new practices on beliefs of African origins.”30 While they did not partake in the same fusion or adoptions of religions as lower class Cubans, rebels leaders in the War of Independence were among Cubans disillusioned with the

Church. However, because of the Church’s staunch support of Spanish colonialism,

27 John M. Kirk, “Toward an Understanding of the Church-State Rapprochement in Revolutionary Cuba,” in Cuban Studies no. 19 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 32. 28 Encuentro Nacional Eclesial Cubano, Documento final, 304, 182. 29 Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (UNC Press, 2006), 53. 30 Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (UNC Press Books, 1995), 64.

18 19

Catholicism suffered a blow to its strength and influence following the success of the

Liberation Army. The laws that came from the 1901 Constitution reflected Independence leaders’ disenchantment with the institution. They “at the very least favored a strict separation of church and state,” which was “adopted by the new Cuban republic in

1902.”31 While the Church contributed to formation of Cuban identity, class and race continued to pervade Cuban society and how women fit into the emerging nation.

Before and after the Wars of Cuban Independence, upper and middle class women benefitted from access to wealth and the power associated with being a member of the upper sphere of Cuban society. These women could live materially comfortable lives without needing to work or deal with the anxieties associated with poverty. To maintain this order, “traditional elites employed patriarchy,” ensuring “society’s prescriptions for women were closely tied to marianismo.”32 The Virgin Mary served as the image all

Cuban women were to aspire to: “Mary the mother, Mary the powerless, Mary without sexual instincts, the servant of men…Women’s lives were to revolve around the home, where they were expected to remain.”33 Unlike working class and peasant women, though, picking up labor outside the home was not a necessity for elite Cuban women.

They could afford to stay within the private domain to pass on Church teachings and societal expectations to their children without their livelihood falling into risk.

Cuban society demanded lower class women also follow the same social restrictions as middle and upper class women. However, in addition to the social graces, lack of wealth and economic status burdened impoverished women. Despite the societal

31 Farber, Revolution Reconsidered, 53. 32 Sarah L. Franklin, Women and Slavery, 21. 33 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 8.

19 20 prescriptions all women were meant to adhere to, women from the lower classes did not enjoy the same financial security as someone who could marry well or someone born comfortably. Many worked outside the home in relatively respected fields, such as domestic workers for larger and affluent families, but others took up jobs as factory workers or on the streets as prostitutes. Working also tended to prevent these women from pursuing upward social mobility, because in order “to achieve upper-class status, a woman had to avoid manual labor of any kind.”34 Prostitution, of course, was not an avenue for women seeking to jump classes. Cuban society—including the Crown and the

Church—unofficially accepted the presence and use of prostitutes, who came from varying ethnic and class backgrounds.35 In the late 1800s, a Spanish health official, Dr.

Benjamin de Céspedes suggested the state begin regulating prostitution for hygienic purposes.36 Rather than shutting down the practice, he believed “by tolerating prostitution sexual appetites are prevented from getting out of control and damaging the honorable family.”37 Furthermore, the culture surrounding prostitution carried well throughout the

Early Republic until women activists in Castro’s Cuba pushed to dismantle what they considered a relic of colonial and neocolonial Cuba.

In addition to the divide class created among Cuban women, race deepened those chasms. While society held white Cuban women to the standard of the Virgin Mary, the system did not include Afro-Cuban women within this expectation. Rather, black women

34 Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (Ocford University Press, 1996), 10. 35 Tiffany A. Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840-1920 (UNC Press, 2013), 3. 36 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 10. 37 Benjamin de Céspedes, translated by Stoner, La prostitución en la ciudad de la Habana (Havana: O’Reilly, 1883), 66.

20 21 were objects for male consumption. “[T]he abuse of slave women by their masters was always blamed on black women’s sexual promiscuity,” and even after abolition, this legacy of slavery remained as a sort of justification for sexual violence against Afro-

Cuban women.38 Moreover, the remnant was something with which white Cuban women had to struggle. White Cuban women also held an edge over Afro-Cuban women in regards to literacy, wherein “52 percent of all white females were unable to read and write, more than 70 percent of women of color were illiterate.”39 Furthermore, widows made up much of the female Afro-Cuban population, and the lack of income usually required colored women to partake in the stigmatized wage labor. According to Aline

Helg, “the trades in which women numbered in the thousands, such as servant, laundress, laborer, and seamstress, were overwhelmingly dominated by Afro-Cubans.”40

Specifically, by 1899, “nearly three-quarters of all female wage earners (48,767 out of

66,356) were colored.”41 However, elite Cuban society did not bar colored women from their culture. Marrying well, mostly through interracial unions, also allowed Afro-Cubans the chance to climb the social ladder. Among these marriages, though, society more readily welcomed one in which a white Cuban man married up to a richer Afro-Cuban woman. Rather than racial distinctions negatively affecting the husband’s status, Cubans would applaud his rise is economic rank and his wife’s—and eventually his children’s—

“whitening.”42 The influence of the Church is also rooted in this concept as “individuals

38 Paula Sanmartín, Black Women as Custodians of History: Unsung Rebel (M)Others in African American and Afro-Cuban Women’s Writing (New York: Cambria Press, 2014), 50. 39 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 164. 40 Helg, Our Rightful Share, 26. 41 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 164. 42 Helg, Our Rightful Share, 27.

21 22 and families…adapted the religious practices of Catholicism and the speech styles and cultural mores of the educated and wealthier classes in order to improve their social standing by becoming culturally more acceptable to white society and therefore racially whiter.”43

Mambisas—or Cuban women who partook in the struggle for Cuban independence in the late 19th century—challenged the traditional colonial views of Cuban women. Past ideas asserted that women were weak, submissive, and passive. The mambisas completely rattled this expectation as they participated in the war effort in the manigua. Cubans and Spaniards understood the manigua as “the untamed countryside, which consisted of dry, mountainous landscape in Oriente; plat fertile farmland in

Camagüey; and mountainous jungles in Pinar del Río,” which the Liberation Army liberated.44 To enter into the manigua was to leave the comfort of urban areas and even rural farming communities. While they maintained their positions as mothers, daughters, and wives, the mambisas “left the protection of their homes, went into the manigua, and took up arms in support of national sovereignty.”45 The War of Independence was all encompassing in Cuba, and there was no escaping or ignoring the fighting whether one was in the cities or countryside.46 While the mambisas were legends among women on the battlefield, rebel leaders initially considered them, along with children, to be impediments in the Cuban War of Independence from 1895 to 1898.47 Thus, leaders within the Liberation Army consistently tried to keep these women on the sidelines as

43 Lillian Guerra, The Myth of José Martí, 34. 44 Stone, From the House, 201; Guerra, The Myth of José Martí, 49. 45 Stoner, From the House, 13. 46 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 131. 47 Guerra, The Myth of José Martí, 92.

22 23 nurses, cooks, tailors, supply runners, and sometimes couriers. The same held true for enslave Afro-Cuban women who were put to work primarily in non-combative roles that required physical labor such as “digging trenches, clearing paths, and doing a variety of other menial tasks.”48 However, the leaders could not stop any of them from going where their husband or sons lead, so these women frequently put themselves in the heat of the battles, forcing them to adopt a new set of skills the situation required.

Not all women remained in Cuba during the fight for independence. Those women who had the ability to escape the island, or those who were sent into exile, used their access to wealth to fund the Liberation Army. Additionally, women who did not send money themselves campaigned for support among Cubans and non-Cubans who could provide the Liberation Army with money and/or arms. Middle and upper class

émigré women saw “the sacrifice of their own personal wealth as an analogous symbol to the property and wealth sacrificed by white, economically privileged soldiers.”49 All- female organizations like Disciples of Martí adopted Victorian-like ideals and refrained from marriage or even dancing with men at social gatherings until Cuba achieved independence. Another all-female club, La Cubanita, sent supplies to rebels in the manigua; however, by “shipping high-quality goods and personal luxury items…[featuring] four pounds of chocolate, a dozen cans of milk, a box of sweets, and a jigger ‘Beef Esteak Sauce’…to economically privileged officers,” they also upheld the division among those fighting.50

48 Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (University of North Carolina Press: 2005), 32. 49 Guerra, The Myth of José Martí, 77. 50 Idid, 79.

23 24

As the Spanish retreated from Cuba in 1899, and most colonial values with them, a new reality faced Cuban women. Most of them had known war for the past thirty years and fought for Cubans to be the sovereigns of their own nation. Speaking to a group of delegates from the Constituent Assembly of Guáimaro nearly 30 years before, Ana

Betancourt de Mora expressed what she believed a triumphant conflict would bring for

Cuban women:

The Cuban woman, in the dark and tranquil corner of the home, waits patiently and resignedly, for this sublime hour in which a just revolution breaks the yoke, unbinding her wings.

Everything was a slave in Cuba: families, race, sex. You wanted to destroy slavery of families, fighting until death if it was necessary. Racial slavery no longer exists, you have emancipated the servant. When the moment arrives to liberate the women, the Cuban—who has overcome familial slavery and racial slavery—will also consecrate their generous soul to the struggle for the rights of who is today, in the war, their sister of selfless charity and who will be tomorrow, as she was yesterday, an exemplary companion.51

Women like Betancourt laid the foundation for what early Cuban feminists would come to argue. They had sacrificed for their country and, as such, deserved rights as citizens. Through the fight Cuban women had “developed new skills and discovered new self-worth,” and their presence “raised new issues about entrée into emerging nationality, about civic participation and political inclusion, about what women could plausibly expect in a Cuba for Cubans.”52

Most recognized their place in Cuban society needed to change, but how to go

51 Ana Betancourt de Mora, “Speech at the Constituent Assembly in Guáimaro,” in “La Mujer en Cuba,” presented at the Congress of Dissident Cuban Intellectuals, Paris, France, April 1979. 52 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 138.

24 25 about doing it and the extent of that change became as conflicting as the nature of cubanidad in the wake of the War of Independence.

Women’s contributions to the War of Independence did not go unnoticed among the leadership of the Revolutionary Army. Men who fought alongside them, or rebel leadership who heard of the mambisas, recognized their contribution to the war effort.

Their acknowledgement demonstrated the change from viewing women as impediments in the army to finding respect in their actions and the sacrifices they too made for the nation. General Federico Cavada, for example, wrote:

Our women in particular merit applause and sympathy from every sensitive and generous heart…they suffered, the wept, and they begged for the liberty of Cuba…In Cuba, women no longer need the intervention of men in the same sense [as women in the United States fighting for social equality through the House of Representatives]. They have known how to equal men in their heroism and suffering. In the Cuban insurrection they have emancipated themselves, not from the tender and beautiful attributes of their sex, but from the slander that encouraged men to think vainly of themselves as heroic and of women as cowardly.53

Cavada’s kindly worded praise lauds Cuban women as masters of their own emancipation; however, women believed his comments to be empty words, and Cuban women like Edelmire Guerra de Dauval preferred action to a pat on the back. Dauval

“helped formulate the revolutionary manifesto on March 19,1897,” which added fuel to early suffrage sentiments.54 The manifesto demanded “women to be able to exercise their natural rights through issuance of the vote for single or widowed women over the age of twenty-five,” and “the option of public employment in accordance with physiological and

53 Ana Moya de Perrera, translated by L. Stoner, “La historia de la mujer cubana,” Caballero, La mujer, 123-124. 54 Stoner, From the House, 32.

25 26 social laws.”55 While some Cubans and liberation leadership supported women’s emancipation, men with authority in the new government sidelined women’s rights, and the progressive 1901 constitution did not reflect Dauval’s vision of Cuban women in a modern state.

Suffrage was one of the issues facing Cuban women in this new Cuba. During the

United States’ intervention in Cuba, U.S. officials with stakes on the island sought to contain the extent of new Cuban independence. One of their main strategies was to cater to the Cubans who idea of Cuban nationalism closely aligned with their interests— specifically, the United States wanted elite Cubans to remain at the forefront of civilized society and in control of the electorate. As the Cuban government drafted the 1901 Cuban

Constitution, U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root desired to “exclude the ‘mass of ignorant and incompetent.’”56 Thus, in Cuba’s US-controlled municipal elections in 1900, “[a]ll voters were required to be Cuban males over the age of twenty and in possession of one of the following: real or personal property worth $250, or an ability to read and write, or honorable service in the Liberation Army.”57 In addition to the havoc thirty years of war did to Cuba’s demographics, a majority of the surviving Cuban men over the age of 25 belonged to the lower and working class or the peasantry whose personal property was scant and whose reading and writing abilities were primarily nonexistent. Root’s stipulation effectively kept most Cubans from politically participating in the new nation and alienated Cuban women from the public political sphere. However, despite

55 Maria Collado, translated by L. Stoner, “La revolución feminina en Cuba,” Bohemia 19, no. 50 (December 11,1927): 58. 56 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 145. 57 Ibid.

26 27 opposition from the United States and several members of the delegation, the 1901 Cuban

Constitution ratified universal male suffrage.58

In the decade following the end of the War of Independence, women’s “roles as organized lobbyists and reformers were limited. Their influence was directed mainly through informal family and class networks.”59 However, the divisions among women continued to define the norm and prevented a strong central set of feminist values from forming across race and class. The direct presence of the United States on the island the introduction to a consumer-based economy in the early 20th century did little to bridge these gaps. Rather, most Cubans readily accepted North American culture in the form of mediums like fashion, film, sports, and spirits. Not only did the Cubans believe the

American way of life would be better, but they also viewed Northern modernity as the embodiment of modernization. According to author Ofelia Rodriguez Acosta, by the

1930s, “it was the movies: the conjunction of social style and the development of an industry that was taking hold, which, perhaps, more than feminist discourses, contributed to the liberation of women in that epoch.”60 However, while film gave Cuban women the confidence to branch out and a new high status image to emulate, its influence was nothing more than a thin layer of veneer dressing up gender and class disparity.

Although spread out over multiple factions, Cuban feminists did grow in numbers despite a lag in the initial aftermath of the War of Independence. Contrary to Rodríguez

58 Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth- century Cuba (UNC Press, 2001), 54. 59 Lynn Stoner Wheeler, “In Defense of Motherhood: Divorce Law in Cuba During the Early Republic,” paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, Bloomington, IN, October 1981. 60 Ofelia Rodríguez Acosta, translated by L. Pérez, Sonata Interrumpida (Mexico, 1943), 12-13.

27 28

Acosta’s assertion, Stoner claims that “feminist success came from the broad appeal of messages, effectiveness in getting feminist views across, and women’s adhesion to the diverse political affiliations so prevalent in Cuba between 1927 and 1940.”61 Among the early Cuban feminists, white, upper- and middle-class women more actively participated in the push for women’s suffrage. While there was undoubtedly lower class, mulatto, and

Afro-Cuban women who advocated for their right to vote, the culture surrounding suffrage in Cuba was rather exclusive: privileged Cuban women often saw themselves as the mouthpiece for all Cuban women, though they understood difference existed between them and less privileged Cuban women. As a result, a variety of women’s groups formed and broke off from one another, starting approximately in the 1920s. In the end, though, the “disputatious women’s movement matched a divided and contentious society, and this allowed women with differing ideas about feminism to appeal to a corresponding sector of the Cuban polity.”62 While some women—those who already benefitted from familial connections and appealed to more traditional Cubans—had no interest in literal equality between women and men, many feminists saw suffrage as the next rational step in the idea of motherhood for the Cuban nation since: suffrage would give women the opportunity to directly influence Cuban domestic affairs.

Social reform remained a top issue among the different factions of Cuban feminists.

For moderate Pilar Morlon de Menendez, the President of the Federacion Nacional de

Asociaciones Femeninas (FNAF) established in 1923, Cuba’s “social machine” was broken. The problems were a “lack of national independence, corruption in public

61 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 108. 62 Ibid, 108.

28 29 administration, selling off of state institutions such as orphanages, drug-trafficking, and child murders.”63 As a spokeswoman for many Cuban women at this time, Morlon believed curing these ills depended on Cuba’s mothers as they encompassed virtue and wisdom, and motherhood provided a framework for women’s roles in building the Cuban nation.. She questioned, “Does not motherhood give us the right to be on guard for the material and moral good of our children?” recalling sentiments of strong family units yielding a strong nation.64 Alongside the FNAF, organizations like the “Club Feminino de Cuba was established [in 1918] to assist in educational projects for women and to press for civil and social rights,” with a specific focus on eliminating “prostitution, improved conditions for women prisoners, night schools for women, child care, and job action by women workers.”65 Additionally, groups such as the “Comité Pro Igualidad de la Mujer…dedicated [their cause] to the elimination of employment discrimination.”66

On top of social reform, other organizations held out for strong political and economic issues.

Luz Rubio, voicing opinions within the Feminist Party from 1914, claimed that even though José Martí and his vanguard fought for national independence from colonial rule, the new nation benefitted everyone but women who were still subject to colonial legislation; because of this, half of the Cuban population was still oppressed by the

63 Catherine Davies, A Place in the Sun?: Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba (London: Zed Books, 1997), 36; Despite gaining its freedom from Spanish rule, Cuba was tethered to the United States by the Platt Amendment which gave the US the power to intervene in Cuban political affairs, among other things. 64 Davies, A Place in the Sun?, 36. 65 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 186; Stoner, “In Defense of Motherhood,” Appendix B. 66 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 186.

29 30 colonial regime.67 A decade late in 1923, Aida Pérez blamed this in part on the 1901

Cuban constitution. She claimed because their constitution was based on that of the

United States, Cuban women would not have been given the right to vote since US women did not have the right to vote.68 The feminists posed women’s liberation as a patriotic call-to-action, especially appealing to those discontent with U.S. influence in

Cuban affairs as well as those keen on keeping up with the modern times. As part of a

1930 radio broadcast, Amelia de Vera de Lens, a member of the ANF, questioned whether Cuban legislatures considered Cuban women inferior to their US and German counterparts: while the others enjoyed suffrage and places in their governing bodies,

Cuban women did not.69 The implication resonated with feminists’ audiences and, coupled with the tumultuous political culture in Cuba, provided women with the sympathies they needed for suffrage, at the very least, to pass.

As the differing factions within the women’s movement pressed the Cuban government and lawmakers for suffrage, they seemingly had the support of then-

President Gerardo Machado—a great advantage considering Machado had “made clear that he would brook no opposition to his policies,” in 1925.70 Machado’s belligerent actions towards communists in Cuba divided many of the factions within the women’s movement. Although most agreed upon women’s suffrage, few organization were involved with radical politics, and only organizations like the Club Feminino de Cuba and the Union Laborista de Mujeres identified with communist ideology. While

67 Davies, A Place in the Sun?, 36. 68 Davies, A Place in the Sun?, 37. 69 Ibid. 70 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 70.

30 31

Machado’s actions caused tension among some of the factions, they alone were not enough for women to give up on his endorsement. Machado’s disregard for the suffrage agenda made him a political enemy to the women’s movement. Despite his claims of support for their right to vote, no action followed as the 1920s progressed, thus women considered his word hollow. As most Cuban feminists heading the fight were white, upper and middle class Cuban women with strong societal connections, Machado had no support from the women or their allies when his opponents orchestrated a coup against him for repression of political enemies, economic turmoil, and serving as an extension of

U.S. hegemony in Cuba. When the time came for Machado’s enemies to put their coup into action, the feminists threw their lot in with the opposition.

Cuban women gained the right to vote in 1934 under interim President Carlos

Mendieta who put the issue on the provisional constitution when he came to power.

However, “between 1933 and 1939 the rapid and irregular succession of Cuban presidents supported by the U.S. left open the question of the legitimacy of each regime,” therefore, “the irregular transfer of power threw into question the validity of [recently deposed President Ramón] Grau’s presidential decree giving women the vote.”71

Feminists remained vigilant and vocal over the six uncertain years, though, determined to keep women’s suffrage from falling to the wayside. When the 1940 constitution finally ratified women’s suffrage, the passage also resonated well with Cubans who were

71 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 125; According to Stoner, Grau passed a series of decrees that supported his position as a reformist, socialist, and anti-imperialist. However, his actions were not enough for the radical left, nor did they make the United States—and those who recognized the need for the U.S. in an economic depression— particularly happy. Grau resigned from his position amidst moderate and progressives no longer supporting him and in fear of a military coup.

31 32 discouraged by the tumultuous political culture. Presidents were coming in and out of office rapidly (one of them only lasting several hours), and “motherhood projected onto an unstable and violent society the promise of wholesomeness, protection, purity, and new life.”72 However the introduction of women in the political sphere did not trigger a change in how Cubans, men and women, viewed women’s role.

Despite having the right to vote, Cuban society still held onto colonial values like

Church informed gender roles and veneration of motherhood. “Most Cubans agreed that women’s functions as wife, mother, and creator of future generations deserved respect in modernizing Cuba,” but they still had to gain permission from legislators to take on more professional, or masculine, roles.73 When women did take on certain professional roles, or roles within the public sphere that Dauval had once petitioned for, feminist activists and those in the government accepted some of the change. They did not see women’s participation in social reformation for the poor and children as particularly radical.

Furthermore, with the Great Depression also affecting Cuba, women’s actions were helpful while also asserting social values and class relations. Marta Abreu, a native of

Santa Clara, was one of Cuba’s well-known figures in personifying “themes of independence, sacrifice, loyalty to country and husband, philanthropy and elite bearing.”74 Because of her dedication to the nation and family, Cubans saw Abreu as the embodiment of the ideal Cuban woman, and Santa Clara was known as the ‘City of Marta

72 Stoner, From the House to the Streets, 107. 73 Ibid, 136. 74 K. Lynn Stoner, “Militant Heroines and the Consecration of the Patriarchal State: The Glorification of Loyalty, Combat, and National Suicide in the Making of Cuban National Identity,” in Cuban Studies no. 34 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 80.

32 33

Abreu’ in her honor.75 This title remained until the end of the Cuban Revolution when

Che Guevara liberated Santa Clara in the Revolution’s final battle. After the dust settled and the Revolutionary government was installed, they renamed Santa Clara the ‘City of

Che’.

Before the July 26th Movement liberated Cuba, though, the nation was rife with dissent and deepening divides among race, class, and gender. The fractured nature of

Cuba’s women’s movement did not provide solutions for social issues like education, health, and racial and gender disparity. Mambisas contributions in the War of

Independence established the warrior mother in Cuba, but their actions did not convince the majority of Cubans of women’s equality or dismantle religious-based views of womanhood. Additionally, when the revolving door of Cuban presidents came to a halt with Fulgencio Batista, a U.S.-backed dictator and puppet for Washington’s interests, a foreign power still controlled the island. Moreover, the United States’ success at the close of World War II also brought a boom to the Cuban economy, but the splendor of Cuba’s post-war scene was nothing more than gilding. While elite Cubans benefitted from the consumer culture and the big band/cabana-style opulence and luxuries associated with

1950s Cuba, underground movements of working class citizens sought to claim Cuba for

Cubans. Throughout this struggle, women participated as guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra, underground combatants, spies, propagandists, and leaders of student rebellions.

75 Raimundo Cabrera, Cuba and the Cubans (Philadelphia: Levytype Company, 1896), 346; Raquel Romeu, “El ensayo de la mujer en Cuba,” in Mujeres ensayistas del Caribe hispano (Madrid: Verbum Editorial, 2008), 16.

33 34

Chapter 2

The Cuban Revolution draws up mental images of bearded men in green military fatigues, smoking cigars or trekking through the thick cover of the Sierra Maestra.

However, long before Fidel Castro’s rebels reached Cuba in December of 1956, talk of rebellion stirred among Cubans discontent with the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Most viewed the dictator as an arm of United States imperialism. As Fidel and Raúl Castro, among others, planned their attacks on locations important to Batista’s regime—most notably the Moncada barracks—everyday Cuban citizens organized themselves around this movement that would later become the July 26th Movement. Historically, and in cultural depictions, the Revolution’s narrative buries female rebels under the barrage of veneration for their male counterparts. Despite the attention historians and society give los barbudos, or the bearded ones, Cuban women were instrumental in the fight for

Castro’s idea of Cuban liberation. Women not only participated in the underground movement, but they also fought alongside men as armed insurrectionists. From the very beginnings of anti-Batista organization through the Battle of Santa Clara, women provided firm foundation for the Revolution as support and insurgents.

Prior to the Moncada Garrison attack on 26 July 1953, Fidel had begun recruiting citizens who desired to see the end of Batista’s reign. After the dictator cancelled a 1952 congressional election—in which Castro had intended to run—Fidel passionately set his sight on ousting Batista. He recruited men and women alike; however, although they

34 35 were among those recruited, Fidel’s vision of the attack did not include women combatants. Of the approximately 120 who attacked the garrison, only two were women,

Haydée Santamaria and Melba Hernández. Melba related her outrage over their initial exclusion, claiming, “I protested to Fidel that we were as revolutionary and that it was unjust to discriminate against us for being women…We couldn’t believe that we would be left behind after we had considered ourselves an essential part of the group.”76 Striking up a compromise with Castro, the women were assigned to support roles as nurses for the men participating in the assault.77 While they did not partake in combat like the men did,

Haydée and Melba faced the consequences for their participation in the failed attack.

However, Moncada’s disastrous results inspired a response. Cuban men and women, the majority of whom were university-educated, sympathized with Castro’s anti-Batista rhetoric and built up the movement which would complement his own efforts in incarceration and exile.

With the Batista regime’s heightened vigilance for subversive activity, the underground movement and civic activism gathered strength. Between 1953 and 1958, women became unsung heroes. They took on helper roles, similar to the women who participated in the Wars of Independence, as nurses, fund raisers, and even lawyers for rebels. Additionally, the women of the Cuban Revolution took advantage of prejudices against the female sex, which assumed pure and weak women were not combatants. This presumption allowed them to move money, information, arms, and other requisitions

76 Melba Hernández, “Sesenta y dos horas de mi vida desaparecieron,” in Granma (Cuba: 1988), 4. 77 Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (Oxford University Press, 1996), 24.

35 36 around Cuba without much inquiry. Women like Vilma Espín and Haydée used their youth and beauty to hoodwink Batista’s soldiers’ prying. On the other hand, elderly

Cuban women like Luisa Díaz played the esteem associated with old age to take a stand and allow revolutionaries to use her home as a meeting place. Equally as important, though, women took up arms. Those connected to the Castros from the beginning fought with them in the Sierra Maestra, and others like Aleida March and Delsa Esther “Teté”

Puebla began their fight with the underground after Fidel’s arrest and worked their way to the guerrillas. Across the nation, Cuban women actively participated in the Revolution as student activists, medical and legal support, teachers in the guerrilla camps, combatants, couriers, and spies. This time, women were not just following their men into battle: they trained to fight, sought out other insurgents in urban areas and in rural Cuba, and on their own volition, they were fighting for Cuba’s liberation from a regime they believed was an extension of U.S. imperialism.

This chapter argues Cuban women were integral to the success of the Cuban

Revolution between 1953 and 1959. Not only did they serve in traditional roles of educators and nurses in the Sierra Maestra from 1956 onwards, but women also dominated the underground movement and actively participated in the urban insurrection as early as 1952. They were responsible for ensuring the movement of medical supplies, uniforms, food, and arms—all necessities for the Rebel Army’s eventual triumph.

Chapter two examines women’s relationship with the fighting over the course of the

Cuban Revolution, starting with the Moncada Garrison Assault through to the ultimate battle in Santa Clara. Furthermore, the reaction to merely the idea of women as combatants sparked outrage among members of the July 26th Movement. While this

36 37 affected to what extent Castro allowed women to participate, it also fueled Cuban women’s fire during the Revolution and inspired others to help rebuild Cuba after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. This chapter discuss the roles women took on, how they maneuvered within their tasks, and also the actions and opinions which affected them during the years of rebellion. My chapter concludes that because of their deep outreach, their revolutionary fervor, and the assignments they undertook, women were the backbone of the Cuban Revolution despite being overlooked in favor of los barbudos.

Compared to some Latin American countries, women in pre-Revolutionary Cuba lived in a relatively progressive society. The Catholic Church had not had as much influence in Cuba as it did elsewhere; wage labor dominated over the hacienda system in

Cuban plantations; and the intricate social connection between Cuba and the United

States gave way to a degree of gender equality that other nations lacked.78 The composition of Cuban sexual political culture reflected early feminists insistent push for reform at the formation of the Republic, starting around 1920 and waning after the success of women’s suffrage in 1940s. However, because the 1940 Cuban constitution ratified women’s right to vote, legally women had the opportunity to politically participate in their country’s affairs. The progressive stance on women allowed “the women to actively participate in the country’s political life since 1936—since then [they] have had [female] deputies, senators, and ministers.”79 Furthermore, women were also present in the manual labor workforce. Cubans women were “generally in the textile and

78 Julie Marie Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (Penn State Press, 2010), 90. 79 Dysis Guira, “Por qué luchó la mujer cubana,” in La Mujer (Buenos Aires, January 1959) from the Dysis Guira Collection, 1957-1964, University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection.

37 38 tobacco industries,” but also in rural farming communities where they “helped with the planting, the harvesting, and tending the animals.”80 However, despite living in a society which legally allowed women to be proactive, they rarely accessed the opportunities.

As machismo still permeated Cuban culture in the first half of the 20th century, the unique social and political circumstances in Cuba was not indicative of practiced gender equality. The movement that had ardently fought for reform in the Early Republic

“significantly declined by the 1950s.”81 Cuban women did not experience a transformation of consciousness with the legal reforms benefitting them, because the competing ideas of Cuban identity had not intended to redefine womanhood. Rather, the role of women in the new Cuba supported women’s roles as mothers, nurturing the nation through focused attention on the family unit. Julie Marie Bunck claims, “By the late

1940s, however, Cuban society had accepted the idea that upper-class and upper-middle- class women might choose to work in the absence of financial need, provided the labor occurred in a ‘respectable’ professional or bureaucratic setting.”82 Teaching was considered an acceptable position for women.83 Nevertheless, within the education profession “it was impossible to gain a teaching position without handing over a bribe.

And even then, the post would be in some tiny school with multiple grades in a remote area.”84 In discussing what the Cuban Revolution meant for women, Vilma Espín

80 Vilma Espín, “The early years,” in Women and the Cuban Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 2004), 47. 81 Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 44. 82 Bunck, Revolutionary Culture in Cuba, 91. 83 K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman’s Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Duke University Press: 1991), 39. 84 Aleida March, Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara (Ocean Press, 2012), 16.

38 39 reflected on the inequality present before 1959, “’Equality before the law is not equality in life,’ said Lenin. In point of face, the constitution of 1940 did not change women’s position of inferiority. In practice women received inferior wages to those of men and were denied access to better-paying and more responsible jobs. The laws on maternity, retirement, vacations, etc., were not complied with.”85 Especially in the beginning years of anti-Batista organization, the adverse effects of machismo limited the full potential effort women could have contributed to the early rebellions.

Fidel Castro was not immune to how machismo informed Cubans. After Batista’s cancellation of the congressional election in 1952, Fidel’s plan of attack did not include

Cuban women fighting alongside men. Those Fidel recruited were “Orthodoxists, very anti-Batista, very good, honest kids, but they lacked any political education,” but who weren’t “particularly anti-imperialistic, because the subject of imperialism was not discussed.”86 Through his recruitment, Fidel met Abel Santamaria, a left leaning student, in May of 1952. However, it was Abel’s sister Haydée who showed strong character,

“identifying with the oppressed” and “the student movement against government corruption…And so it was that when Abel brought a young fiery Fidel Castro home one day, the two insurgents found both an open heart and revolutionary spirit in Haydée.”87

Additionally, monetary support for the attack came from Castro’s mistress, Naty

85 Espín, “The early years,” 49. 86 Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro: My Life (New York: Scribner, 2009), 106-7. 87 Antonio Rafael de la Cova, The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 34; Betsy Maclean, Haydée Santamaría: Woman Guerilla Leader in Cuba Whose Passion for Art and Revolution Inspired Latin America's Cultural Renaissance (Ocean Press, 2003), 4.

39 40

Revuelta, who he had met “in the anti-Batista underground.”88 Revuelta, the socialite wife to a Cuban surgeon, “raided her savings and sold her jewels to help finance Fidel’s ill-fated attack.”89 The last woman attached to the attack was Melba Hernández, a lawyer and member of Abel Santamaria’s rebel group.

Of the women involved with the Moncada Garrison Attack on July 26th 1953—the namesake of the July 26th Movement—Melba was the most vocal about Castro’s exclusion of women in the attack, but instead of combat positions, Fidel permitted Melba and Haydée to act as nurses. When the attack on Moncada failed, those who were not massacred on sight were arrested and tortured. Batista’s forces captured Haydée and

Melba along with the rest of the combatants at the Moncada Garrison; but the law had difficulty deciding upon the consequences of the women’s’ actions. They challenged social norms, and according to Haydée, “The Supreme Court wanted to free us. It was not the custom for women of so-called decent families to go to jail. I belonged to a rural family of position and culture, not of the street. But…we were part of it [the rebellion], and what would I have done when I got out? I couldn’t get a job. I would have had to go home.”90 Haydée and Melba served seven months after the regime squashed the rebellion, but the impact of the attack resonated with Cubans across the island.

Cuban women mobilized behind anti-Batista sentiment more readily than their mothers and grandmothers had done under the feminist factions in the Early Republic.

Vilma Espín had long been part of a University of Santiago campaign before the attack,

88 Richard Haney, Celia Sánchez: The Legend of Cuba's Revolutionary Heart (New York: Algora Publishing), 51. 89 Ibid, 51. 90 Sally Quinn, “To Die Is Much Easier,” in Washington Post (March 1977), B4.

40 41 but she found common beliefs in Castro’s La historia me absolverá (History Will

Absolve Me), a speech Castro gave at his trial in October of 1953.91 Commenting on the situation in Santa Clara in the aftermath of the attack, Aleida March relayed, “the name of Fidel Castro now became familiar to some Cubans, who learned about his role in the student movement at the University of Havana and his affiliation to the Orthodox

Party.”92 At this time, Castro was not yet a household name, but the start of the whispers of Fidel’s cause in Santa Clara would later fuel its underground movement, in which

Aleida actively participated. Castro’s July 26th Movement “attracted adherents from all sectors of Cuban society and none more than from those quarters of historical proximity with North Americans.”93 For example, “liberated young women of the Havana Country

Club formed part of a vast underground network in the capital.”94 Despite a weakened women’s movement compared to the 1920s and 1930s, Cuban women were less fractured than the early feminists. They found common cause in opposing Batista—whose 1952 coup and subsequent political repression they considered a threat to a democratic Cuba—

, and a figurehead in the passionate and charismatic Castro.

As their predecessors had done during the Wars of Independence, women fell into support roles within Cuba and outside. Aleida, and others Margot Machado led, had initially joined the July 26th Movement while Fidel was exiled in Mexico to provide “first

91 Alexandra C. Fenton, “Vilma Espín: Her Role in The Federation of Cuban Women and the Evolution of Women’s Roles in Revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1975,” Masters’ Thesis (Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University, 2013), 25. 92 March, Remembering Che, 16. 93 Louis A. Pérez, Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 234. 94 Ibid, 234.

41 42 aid to the combatants if there was a clash or wherever else we were needed to be.”95

While Aleida met her link to the Cuban Revolution through a church group, other women entered into the movement through university activism. Dysis Guira, a staunch supporter of Castro during the Revolution, was one of these women who originally became involved with the movement through university protests. Although already active within the movement, the murder of her fiancé at the hands of Batista’s forces only added fuel for Guira’s resistance. The more vocal she was in her opposition, though, the more

Batista’s forces targeted her until she fled the country. In a self-imposed exiled, Guira took it upon herself to be Castro’s mouthpiece outside of Cuba, letting the Latin

American world know the situation in Cuba. Guira was the president of the Federation of

Cuban Students, the Secretary of Press and Propaganda for the July 26th Movement, and a delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Directorate.96 When asked why the students were fighting, Guira replied, “the Cuban students are fighting for the overthrow of a regime that has abused the rights of individuals and sustains itself by armed force.”97

Additionally, in a 1957 interview with the Argentine newspaper El Tiempo, Guira defended the Revolution:

Chronicler: Is the Cuban fight a nation fight that responds to the interest of the Cuban people or to other interests?

Miss Guira: The Cuban Revolution has not compromised with any kind of foreign elements; it represents the continuation of Martí’s revolutionary ideal, in which it is

95 March, Remembering Che, 20. 96 Guira, “Por qué luchó la mujer cubana.” “Patéticas Declaraciones de la Joven Estudiante Cubana: Dysi [sic] Guira Relata Entre Lágrimas de Dolor y Rabia los Crímenes de Fulgencio Batista,” in Noticias Graficas 9373 (Buenos Aires: August 1957). 97 Dysis Guira, “Interview with Lilian Morelli in Belgrano,” (Buenos Aires, August 1957) from the Dysis Guira Collection, 1957-1964, University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection.

42 43

inspired, and aspires to the conquest of an integral democracy without diminishing for anyone, and for the wellbeing of the nation.98

Though unique in many ways, the pain Guira felt at losing a loved one to political oppression and the hope she placed in Fidel was something with which Cubans across the island sympathized.

Guira was hardly the only student activist, though. University students served as a permanent thorn in Batista’s side throughout the Revolution. Recruited by the head of the

July 26th Movement’s national finance committee (a female associate of Melba’s),

“Gloria Cuadras had served in a student activist group, the Revolutionary Directorate, at the University of Oriente in 1930. After Batista’s 1952 coup, she organized a group called the Association of United Cuban Women to support antigovernment activities.”99

Despite women’s involvement in these groups, and having key positions like Guira, the men who made up the majority of the movement encouraged women not to attend violent protests throughout the Revolution.100 Old prejudices of women’s capabilities in rebel activity were predominant in the university setting just as they were in the Sierra Maestra.

Organizers delegated women to support roles, such as passing out pamphlets and passing messages amongst anti-Batista groups. However, because urban society was heavily formulated around consumer society, Cuba’s urban activism was a more level playing field for women, who consumer culture primarily targeted.

98 Dysis Guira, “Habla para EL TIEMPO Dysis Guira, exilada cubana: ‘No se gobierna un pais como se manda un campamento mititar,” in El Tiempo 7629 (Buenos Aires, August 1957) from the Dysis Guira Collection, 1957-1964, University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection. 99 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 25. 100 Michelle Chase, Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 41.

43 44

Alongside their male counterparts, Cuban women excelled in urban activism, which operated through an intricate underground system. According to historian Michelle

Chase, “the earliest years [or, from the 1952 coup through the arrival of the July 26th

Movement in 1956] of the Cuban anti-Batista movement were characterized by what we might call gender-inclusive protest strategies, in which urban women and men together forged a compelling range of protest actions…Urban protesters undertook an array of actions, including public demonstrations, phone chains and rumor campaigns, collective

‘stay-at-home’ days, ‘flash’ protests, patriotic street theatre, boycotts, and other consumer actions.”101 While Fidel was plotting in Mexico, women involved with urban activism continued the unrest at home. Though Fidel would later be the international figurehead for the Cuban Revolution, combatting Batista’s regime started long before the guerrilla movement. Furthermore, urban activism complemented the assault on the Moncada

Garrison, as “at the very time that Bohemia published [Fidel’s] declarations [regarding the attack on Moncada], the 26th of July Movement’s ‘action and sabotage’ units in urban areas regularly set off bombs in stores and movie theaters, destroyed infrastructure, and burned tens of thousands of pounds of sugar, the country’s main source of wealth.”102

Although the recognition came nearly a decade later in 1968, Castro noted the importance of the urban resistance, “Almost all attention, almost all recognition, almost all admiration, and almost all the history of the Revolution [have] centered on the guerrilla movement in the mountains…This fact tended to play down the role of those who fought in the cities, the role of those who found in the clandestine movement, and the

101 Chase, Revolution within a Revolution, 20. 102 Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 15.

44 45 extraordinary heroism of young persons who died fighting under very difficult conditions.”103 While university protests reminded Batista of student and faculty’s discontent with his regime—as police brutality was heightened among these crowds—the urban insurrection brought visibility the July 26th Movement to the Cuban public.

Not all women who participated in the Revolution were as visible as the student and urban activists, though. For the first couple years of the Cuban Revolution, from their arrival in December of 1956 to summer of 1958, the July 26th leadership did not allow women armed combat roles, and, as previously stated, university organizations encouraged their exclusion. Additionally, while women participating in public demonstrations with the urban activists received attention, the associated underground network was much more complex and composed of a number of women. Their ability to move through Cuban society without raising too much awareness allowed women to act as courier and spies. Furthermore, their manipulation of assumptions towards showcased their consciousness of the stereotypes against them. Téte Puebla recalls the ways women would maneuver in Batista’s Cuba while aiding the July 26th Movement from 1956 to

1959, claiming the way women dressed hoodwinked the troops. They would wear “a very wide skirt held out with crinolines...Under that skirt we’d carry bullets, dynamite, or whatever else we were going to transport. Sometimes too we’d pretend to be pregnant.

Nobody would touch the belly of a pregnant woman. But what we were carrying were bullets, messages, dynamite, medicine, and money.”104 Vilma Espín was one of these

103 Thomas C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001), 16. 104 Téte Puebla, ed. Mary-Alice Waters, Marianas in Combat: Téte Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary war, 1956-58 (Pathfinder, 2005), 32.

45 46 women who exploited societal prejudices. Asela de los Santos, a friend and comrade, remarked that military men would allow Espín to pass through checkpoints because of her serenity, elegance, and family relations.105 Furthermore, their presumed innocence coupled with skirts, and even handbags, also allowed women to carry July 26th propaganda materials around the island as well as bombs.106 The underground movement ensured materials for the Sierra Maestra combatants and other insurrectionists were properly disbursed throughout Cuba, and the leaders within the underground made sure each old and new recruit was working on a task suited to their abilities and strengths.

In spite of their inclusion in the Revolution, “women usually did not play central leadership roles in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship, perhaps partly because the

Cuban women’s movement [declined],” but “machismo unquestionably was an important cause of the exclusion of women from certain revolutionary activities.”107 Castro did not permit women to participate in the armed fighting until July of 1958. Moreover, despite women being active in the urban resistance, the revolutionary leadership “overlooked and, perhaps inadvertently, discredited the work and sacrifice of thousands of members of the urban resistance, including the great bulk of M-26-7.”108 Enrique Carreras, a U.S.- trained pilot who is considered the father of the Revolutionary Armed Forces’ air force, remembered his time serving in World War II: specifically, he commented on the culture shock he experienced upon seeing women in positions that men typically manned.

However, he believed the revolution had been working to eliminate the machismo which

105 Carolina Aguilar Ayerra, Por siempre Vilma (Cuba: Editorial de la Mujer, 2008), 141. 106 March, Remembering Che, 23. 107 Farber, Origins of the Cuban Revolution, 44. 108 Wright, Latin America, 16.

46 47 affected Cuban’s view of its women.109 This work to combat machismo did not occur until after the Revolution deposed of Batista, though, despite women’s ability to prove themselves in the underground, the urban areas, and even among the fighters in the Sierra

Maestra.

In addition to fighting alongside their male counterparts in the urban insurrection and underground movement, women also took up arms with the guerrilla troops. During the Sierra Maestra phase of 1956 to 1959, few leaders saw any worth in armed women.

However, “Che Guevara found that women were valuable in guerrilla camps because they could perform duties that ‘are scorned by those [men] who perform them; they [the men] are constantly trying to get out of those tasks in order to enter into forces that are actively in combat.’”110 While Che admired the initiative women took, he also “permitted women to take up arms, as in the case of Oniria Gutiérrez, who hiked up to his camp in the Sierra the previous summer [1957]. Oniria argued that if Celia Sánchez could fight, she could too,” and “Che yielded.”111 Women combatants achieved far more than this, though.

In the summer of 1958, the Rebel Army formed the first all-female platoon, the

Mariana Grajales Platoon. Téte Puebla recalled, “Even though [women] were doing many essential things, we felt frustrated that we could not fight arms in hand…We had already proved that women could do just about everything. We withstood bombings, delivered weapons, and were in the places where fighting was taking place. But we were still not

109 Enrique Carreras, edited by Mary-Alice Waters, “War of the entire people is the foundation of our defense,” Making History: Interviews with four generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (Pathfinder, 1999), 61.

110 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 30. 111 Ibid.

47 48 allowed to fight. ‘If women have to take part in all the duties of the revolution,’ we said,

‘why can’t we fight for the revolution in the same way as our men fight?’”112 After further appeal to Fidel, the commander in chief conceded. The formation of an all woman’s brigade did not sit well with male combatants, who questioned Fidel’s decision.

Castro noted the prejudice of the Rebel Army when “we began to organize the Mariana

Grajales Platoon, and the real resistance we encountered to the idea of arming that women’s unit, which reminds us how much more backward we were a few years ago.

Some men believed that women weren’t capable of fighting. But the unit was organized, and the women fought excellently, with all the bravery that the most valiant of our soldiers could have shown.”113 The Marianas participated in numerous encounters, though, and after the first, a guerrilla leader said to Fidel, “I must tell you after being one of the main opponents to having women in our troop…I congratulate you once again because you’re never wrong…I wish you could see if only on film…the behavior mainly of Téte [Puebla] and also of the other women comrades who when ordered to advance, while some of the men lagged behind, were out in front with a degree of courage and coolheadedness [sic] worthy of respect and recognition of all the rebels and everybody else.”114 While the Marianas situation was unique and not indicative of the Rebel Army on the whole, women participated in other areas of need.

112 Puebla, Marianas in Combat, 46. 113Fidel Castro, edited by Elizabeth Stone, “The struggle for women’s equality” (1974) in Women and the Cuban Revolution: Speeches and Documents by Fidel Castro, Vilma Espín, and others (Pathfinder, 2004), 84. 114 Mariano Rodríguez Herrera, “Cuban Women in the Rebel Army,” Granma Weekly Review (1988), 2.

48 49

Women played a fundamental role in instilling revolutionary values into recruits through education programs implemented within the Rebel Army fighting in the Sierra

Maestra. Puebla remembers, when she first reached the Rebel Army in late 1957 and before the establishment of the Marianas, “we helped with cooking, sewing, and tending for the wounded. We also helped teach the compañeros to read and write.”115 Prior to their arrival, Che Guevara had taken it upon himself to teach the incoming combatants, mostly made up of Cuban peasants, rudimentary reading and writing skills, even working closely with one rebel to the point where “every time we stopped I would teach him a few letters of the alphabet.”116 As the Revolution garnered support among Cubans, though, the guerillas experienced an increase in combatants. These new recruits came mostly from rural areas where access to education was often unavailable or inconvenient. The leaders within the Revolution’s ranks recognized universal literacy as a core tenet of the

Revolution, as outlined in Castro’s Sierra Maestra Manifesto.117 Despite their presence in the guerrilla units, though, women were naturally not as predominant as men within the

July 26th Movement.

Women’s limited presence on the battlefields did not indicate their lack of overall participation. Over the course of the armed combat, poor and urban women acted as

“nurses, organizers of the camps, or workers in shops making uniforms, knapsacks, and other essentials…others works in kitchens, brought in supplies, helped transport people from the mountains to the city or from the city to the mountains. They took care of the

115 Puebla, Marianas in Combat, 33. 116 Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (Ocean Press, 2006), 34. 117 Che Guevara, edited by David Deutschmann, Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution (Ocean Press, 2003), 32.

49 50 wounded helped set up hospitals, helped establish the schools in the Second Front and in the Sierra Maestra.”118 Celia Sánchez gained her recognition and Fidel’s confidence through her unwavering efforts in organizing the Rebel Army and maintenance of contacts throughout the Sierra Maestra. Her contacts among the peasants in Cuba were the ones who rescued the survivors of the Granma in December of 1956 and moved them to relative safety.119 Fidel inducted Celia, at the recommendation of several guerrilla forces, into the Rebel Army as an armed combatant prior to the creation of the

Marianas.120 Furthermore, some acted as translators between Cubans and foreign aids, and women like Haydée Santamaría and Sánchez were key to global outreach, which favored the Cuban revolutionaries struggling against an oppressive dictator. At one point in 1957, the two “brought a CBS television crew up to the Sierra Maestra” to meet

Castro.121 Women like Vilma, Haydée, Téte, and Celia served as sources of inspiration for Cuban women interested in doing what they could to reclaim their country.

As the Cuban Revolution gained strength throughout the nation, many women saw a triumph of the opposition as a triumph for women’s equality. Harry Villegas, a member of the Rebel Army who had served under Che, confirmed equality was one of the reasons the Rebels were fighting for Cuban emancipation. Villegas claimed, “we

[were] fighting to end discrimination against women…the revolution has created the

118 Vilma Espín, “With no preconceived structure or agenda: interview with Vilma Espín,” in Women in Cuba: the Making of a Revolution within a Revolution (Pathfinder, 2012), 280-2. 119 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 27. 120 Nancy Stout, One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (New York: Monthly Review, 2013), 177. 121 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 27.

50 51 conditions to end discrimination and is fighting to do so.”122 Espín agreed with these beliefs as she reflected a couple years later, in 1961, on the Revolution’s success:

During that unforgettable stage, women together with men participated in the two currents of the struggle—in the armed insurrection and in the underground—giving immense demonstrations of valor, self-sacrifice, and patriotism…

Throughout this difficult process, women many times took up vanguard positions; carrying out formidable mass actions, protest demonstrations, strikes; making unheard-of efforts to obtain unity of all the opposition forces in common action against the tyranny…

What did the triumphant revolution offer our women? A new life, filled with possibilities and prospects, in which their deepest dreams might become reality.123

Thus, as the Battle of Santa Clara came to an end and Batista’s took plight, Cuban women were once again faced with the question of what a new Cuba would mean for them. The nation was liberated in a way it had not experienced before, and through the compañeros Cubans could create a society in their own vision. The concern for women, though, was where they stood. Participating in ways men could not possible have done,

Cuban women made up the backbone of the Cuban Revolution. Under the shadow of veneration and romanticism for the beaded ones, women demonstrate the bottom-up history of the Revolution. While women who were close to los barbudos had easier access to more hands-on roles in the Sierra Maestra, this did not mean the average Cuban

122 Harry Villegas, edited by Mary-Alice Waters, “We are a political army, fully aware of what we are defending,” Making History: Interviews with four generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (Pathfinder, 1999), 130.

123 Espín, “The early years,” 50-1.

51 52 woman waited for the guerrillas to liberate them. The young and the elderly pushed against and evaded the Batista regime to secure the July 26th Movement’s success.

Women helped to keep revolutionary thought afloat in urban areas and garner support for the cause outside of the nation. Their homes served as meeting spots for rebels; their skirts hid revolutionary propaganda from militants; and their active support and inclusion made them the vanguard of their own liberation and the transformation Cuban society would come to experience.

Contrary to the belief the Cuban Revolution handed women their liberation,

Cuban women’s participation in the Revolution demonstrated their active push for

Cuba’s liberation. From past leaders hesitance toward emancipation to Castro’s own dance with machismo, Cuban women had no reason to expect a drastic change in their social situation. Cuban women fought to free their country from an oppressive regime. As

Lenin had stated in 1918, without the participation of women, a liberation cannot succeed, and roughly 40 years after, Cuban women showcased the weight behind his words. Cuba’s female combatants, underground revolutionaries, and urban activists had proven to the world (and perhaps more importantly, Fidel Castro) they were just as capable, driven, and fierce as the men they fought alongside. In the developmental years following the triumph, women like Espín continued to crusade for women’s liberation and the breakdown of old prejudices which she felt inhibited Cuban society’s full potential. When Castro established Cuba as a nation free from the talons of imperialism,

Cuban women—with the help of the Federation of Cuban Women’s lobbying— continued to actively participate in nation building, ensuring the revolutionary

52 53 government upheld the complete emancipation and integration of all Cubans in the burgeoning socialist society.

53 54

Chapter 3

In the decade following the success of the Cuban Revolution, the nation went through a period of reconstruction. For the first time, Cuba was a nation free from foreign subjugation: they were rid of the colonial domination of Spain and free from the oppression of the Platt Amendment and U.S. hegemony. Once again in 1959, the question of what a Cuba for Cubans meant for women was on the mind of those who participated in the Revolution and those who would benefit from the 26th of July Movement’s success.

Women like Vilma Espín, Teté Puebla, Celia Sanchez, and Haydée Santamaria had played vital roles in reclaiming Cuba from Fulgencio Batista’s government, but other

Cubans did not share these women’s experiences or opportunities. After the Revolution’s success, women related to or who were close to the new leaders had greater access to leadership roles within Cuba from the 1960s onward. Espín recognized this divide and created the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in 1960 as an attempt to integrate all women into the transforming nation. Furthermore, despite changes in Cuban law aimed to challenge dated perceptions gender roles, individuals’ private affairs did not always reflect the legal progress. Thus, Cuban women struggled with the notions of liberation and equality in a changing society.

54 55

While Cuban women pondered their place in Revolutionary Cuba, members of the

July 26th Movement installed in the government had to consider what a new Cuba would look like politically, socially, and economically. Furthermore, the government had to decide how to shape a society free from imperial bondage, which the July 26th Movement understood as an obstacle to Cuban self-determination. Che Guevara’s answer to this was revolutionary education through the Cuban “new man.” This new man would come to fruition under the idea of socialist emulation, which is “a form of competition meant to rally workers to labor more energetically and produce more goods,” where rewards were not material in nature but typically recognition from the leaders of the July 26th

Movement or Communist Party.124 To Che, the new man would be a hardworking, egalitarian figure who would willingly give their time and effort to Cuba. Although Che had begun drafting his ideas of the new man in the Sierra Maestra, he did not publish the concept and term until 1965 after the publication of his letter originally sent to Carlos

Quijano, editor of the Uruguayan weekly publication, Marcha.125 His concept of the new man relied heavily on voluntarism, in which human will and consciousness alone can overcome any objective, material obstacles.126 Specifically, this concept materialized in the vanguard of the Revolution.127 More importantly, the rhetoric surrounding Che’s new

124 Julie Marie Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (Penn State Press, 2010), 130-1. 125 David Deutschmann, ed. Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution (Ocean Press, 2003), 212 126 Samuel Farber, The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), xx. 127 According to Lenin, the vanguard, or “the advanced contingent”, were politically educated individuals who espoused revolutionary zeal in regards to the works of Marx. In his 1902 pamphlet, What Is To Be Done: Burning Questions of our Movement, Lenin claimed, “It is not enough to call ourselves the “vanguard”, the advanced contingent; we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognize and are obliged to admit

55 56 man was intended to be gender neutral. In Che’s vision of Cuba, the struggles that had plagued female emancipation in the past would no longer be an issue in what he believed should be a communist society. Espín, who sympathized with the effort to create a new

Cuban society, realized the transformation into a new Cuban individual was fundamentally deeper than Guevara’s interpretation. A new Cuban society needed to challenge outdated ideals on women’s role in society to truly transform the nation.

Through deed, Cuban women continued to combat gendered norms and actively participated in redefining their nation as well as themselves. The success of the revolution, which claimed education to be essential to its values, promised educational reform across the board. Moreover, with leaders who so vocally advocated for the working class and campesinos, or the peasantry, stronger support for the laborers ranked among the Revolution’s top priorities. Although women were among the numbers who benefitted from the Revolution’s ideals, they were not readily welcomed into the transformation.128 Machismo, or the belief that the perceived masculinity in men is superior to that of femininity in women, remained deeply rooted in Cuban consciousness.

The reason from traditionally-minded men and women hardly prevented others from

that we are marching in the vanguard.” The vanguard would not only embody the ideals of a proletariat revolution, but they would also spread those ideals and lead the workers as a united front. Cuba relied on this interpretation for their revolutionary vanguard (or, simply, the vanguard). The vanguard consisted of Cubans who the July 26th Movement perceived as encompassing the ideals of the Cuban Revolution. According to Yinghong Cheng, the Cuban vanguard were the guerrillas who had fought in the Sierra Maestra. Although initially centered around the image and actions of los barbudos, Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula argue that Revolutionary leadership recognized the need to include women into this fold “for the survival of the new regime.” 128 Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (Oxford University Press, 1996), 33.

56 57 campaigning for gender equality in the public and private spheres, though. Women who believed in Castro’s Revolution looked to his 1955 pamphlet “Manifesto No. 1 to the

People of Cuba” that claimed Castro’s plans for change would bring “adequate measures in education and legislation to put an end to every vestige of discrimination for reasons of race and sex.”129 Through the FMC, and with Espín as their figurehead, Cuban women made sure the Castro regime heard the concerns and put the promises of the Revolution into action.

This chapter argues Cuban women better identified and embodied Che’s vision of the Cuban new man, a selfless actor working to better their fellow man and country. To start, this portion of my overall work examines the formation of Che’s new man ideology.

I examine the influences of the Soviet New Man, Mao Zedong’s voluntarism, and idea of

“Mao’s good soldier” had on how Che imagined the Cuban new man. I use Che’s own works to demonstrate his conceptualization of the new man and, though this, the gender neutrality of his rhetoric. After outlining what the Cuban new man is and how this individual differs from its predecessors, I discuss the conscious efforts women undertook to participate in Revolutionary Cuba. Cuban women took up the new man ideology mantle with their work to better Cuba and educate themselves, exemplifying what it meant to be a Cuban new man before Che formally publicized the ideal.130 My work ties

129 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 25-6. 130 The use of ‘Cuban women’ throughout this chapter, unless otherwise noted, predominantly refers to campesinos and urban working class women who supported Castro or, at least, supported those with anti-imperialist and anti-Batista agendas. Cuban women did not unanimously support the Revolution, and many wealthy upper and upper- middle class women fled with their families when Castro came to power. Furthermore, literature on Cuban women who remained and disagreed with the course Cuba was taking is not strong.

57 58 together studies on Cuban women and work on the Cuban new man to show Cuban women encompassed and epitomized the new man ideology.

With the success of the Cuban Revolution, the rise of socialist thought shook up

Cuba’s political composition. As many of old regime’s prominent figures fled, the upcoming leadership ensured the interests of the Revolution were adhered to by installing members of the Revolution—or at least those whose ideals aligned—in the new government. An important factor to Cuba’s “reconstruction” was for the nation to be the opposite of what Cubans had known in the past. That is, the Revolutionary government sought to severe ties with the United States, which they perceived as a looming imperial presence that hindered their development and self-determination. The Revolutionaries were looking to build their Cuban utopia. Where the “politics under Batista had been corrupt, class-based, and influenced by the United States…politics under Castro would be incorruptible, mass-oriented, and influenced only by Cubans.”131 Entering into the new year and the new Cuba, the Rebel Army benefitted from a deep connection to those who figureheads like Fidel, Che, and Camilo Cienfuegos inspired. Their aims had appealed to a wide net of people, and “the moral imperative of ‘saving Cuba’ rendered politics passionate and made many of the followers believers and many of the believers fanatics.”132 This close and charismatic bond between the soon-to-be leaders and their people set the foundation for “a centralized state with a maximum leader and a maximalist social agenda and popular mobilization in a one-party system.”133 Castro, in a

131 Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford University Press, 1969), 12. 132 Damián Fernández, Cuba and the Politics of Passion (University of Texas Press, 2000), 64. 133 Ibid.

58 59 way that Batista never could, held the trust of the people. He had made good on the promise to liberate his country, and Cubans trusted him to lead them into a new Cuban.

As the Revolutionary government placed such a heavy importance on rebuilding of the state and combatting internal and external dissent, an anti-imperialist, anti- capitalist Cuban became the identity the leading revolutionaries urged Cubans to protect.

They addressed issues like race, sexuality, and gender in different capacities; however, los barbudos gave little to no consideration to the interplay among the characteristics. As a result, they categorized the struggles Afro-Cuban women faced as either racial or gendered issues. Speaking on what the Revolution faced in taking over Cuba, in 1959

Che stated, “there is still racial discrimination in our society which is not beneficial to efforts to achieve the internal unification of the people.”134 Although the Castro regime outlawed racial discrimination in 1960, the government prevented open discussion concerning discrimination. Dr. Mark Q. Sawyer claims, “the need to portray Cuba as a racial paradise to allies in Africa and the United States…limited the domestic dialogue about race. Cuba’s interest was in maintaining credibility on the issue by declaring the problem solved.”135 Additionally, the government treated sexuality in Cuba—specifically homosexuality—with a strong and hostile reaction. When the ideal Cuban male was compared to los barbudos, “the notion of an effeminate man offended the heroic sensibilities of revolutionary leadership.”136 The hostilities were well-known to the point where the newspaper Revolución wrote in 1965, “No homosexual represents the

134 Che Guevara, “A new old interview (1959),” in Che Guevara Speaks (Pathfinder, 2010), 12. 135 Mark Q. Sawyer, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 78. 136 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 172.

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Revolution, which is a matter for men, of fists not feathers, of courage and not trembling, of certainty and not intrigue, of creative valor and not of sweet surprises.”137 The issue of sexuality and the harsh dismissal of femininity found in men raised the concern of where women stood in Revolutionary Cuba. However, Che believed a completely new mindset would cure the ails affecting the new Cuban society.

In the minds of revolutionaries like Che, Fidel, and Vilma Epsín, a new Cuban society called for a new Cuban who could meet the challenges of their nation and inspire future generations. As with other revolutions, including but not limited to the , French,

Russian, and Chinese Revolutions, the people had to be trusted to carry on the legacy of the Cuban Revolution. To do this, however, they needed to be educated on the goals, symbols, and values of the Revolution. Cuba’s revolutionary government aimed to create

“a new social order by forming and reforming men who [would] worship new images, behave in new ways, and relate to one another in the context of new institutions.”138

Education reform, legal reforms, and volunteer and labor programs served this purpose, and groups such as the Federation of Cuban Women and Committees for the Defense of the Revolution ensured change was managed throughout the nation.139 However the vanguard was ultimately the figureheads who would carry out the goals of the Revolution and inspire the Cuban people. With this in mind, Che began drafting what this vanguard would look like.

137 Samuel Feijoó, “Revolución y vicios,” El Mundo (1965), 5. 138 Fagen, Transformation of Political Culture, 18. 139The Federation and the Committees relied on support from around Cuba, in all of its provinces, to promote the Revolution and its goals. Furthermore, according to Pérez in Between Reform and Revolution, the Committees, controversial organizations which could be further studied, also served to combat internal dissent.

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Che’s “new man” was the answer to the challenges the burgeoning socialist society would face. The Cuban new man was a concept he had begun formulating with the success of the rebel army, but the new man became a part of Cuban Revolutionary rhetoric in 1965 with the publication of “Socialism and man in Cuba”.140 A stark diversion from the values and traditions of the past required a new way of thinking from a nation’s people. Speaking specifically to Cuba’s experience, Yinghong Cheng claims,

“Because the socialist transformation in Cuba was less planned than in other countries and was carried out within a much shorter time, state imposition of the new social system was more forceful and had to be installed by indoctrinating people with new beliefs, values, symbols, and patterns of behavior.”141 The new man was the focal point for these changes, because “the new man is, above all, a new citizen. His primary role is that of a participant in the transformation of a new social order.”142 Similarly, revolutions in the

Soviet Union and China also gave way to their own leaders establishing ideas of a new man for their new societies.

Although the Che would base the new man with his own interpretation of Cuba’s current and coming struggles, the roots of this new citizen date back to the Russian

Revolution and the “New Soviet Man.” The Russian Empire included various territories, language variations, and ethnicities, so New Soviet Man became the central figure to aspire to after the empire fell. The New Soviet Man was a prime physical specimen as

“Soviet leaders saw physical culture as an essential element in the construction of

140 Deutschmann, ed. Che Guevara Reader, 393. 141 Yinghong Cheng, Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 127. 142 Fagen, Transformation of Political Culture, 15.

61 62 socialism.”143 The New Soviet Man took pride in his labor, because Soviet leaders viewed the selflessness of the work as a “[triumph] over [man’s] baser urges.”144 In addition to being a master of his own physicality, the New Soviet Man, was a symbol of power and intelligence, which was particularly important coming out of a regime where class informed the two.145 Although Lenin imagined the Soviet Union’s new man to have a strong ideological backbone, “as the Soviet Union was modernized and urbanized, the development of state bureaucracy and technocracy became the backbone of Soviet society.”146 The shift from an ideology-based progression to a bureaucratic state—in congruence with the rise of Joseph Stalin starting roughly in 1924 with the death of

Lenin—hindered the further development of the New Soviet Man to transform Soviet society and placed an importance on the distinction between the New Soviet Man and the

New Soviet Woman.

Despite the social progress Bolsheviks advocated for, the New Soviet Man was not an all-encompassing term, rather it differentiated Soviet men from the New Soviet

Woman. A clear gender distinction emerged with the rise of Stalin. In the Stalinist era, the Soviet Woman had to emulate everything good about the New Soviet Man; however, on top of that, she had to be a perfect wife and mother.147 Stalin diverged from classical

Marxist theory that women actively participating in society would break down the

143 Igal Halfin, Language and Revolution: Making Modern Political Identities (Routledge, 2004), 228. 144 B.R. Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves—And Why It Matters (New York: Melville House, 2010), 68. 145 Cheng, Creating the New Man, 46. 146 Ibid. 147 Barbara Evans Clements, Daughters of the Revolution: A History of Women in the U.S.S.R (Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc, 1994), 73.

62 63 influence capitalism had on the family unit; instead, he placed heavy importance on women in the home. Furthermore, Stalin’s U.S.S.R also expected women to give up their femininity, because “to look attractive, use cosmetics, or act in a coquettish manner were values of the past.”148 Instead, a New Soviet Woman should be “focused on her social standing, not her gender,” and needed to “walk briskly and energetically as a fighter and a worker. She was to stop styling herself after bourgeois maidens of the pre-revolutionary epoch and shake hands rather than allow her hand to be kissed.”149 Women’s place in the new Soviet society was supplementary, though. They were not among the vanguard alongside Soviet men. However, while there was an understanding among Soviets on the vanguard, their leadership did not place as heavy as an importance on the vanguard’s mobilization as Mao Zedong.

The role of the vanguard in Mao’s revolutionary society informed Che’s vision of the Cuban new man. Unlike the New Soviet Man or the Cuban New Man, Mao never formulated a “Chinese New Man” to easily idolize in a new society. Rather, mobilizing the masses to contribute to progress replaced a revolutionary archetype. Voluntarism laid at the foundation of this approach. The belief relies on “supreme faith in the power of subjective factors such as commitment, faith, determination, and perseverance to overcome objective conditions or obstacles that stand in the way of solving a problem or achieving a goal.”150 Through his speeches and writings, Mao catered to bolstering

148 Vladimir Brovkin, Russia After Lenin: Politics, Culture and Society, 1921-1929 (Routledge, 2005), 146. 149 Ibid, 145. 150 William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014), 164.

63 64 voluntarist thought throughout China.151 Although Mao did not conceptualize a ‘new man’, with the help of his followers, Mao was the example the Chinese leadership expected their people to follow. Specifically, “all officers and soldiers should ‘study

Chairman Mao’s books, obey Chairman Mao’s words, implement Chairman Mao’s instruction, [and] become Chairman Mao’s good soldier.’”152 The use of Mao as the ideal is also a notion the Cuban leadership adopts and places upon Che, with particular fervor after assassination in 1967. Through Mao’s development of voluntarism and the revolutionary vanguard coupled with the Soviet’s clear establishment of a ‘new man’, though, Che formed the Cuban New Man.

What made the Cuban new man unique from its predecessors, though, was its gender neutrality. Although Che did not believe the Soviet New Man was a true example of a new kind of man, the Cuban new man does reflect similar qualities, such as educated, active in the community, and selfless.153 From Mao—whose ideals Che agreed with more than the then Soviets—he incorporated the need for voluntarism to build up a strong vanguard.154 However, as Cheng noted, Cuba experienced a transition into a socialist society at a quicker pace than its predecessors.155 If every able body in the

Cuban nation was participating in the advancement of their society, then the lack of contributions, which he attributed to individualism, would only hinder Cuban progress.156

151 Ibid, 165. 152 Zhengyuan Fu, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 311. 153 Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press 2010), 458. 154 Farber, The Politics of Che Guevara, 113. 155 Cheng, Creating the New Man, 127. 156 Anderson, Che Guevara, 605.

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Thus, Che’s new man, the vanguard of island, was gender neutral. When he first broaches the subject, he references these new Cuban individuals as the Cuban “new man and woman”.157 In further discussion on the new man, his foundation or future, though, Che does not make a distinction between the man and woman. Instead, the Cuban “new man” is synonymous with the new individual.

Differences in translations between the original documents in Spanish and their

English counterparts blur the neutrality evident in Che’s writings. When discussing his vision of the new Cuban, Che writes, “En este período de construcción del socialismo podemos ver el hombre nuevo que va naciendo.”158 Here, Che makes no gender differentiation between an hombre nuevo y una mujer nueva, or a new man and new woman, such as the Soviets with the New Soviet Man and New Soviet Woman. In a text which discusses the role of the individual within the mass, the implied gender neutrality is clear. English translations, though, dispose of this neutrality. These versions state, “In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man and woman being born.”159 Conversely, Mary Alice Waters, who has frequently collaborated with Cuban revolutionaries, translates the text as, “In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man being born,” which more accurately reflects the content of the original quote.160 However, those referencing the work consistently refer back to the former

157 Che Guevara, “Social Ideals of the Rebel Army,” Che Guevara Reader, 90, 94. 158 Che Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” (1965), Economía y hombre nuevo collection. 159 Che Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” (1965) edited by David Deutschmann in Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution (Ocean Press, 2005), 218; Che Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” (1965) in Manifesto: Three Classic Essays on How to Change the World (Ocean Press, 2005), 156. 160 Che Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” (1965) edited by Mary Alice Waters in Che Guevara Speaks (Pathfinder, 2013), 160.

65 66 translation. Waters’ interpretation more accurately reflects Che’s thoughts on the Cuban new man in 1965. Che recognized the importance of women’s contribution in society; however, this understanding came from his interpretation of Marxism, which left no room for identity markers like race and sex, and the role of the individual in building a socialist society.

Che frequently uses words like ‘fighters’, ‘combatants’, ‘vanguard’, and even

‘cadres’ instead of gender specific words. For Che, someone who closely identified with

Marxism and the implementation of its ideals in Cuba, gender in relation to societal reform should not have mattered. Farber attributes this to Che’s “monolithic view of state socialism,” which “rejected not only the notion of workers’ control and self-management, but of individual identity, interest, and self-determination.”161 In complete liberation of the Cuban people under a socialist system, characteristics which defined and divided the

Cuban people would be nonissues. The construction and recruitment of a strong vanguard was the issue to Che. He understood the road to a socialist state as a process, which required continuous participation and communication between the individuals who composed the masses and their leadership.162 The vanguard or cadre, who would come to be the new man, walked among the masses, inspiring their fellow countrymen. According to Che, the cadre “is an individual of proven loyalty, whose physical and moral courage has developed in step with his ideological development, in such a way that he is willing

161 Farber, The Politics of Che Guevara, xix. 162 Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre nuevo en Cuba,” 76.

66 67 to face any debate and to give even his life for the good of the revolution.”163

Furthermore, he expected this from his own family in addition to his countrymen.

Aleida claimed after the success of the Revolution, at Che’s encouragement, she began to read political literature. Specifically the Russian and Soviet works, Che discussed with Aleida and “tried to convince me about communism, patiently clearing up my misconceptions, without me feeling that he was forcing his views on me.”164 He even encouraged her to work outside the home, originally suggesting she become “head of the press agency,” which she turned down due to inexperience.165 Furthermore, in the short time he had with his children, he did his best to instill revolutionary values in them through letters: upon leaving for Bolivia in 1965, Che wrote to all his children, “Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature. Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.”166 To Hildita, his eldest daughter with Hilda Gadea, Che wrote in 1966, “Remember, there are still many years of struggle ahead, and even when you are a woman, you will have to do your part in the struggle. Meanwhile, to prepare yourself, be very revolutionary…you should fight to be among the best in school. The best in every sense, and you already know what that means: study and revolutionary attitude. In other words: good conduct, seriousness, love for the revolution, comradeship, etc.”167 Che’s beliefs had not changed from nearly ten years prior, when Hildita was just a baby, as

163 Che Guevara, “Cadres for the New Party,” (1962) in Che Guevara Speaks (Pathfinder, 2013), 82. 164 Aleida March, Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara (Ocean Press, 2012), 77. 165 Ibid, 76. 166 Che Guevara, “To my children (1965),” Che Guevara Reader, 383. 167 Che Guevara, “To Hildita,” Che Guevara Reader, 385.

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Gadea recounted that she “observed as Ernesto picked their daughter up and told her in a serious voice: ‘My dear little girl, my little Mao, when you grow up, this whole continent…will be fighting against the great enemy, Yankee imperialism. You too will have to fight.’”168 This combination of gender neutrality, a clearly articulated vanguard, and a defined goal gave women the needed foothold to enter into the national narrative as active participations of nation-building through the Federation of Cuban Women.

In 1960, Fidel established the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) with Vilma

Espín as president. Under the leadership of Espín, the FMC acted as a mouthpiece for

Cuban women and worked closely with the government to ensure the interests of women were the interests of Cuba.169 Espín stated the need for the FMC arose out of women’s interest in serving and furthering the Revolution’s goals. She claimed even before the organization of the FMC:

Those of us who had participated in the war—whether in urban insurrection or in the mountains—were approached by women who wanted to do precisely what we had done, to take part in the revolution.

They asked to be trained in emergency medical care, because of the threats and attacks from imperialism…It was these classes, in fact, along with sewing classes we organized, that gave birth to the federation—not the other way around.

The classes weren’t just a way of responding to women who had asked for emergency medical training. They were

168 Anderson, Che Guevara, 202. 169 Alexandra Fenton, “Vilma Espín: Her Role in The Federation of Cuban Women and the Evolution of Women’s Roles in Revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1975,” Masters’ Thesis (Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University, 2013), 10.

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a way to bring women together, so we could discuss things they wanted to know about the revolution.170

With Espín, absolute women’s liberation through equality and integration into the new

Cuba was the primary focus of the FMC. Unlike other larger-than-life figures of the

Revolution, Espín did not “allow ideological stances to influence the running of the

FMC,” instead Espín “[relied] on her sense of scientific practicality.”171 Furthermore, for

Espín, women actively participating in Cuban society to further the Revolution’s aims was the next logical step in Cuba’s development.172 To achieve this, the FMC pushed for

“bringing women in the economy; communal services to alleviate domestic work and childcare; equal opportunities for women in public and private; educational, social, financial, and political capital to satisfy the particular needs of women and their families.”173 Especially in the early years of the FMC, the organization relied heavily on its volunteers ability to recruit women face-to-face.174 Although the FMC faced backlash from disgruntled families, including conservative men and women who did not believe in women’s involvement in labor or politics, members persisted and continued to devote their efforts to the Revolution.

Education is one of the core tenets of the Cuban Revolution. The Revolutionary government put the full weight of its support on transforming Cuban education curriculum, ensuring easier access and opportunity to education, but also pushing for

170 Vilma Espín, “With no preconceived structure or agenda: interview with Vilma Espín,” in Women in Cuba: the Making of a Revolution within a Revolution (Pathfinder, 2012), 216. 171 Fenton, “Vilma Espín,” 32. 172 Ibid, 117. 173 Colette Harris, “Socialist Societies and the Emancipation of Women: The Case of Cuba,” in Socialism and Democracy 9, no. 1 (1995), 91-92. 174 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 34.

69 70 universal literacy. Perhaps one of the biggest contributions of the FMC to Cuba was the

Literacy Campaign of 1961. Roughly 100,000 Cubans volunteered in this mass movement to eradicate illiteracy, and a majority of the volunteers were women.175 In addressing the Association of Rebel Youth in 1962, Che spoke highly of the volunteers and claimed, “When [the problems with low literacy rates] were raised, the youth once again were there. Youth brigades, responding to the call of the revolution, invaded every corner of the country. And so, after a few months of hard battle in which there were additional martyrs of our revolution—martyrs of education—we were able to announce something new in Latin America: Cuba was a territory of the Americas free from illiteracy.”176 The martyrs, or the volunteers who had given up their day-to-day life for the Cuban Literacy Campaign, helped seven hundred thousand Cubans learn to read and write; so within a six-month time span, Cuba’s illiteracy rate dropped from 20 percent to

3.9.177 The FMC also supplemented the volunteers’ work. Members who were not in the field “delivered mail to literacy workers, provided housing, did substitute teaching, and served as ‘loving mothers’ to the seventy thousand literacy workers who were awarded secondary school scholarships.”178 Moreover, even after the successful campaign, the

FMC continued to engage with education. The organization supported community involvement, which lead to the establishment of the Movement of Militant Mothers for

Education in 1968. The group “collaborated as volunteers with schools regarding

175 Ibid, 83. 176 Che Guevara, “What a Young Communist Should Be” (1962) in Che Guevara Talks to Young People (Pathfinder, 2003), 107. 177 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 84; Mark Abendroth, Rebel Literacy: Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign and Critical Global Citizenship (Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2009), xi. 178 Ibid, 37.

70 71 attendance, retention, promotion, socialist values, civic responsibilities, parent involvement, instructional support, work-study programs, and more. Principals and school councils respected their grassroots efforts and collective voices.”179

While Cuban women volunteered in droves to help educate those without easy access to education, their own relationship with higher education was often tumultuous.

Women also worked to better themselves alongside their countrymen. “Women made up

46 percent of university students and 50 percent of medical students, one half the enrollments in the natural sciences, and 42 percent of the enrollments in economics.”180

Additionally, “enrollments in technical training increased. At the University of Oriente, women made up more than 1/3 of engineering students, and received half the degrees awarded in geology, minerology, and metallurgy.” 181 Even prior to the success of the

Revolution, though, women had boasted relatively high numbers in education. By the time the Revolution started with Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks, “women constituted 37 percent of university graduates,” and as the decade progressed, they made up “45 percent of university students and 22 percent of professors were women.”182 After the Castro regime came to power, higher education institutions experienced an exodus of its faculties, particularly among female professors. Despite prominent professors, both men and women, being active in the Cuban Communist party, Revolutionary leadership skipped over women to award men higher positions in Cuban universities and in the

179 Abenbroth, Rebel Literacy, 130. 180 Louis A. Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2014), 293. 181 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 294. 182 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 89.

71 72 government.183 The regime’s actions caused many educated Cuban women to leave the island for opportunities in Miami: many were upper and upper-middle class women, but others were educators who were discontent with the introduction of revolutionary and

Marxist theory or the longer hours the government demanded of them.184 Among those who departed Cuba was Elena Mederos, who had been the government’s pick for

Directory of Social Welfare and “who had helped to create the University of Havana’s social welfare department.”185 Despite the exodus of Cuban educators, though, Cuban women continued to rebuild the institution with record amounts of women partaking.

Similarly, women also tackled the labor force.

The years after the Revolution witnessed the mass mobilization of women into the workforce. In agriculture alone, roughly 200,000 women volunteered for fieldwork such as sugar production, and others still took up work in factories.186 The Cuban Revolution had ushered in a new age for Cuba, and women wanted to be part of the change their homeland would experience. After 1959, “this meant participating in all the big tasks of the revolution, such as establishing the national health-care and education systems and building up agriculture, industry, and the military defenses of the revolution.”187 Women had the support of the FMC in this transition, and, more importantly, they had support among each other. Though challenges faced working women in the form of past prejudices and, for some, duties they shouldered at home, they were never too far from

183 Ibid. 184 Ibid, 85. 185 Ibid, 90. 186 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 292. 187 Elizabeth Stone, Women and the Cuban Revolution: Speeches and Documents by Fidel Castro, Vilma Espín, and Others (Pathfinder, 2004), 16-7.

72 73 someone who could sympathize and bolster their confidence. Additionally, women also volunteered for more work in times when their male counterparts were out of the country—whether on military aid missions or in times of war.188 Furthermore, after 1968 when the government nationalized small services and retail, 90 percent of the 4000 new administrators were women.189 Women were as passionate about the Cuban Revolution as the men. The Revolution, “the patriotic fervor, the sense of responsibility, the discipline, dedication, and enthusiasm of the leadership,” inspired women sympathetic to the Revolution’s goals to “participate, to contribute to that incredibly wonderful process that began January 1, 1959, opening the doors to a new life full of freedom, independence, sovereignty, and social justice.”190 The change, however, was not always welcome, and women in the public sphere still faced opposition from Cuban citizens and the deeply-rooted idea of machismo.

Despite the strides women made in securing equality, the composition of revolutionary institutions—such as the government—did not represent the number of women engaged in Cuba’s ongoing revolution. In asking if Cuban women were truly and fully integrated into Cuban society, Castro noted in 1974:

Before the revolution there were 194,000 working women. Of them, according to a report read here, 70 percent were domestics. Today we have three times more women working. The figure for women in civilian state jobs, which as you know include the majority of productive activities, services, and administration is 590,000 women out of a

188 Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (UNC Press, 2012), 241; Robert M. Bernard, The Theory of Moral Incentives in Cuba (University of Alabama Press, 1971), 77. 189 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 294. 190 Yolanda Ferrer, edited by Mary-Alice Waters, “What It Meant to Be Female Began to Change,” in Women in Cuban: The Making of the Revolution within the Revolution (Pathfinder, 2012), 196.

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total of 2,331,000 persons working. Nevertheless, the number of women holding leadership posts…is only 15 percent. Only 12.79 percent of our part members are women. A notably low figure. And the number of women who work as party cadres and officials is only 6 percent.191

In part, this disconnect arose, because “the revolution placed a great deal of emphasis on changing women’s role but gave little attention to changing men’s.”192 As the celebrations for the July 26th Movement settled, the machismo culture and veneration of los barbudos proved to be women’s new ongoing obstacle.

The support for machismo was apparent in the Cuban Revolution—starting with

Castro’s 1953 Moncada Garrison Attack—and throughout Revolutionary Cuba with “the

1970s [being] a time of total machismo.”193 As women entered into the public sector, they were often steered towards the traditional female roles of primary school teacher and nurses.194 However, considering the importance of the family unit and traditional notions of gender norms in pre-Revolution Cuba, some of the biggest agitators came in response to women in the workplace. Men generally refused to share housework or assume larger responsibility in helping raise children.195 Husbands often resented the deepening involvement of their wives in the public sphere. Naturally, the lack of support and acceptance within the home affected the extent to which women were able to actively participate in building up a new Cuban society.

191 Fidel Castro, “The Struggle for Women’s Equality” (1974) in Women and the Cuban Revolution: Speeches and Documents by Fidel Castro, Vilma Espín, and Others (Pathfinder, 2004), 71. 192 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 158. 193 Megan D. Daigle, From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2015), 55. 194 Padula and Smith, Sex and Revolution, 90. 195 Ibid, 159.

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Moral incentives were an integral part of building up the new Cuban economy.

With voluntarism being Che’s base for the Cuban new man, moral incentives were another element of the new man’s creation.196 As opposed to material incentives, which relied on “the mobilization of the workers by means of their direct, private, individual material interest (in opposition to or in competition with each other),” Che believed “the social and political consciousness of the masses” defined moral incentives.197 In hopes the act would garner support for the moral incentive theory, the government lowered the fees of public services in the 1960s. Members of the FMC recognized the relationship between themselves and moral incentives. Speaking for Cuban women, a member of the

FMC claimed this was something women had already understood. She stated, “I think that women join the collective effort, in the majority of cases, because of their revolutionary consciousness. That is, they understand that their work is necessary for the country and, at the same time, that household activities dull their minds whereas work in

196 As a program, with emulation and moral incentives being foundational, Che’s Cuban New Man struggled. Its main conflict was rooted in the debate between moral and material incentives, with the latter relying on boons like pay raises or bonuses to boost productivity. The Soviet Union’s form of communism utilized material incentives, which, according to Michael Löwy, “[tended] to privatize and depoliticize the lives of citizens.” As the political education of man was an important factor in creating the Cuban new man, the Soviet model was the antithesis of Che’s goals. Although Che was staunchly in favor of moral incentives, Castro’s tango with the Soviet Union caused him to lean more towards material incentives. Furthermore, coming out of a close social, political, and economic relationship with the United States, many Cubans were not sympathetic towards communist beliefs or well-read on theory; thus, Cubans typically shied away from supporting moral incentives in favor of material incentives, which was a more appealing transition for them. 197 Michael Löwy, The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007), 55-7.

75 76 society opens new horizons.”198 Additionally, emulation of the vanguard bolstered moral incentives.

Che served as a prime example for all Cubans: he worked hard during the week, spent time with his family and fellow revolutionaries in the evenings, gave his Saturdays to volunteer work, and took time for himself on Sundays. After his death, his fellow guerrilla Haydée Santamaría wrote, “you made a unique creation, you made yourself.

You demonstrated that the new human being is possible, all of us could see that the new human being is a reality because he exists, he is you.”199 Women fit into Che’s image as best they could; however, voluntarism and emulation largely relied on the volunteer hours, sometimes on a Saturday and sometimes staying an hour or so after normal work hours. This put women at a disadvantage. With the belief that men do not operate in the home, women continued to shoulder the burden alone. At this time, daycares had stricter regulations, so it would not have been possible to leave children any longer than the work day or school day required.200 Thus, any chance to participate on the same level leaders like Che did was out of their hands if no supplementary support came from the families.

The FMC fully understood this disparity as a problem. While they made an effort to reform daycares for working women, the introduction of the 1975 Family Code provided women with legal justification and protection.

198 Ana Ramos, “La mujer y la revolución en Cuba,” in Casa de las Américas, March- June 1971, 71. 199 Haydée Santamaría, edited by Betsy Maclean, “Hasta la Victoria Siempre, Dear Che: Letter from Haydée to Che, after his death,” (1968) in Haydée Santamaría: Woman Guerilla Leader in Cuba Whose Passion for Art and Revolution Inspired Latin America's Cultural Renaissance (Ocean Press, 2003), 19. 200 Padula and Smith, Sex and Revolution, 119.

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Despite the challenges presented, Cuban women fought back against the dated divide which placed them secondary to the venerated masculinity. Through the FMC, women pressured the government to act in favor of equalizing sex roles.201 They thought with the time they were devoting to working, men should contribute to the home life.

Members of the FMC claimed of men, “If they’re going to incorporate us into the work force, they’re going to have to incorporate themselves into the home, and that’s all there is to it.”202 Because of women’s demand for equality that the Revolution had yet to make a reality, the Cuban government passed the Family Code in 1975. The Family Code put the full legal and moral force and support of the revolution behind the demands of women.203 Additionally, the code “acknowledged that the expectation that women would both be fully integrated into the revolution as workers and full responsible for households was unrealistic and unreasonable.”204 Among other stipulations codified in the Family

Code, Espín made it clear that both partners in a family were required to share the responsibilities of the home equally.205 Although the law did not force the traditionally- minded to change their views, the Family Code gave women the option to change their circumstances at home. If her husband was not pulling his share of the weight at home, a wife had legitimate grounds for divorce. The enactment of the Family Code made good on the FMC’s promise to Cuban women that their problems and interests would become

201 Henry Veltmeyer and Mark Rushton, The Cuban Revolution as Socialist Human Development (Bostron: BRILL, 2011), 198. 202 Pérez, Between Reform and Revolution, 294. 203 Ibid. 204 Ibid. 205 Smith and Padula, Sex and Revolution, 154.

77 78 the Revolution’s problems and interests.206 Although, women’s struggle for unconditional equality in a machismo-dominated society was, and continues to be, a process for the

Cuban vanguard, the Family Code established a basis on which to defend and expand upon women’s rights.207 As they historically have done, though, Cuban women continue to fight and persevere.

Even before the publication of “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” Cuban women had been striving to better themselves and their countrymen, thus personifying the ideals Che put forth. Cuban women were actively involved in educating themselves as well as others, as evident with their turnout in the Cuban Literacy Campaign. They took up new trades, involving themselves in manual labor with tasks that had previously been reserved for me. Additionally, Cuban women remained active participants in building the nation after the success of the July 26th Movement, specifically through their involvement with the FMC. Che’s letter simply put a name to concepts that Cubans had been workings towards with the arrival of the Cuban Revolution during the Moncada Garrison Attack and into the 1960s. Among them, women stood readily. They accepted the challenges

Castro’s Cuba presented them with and established their place within society. Even in the face of obstacles like machismo and a lack of representation in government, women persevered through grit and determination. Although Vilma Espín was an established

206 As Pérez states, the Family Code was “more of a statement of goals than a reality.” While it gave women the opportunity to make certain changes to their life, the Code did nothing to change the social beliefs which existed. For example, while the new regime encouraged women to become more active, especially in the workforce, and take on new roles in society, men were not encouraged to change their own roles. Accept women in the workforce and the Revolution, of course; but the new Cuban regime did not intend to challenge machismo and its place in Revolutionary Cuba. 207 Isaac Saney, Cuba: A Revolution in Motion (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 95.

78 79 member of the revolutionary cadre, she used her position to her fellow citizens and give women the chance to make sure voices heard and their concerns the concerns of Socialist

Cuba. Che’s publication of “Socialism and Man in Cuba” may have inspired some women to step up; however, since the triumph of the Revolution, women had been taking the opportunities presented to further their education while others lent their time and services to those who needed vigorous tutoring, and others still learned new skills to meet the demands of a burgeoning socialist nation.

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Conclusion

Cuban women have always been masters of their own emancipation as well as the liberation of Cuba. They challenged their government; they fought against imperial oppression; and they combatted traditional gender norms. Despite Liberation leadership considering them impediments in the Wars of Independence, women proved they were just as capable of defending their nation as their male counterparts. Furthermore, in the decades after the establishment of the Cuban Republic, women campaigned to ensure statesmen heard their concerns through various women’s organizations. The fractured nature of these clubs, though, prevented women’s issues from being Cuba’s issues; and although women won the right to vote in the 1940s, many women’s organizations quickly dissipated as suffrage was a be-all and end-all platform for them. However, as the Cuban government became increasingly repressive, groups of Cuban women organized under a new idea: a Cuba free from the United States puppeteering. When Fidel Castro and his

Rebel Army took up arms against the Batista dictatorship, women participated in the urban activists and underground movements, which supplemented the Assault on the

Moncada Garrison and, later, the guerrilla fighting phase of the Cuban Revolution.

Additionally, women overcame Castro’s own insistence that only Cuban men would take up arms. They acted as spies, couriers, medics, teachers, and guerilla fighters—all of which were vital to the eventual triumph of the July 26th Movement. As the fighting ended and Batista fled, Cuban women were the steadfast figures the new Cuban society needed. Che Guevara claimed a new type of individual was necessary for the new Cuba

80 81 to survive. This individual, the Cuban new man, had to be selfless, willing to fight for his country and better himself and his fellow countrymen, and hardworking. Cuban women embodied this ideal. They readily mobilized under Cuban campaigns to improve the labor force, education, agriculture, and health. All the while, they took steps to educate themselves and adapt to the challenges a Revolutionary Cuba could bring.

While more research on Cuban women has started to emerge, especially over the last decade, they are still unseen and unheard in most narratives of Cuban history.

Women’s organizations in pre-Revolutionary Cuba rarely engaged working class women or Afro-Cuban women. Thus, many of their stories and contributions to the development of the Cuban Republic must be explored to better understand how those formative years shaped, and were shaped by, women of differing class, ethnicity, and race in post- colonial Cuba. A more thorough examination of the relationship between motherhood and nationalism in Cuba would also benefit the field. Although most of the sources used in my research addressed motherhood and the warrior mother being an ideal among

Cuban women in the Early Republic, no one discusses what happened to that ideal: at what point does fighting for Cuba as a citizen become more prominent among women than nurturing Cuba as a mother? Furthermore, after the success of the Cuban

Revolution, many narratives are lost to los barbudos. Che, Camilo Cienfuegos, the

Castros, Espín, and Sanchez were all complex figures with even more complex roles in the Revolution, but the war wasn’t won by the compañeros alone. Cuba’s underground movement allowed for concealed transportation of resources and information: it was the

Cuban Revolution’s own spy network. Working alongside the underground movement, urban activists kept the Batista regime on its toes as much as Castro’s hit-and-run attacks

81 82 in the Sierra Maestra. Both of these factions supplemented the guerrilla fighting, but women within them remain unsung heroes because of the lack of research and recognition from scholars writing on the Cuban Revolution who gravitate toward big personalities like Fidel or Che.

Despite Cuban society considering them second class citizens, Cuban women proved resilient against efforts to silence them or disparage their capabilities. They challenged their government; they fought against imperial oppression; and they combatted traditional gender norms to redefine the role of a woman in a new socialist society. Although Che did not pen Cuba’s new man until 1965, Cuban women had long embodied this ideal.

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