Cuban women's online activism: Educating and defending Revolutionary Values and Rights

• In Event: Activism, Education, and Technology: Empowering Women and Youth in Latin America

Proposal

Relevance
Cuba has been involved in new digital strategies for education since the pandemic. Although the internet has been available in Cuba for decades, it has been too costly and unreliable for the average Cuban to access. With more affordable public access, Cuban women are taking their civic duty to new heights by educating others, principally mothers, to organize and take to the streets to demand their rights. They network and publicize on social media the shortages of electricity, water and food to educate and assert their demands to the Cuban government.

This study highlights how Cuban women use social media in opposition to the government. Who is the Cuban woman when the State does not fulfill its duty to provide? In what ways does she uphold civic values? How does social media become a revolutionary tool of power? Historically, the Revolutionary government has depicted women’s activism in alignment to it, not against it, masking Cuba’s long history of women’s organizing as a teaching space for women to gain leadership skills. It has also obscured the historical power Cuban women in mass have levied to influence politics. Little attention has been paid to women-organized activism to hold the Cuban government accountable to the Constitution and society’s basic needs.

At the same time, Cuban women’s demands for basic resources goes much deeper. Basic needs represent values, such as humanity, equality, dignity and solidarity, that have been honed since Cubans were children in school. This is what the Cuban government calls “la formación de los valores” (values education), the basis of which constitutes Cuban civic education. Thus, the internet has become an educational conduit for women to demand that the government be accountable in its civic duty to the people.

Context
Cuban women have long engaged in activism for citizen rights, and education has stood as a key factor in this activism. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including prior to statehood, Cuban women intellectuals sought to convince elite Cuban and Spanish societies of the moral capabilities of women, particularly as mothers, within a patriarchal context wherein law and Catholicism framed women as weak and inferior to men. Cuban women’s legacy of activism, along with its transformations, has not been publicly recognized.

Theory
We employ philosophy from Cuba’s national hero, leader in its independence, and poet and essayist, José Martí, to interpret the findings of this study. Marti promoted the principles of human equality, dignity and solidarity in all of his writings, and in doing so, he created the foundation for a framework for human rights and inclusivity. Cuba’s insistence on citizen’s rights to education and employment is in part built on Marti's insistence of dignity as integral to a liberatory society. Marti also distinguished between instruction and education in schools, the former focusing on subject-related learning and the latter focusing on values and character development. Under Fidel Castro’s guidance, education in values outside of the classroom became a collective responsibility of all Cubans. We draw upon Marti’s writings because they have shaped how Cuban women see themselves as citizens deserving of dignity and charged with teaching others. José Martí’s philosophy is also key to recognizing the revolutionary and civic values at play between the Cuban State and women protagonists, both bodies who reference his words and ideas.

Mode of Inquiry
In addition to social media posts, this study examines blog posts and news stories featuring Cuba women’s voices since 2020. It recognizes a core of five websites: La Joven Cuba, El País, Associated Press, Reuters, and Al Jazeera. This study employs content and discourse analysis to identify and document women’s civic organizing and participation in the struggle for basic resources, the values exercised, and the State’s response.

Findings
With the increase of Cubans’ access to social networks and demonstrations of popular discontent, the government has taken measures to restrict freedom of expression online. Decree Law 370, approved in 2019, criminalizes the disclosure on social networks of “information contrary to the public interest, morals, good customs and the integrity of persons.” Likewise, Decree Law 35 of 2021 legislates the restriction of the use of information “through telecommunication/ICT infrastructures, platforms or services, of content that threatens the constitutional, social, and economic precepts of the State.” These restrictions are meant to control information and eliminate the organizing that has led to mass protests.

Women nevertheless use digital media to actively film their activism, oftentimes with children at their side, highlighting the shortages or police brutality, and then uploading it to social media. The Cuban government has responded in various ways: shutting down the internet, jailing and or threatening the women involved, and, sometimes, delivering food in trucks to quell the crowd. Wisely, women have leveraged their place as mothers, a social position that is imbued with respect throughout Cuba. In the words of a former Communist Party member, Amelia Calzadilla, “If a mother has a problem, that’s Cuba’s problem, even if it isn’t affecting everyone personally.” (Al Jazeera, March 20, 2024). The Cuban government can not ignore the women’s protests, as they are an essential porter and purveyor of the Revolution and its values.

Contributions
To follow the words and actions of these women is to understand the education of future Cuban adults, as little ones learn by their mother’s side to hold the State accountable to the civic values it expects from its citizens: one’s rights, including the freedom to be seen and heard. Reminiscent of pre-1959 Revolutionary eras, Cuban women again are presenting their ideas and developing arguments about current struggles. A new type of education is emerging; one that can not be harnessed by the State: the digital world is engaging women with others, collectively and in solidarity, for a better Cuba. Women’s physical and online visibility, in opposition to their government, reveals the Cuban guerrillera at her finest—steadfast and demanding in her Constitutional rights and bearer of the nation’s revolutionary and martiano (from José Martí) values of justice, solidarity, dignity, and equality.

Authors

• J. Ruth Dawley Carr, Northeastern Illinois University

• Denise Blum, Oklahoma State University