LavenderRed_Cubabook

The 1971 congress declaration pointed out that, “For the bourgeoisie, the elimination
of the cultural elements of its class and system represents the elimination of culture as
such.
“For the working class and people in general, the culture born of the revolutionary
struggle is the conquest and development of the most valuable of humanity’s cultural
heritage which the exploiters kept from them for centuries.”
The 1971 congress declaration stressed that “[T]he changes in the field of sexual relations
stem from society itself as it progresses in the social, cultural and economic fields
and continues to acquire an ideology that is more consistently revolutionary.”
Fidel: ‘tangible and practical successes’
Looking back from the vantage point of 1992, Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel
Castro told Tomás Borge, a priest and founder of the Sandinista National Liberation
Front, “We inherited male chauvinism and many other bad habits from the conquistadors.
That was an historical inheritance. In some countries more than in others, but in
none was there more struggle than in ours and I believe that in none have there been
more tangible and practical successes.” (Borge)
Fidel Castro recalled, in a series of interviews between 2003 and 2005, “[W]e had
to work very hard to do away with racial prejudice here. Concerning women, there was
strong prejudice, as strong as in the case of homosexuals.” (Ramonet)
Castro had told Borge, “There was, for example, one standard for judging the personal
conduct of a man and another for a woman. We had this situation for years in the party
and I led fights and argued a lot about this. If there was infidelity in a marriage on behalf
of the man, there was no problem, no worry, on the other hand it was a subject of discussion
in the party units when there was infidelity on the part of the woman. There was
one way of judging sexual relations of men and another of women. I had to fight hard,
against deeply rooted tendencies that were not the product of any sermon or doctrine,
or education, but the male chauvinist concepts and prejudices that exist in the heart of
our society.”
Castro added, “I am not going to deny that, at one point, male chauvinism also influenced
our attitudes towards homosexuality.”
He explained to Ramonet, “There was less prejudice against homosexuals in the most
cultured and educated sectors, but that prejudice was very strong in sectors of low educational
level—the illiteracy rate was around 30 percent those years—and among the
nearly-illiterate, and even among many professionals. That was a real fact in our society.”
(Ramonet)
One of the first actions of the revolution in 1960—the Year of Education—was to
organize volunteers to teach 700,000 adults to read. Cuba rapidly reached the highest
literacy rate in Latin America.
1970s: Decade of cultural progress 31