García Ayala was one of 25 graduates of the Social Workers Training School who participated in a July 28 meeting here at a community center in the Cayo Hueso (Key West) neighborhood of Havana. The meeting was attended by about 75 young people from the United States who were visiting the island as part of the Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange.
Altogether, nearly 300 college and high school students and other youth from the United States took part in the one-week visit to Cuba, held July 23 to August 1. The purpose of the trip, sponsored by the Union of Young Communists (UJC), Federation of University Students (FEU), and other Cuban youth organizations, was to allow the U.S. visitors to learn firsthand about the Cuban Revolution today. In the course of the more than two-hour-long exchange, members of the social workers brigades spoke about the work they are doing in working-class neighborhoods such as Cayo Hueso.
The training and mobilization of thousands of revolutionary social workers across the country, they said, is part of an effort known here as the “Battle of Ideas,” a political offensive spearheaded over the past three years by Cuba’s revolutionary leadership. The aim of this campaign is to deepen the participation of working people and youth in Cuba’s socialist revolution. Central to this effort, which encompasses more than 70 different programs, is broadening the access to culture and educational opportunities.
Through the Battle of Ideas, Cuba’s communist leadership seeks to confront the imperialist ideological drive that promotes capitalism and its dog-eat-dog values. It also seeks to address the social inequalities that have sharpened as Cuba has become more exposed to the capitalist world market since the early 1990s, when it lost 85 percent of is foreign trade after the collapse of aid from and trade with the former Soviet Union and Eastern European workers states.
Among those most affected by the economic and social crisis are young people, including layers of teenagers who, after graduating from high school, are neither working nor studying. Some become alienated and get involved in hustling or petty crime.
In contrast with “social work” as organized by the capitalist rulers of the United States—who approach the hardest-hit layers of working people as potential criminals who must be policed and subjected to the most degrading methods of social engineering—the social workers campaign in Cuba seeks to involve young people in finding solutions to social problems in a way that reinforces the solidarity and confidence of the working class. This is possible in Cuba only because workers and farmers have made a revolution and hold state power.
The youth involved in the social workers program take an intensive six-month course at one of the Social Workers Training Schools, such as the one in Cojímar, East Havana. Then they begin working in communities around the country, learning firsthand about the social problems in some of the worst-off working-class neighborhoods and helping provide solutions to them.
Through this mobilization of social workers, many of these youth—who were born well after the January 1959 victory of the revolution—can identify with the experiences of earlier generations of Cubans who were transformed by their participation in revolutionary activities such as the 1961 literacy campaign, through which tens of thousands volunteered to go into the countryside as teachers and helped wipe out illiteracy in Cuba.
“In Havana there were 109 [professional] social workers before this program began,” said Norma Pérez, who heads the program in Havana. “They would mainly wait in community centers like the one we are meeting in today for people to come to them and tell them about their problems.
“Now there are 2,182 social workers in Havana. These young people go out into the community. They live among and get to know the families they are working with,” Pérez explained. “They work together with them on problems they are facing.”
The schools of social work were established “to solve two problems at once,” Pérez said. “We take youth who weren’t benefiting from all of the rights that the revolution offers and connect them with school and work again. The social workers go out into the community, evaluate the problems, criticize when government institutions aren’t working properly, and offer solutions.”
At the same time, the program gives these youth the opportunity to go to college. After the initial six-month training program, they are admitted to a six-year university program—carrying out social work in the community Monday through Friday while going to the university on Saturdays.
Pérez explained that when the program began in 2000, youth brigades conducted a broad survey of the entire population. It revealed that 186,000 Cubans between the ages of 16 and 30 were neither working nor in school, Pérez explained. Today, through this mass campaign, she reported that 132,000 of these youth have been integrated into classes that will train them to get jobs or prepare them to enter the university.
An army of social workers
In September 2000 the Cuban government opened the first Social Worker Training School in Cojímar. In February 2001, after completing a six-month course, the school graduated its first class of 513. Speaking at their graduation ceremony, Cuban president Fidel Castro described them as the first battalion of what would become an army of revolutionary social workers.
Today that army has swelled to more than 8,000 nationwide. Schools for training social workers have since been established in the cities of Villa Clara, Holguín, and Santiago. Another 5,000 are set to graduate from these schools in September.
Last year, thousands of graduates from these schools participated in a massive campaign to eradicate dengue fever, a sometimes deadly disease spread by mosquitoes that breed especially in unsanitary accumulations of water. Teams of students and graduates from the social work schools around the country went into communities, especially in Havana, the country’s largest city, going block-by-block to improve the sanitary conditions and educate the entire population on the measures to be taken to reduce the spread of the disease. Unlike the epidemic conditions that developed in other tropical regions of Latin America, only a tiny handful of people died in Cuba from dengue fever.
One of the social workers told the story of her work with an elderly woman who lived on a pension of 90 pesos a month and was struggling to support a grandchild. The brigadista recommended that the woman’s pension be increased, and it was raised to 200 pesos. She also involved her and her grandson in an initiative called the community dining halls.
Pérez explained that these dining halls were set up by the social work brigades to help those who have difficulty buying and preparing their own food, in particular the elderly and disabled. They also serve as an important link for those who need them to broader social activity.
This priority on the elderly is particularly important because of their growing numbers in Cuba. As a result of the improved social conditions brought about by the revolution, the average life expectancy of Cubans has increased to nearly 77—the highest in Latin America and comparable to life expectancy in the most industrialized countries.
Another young social worker from the Playa district of Havana described her work with a young man who had committed a petty crime and was serving his sentence in his home. She helped him get involved in school and reported that he has since become the president of the student federation at his campus.
“This is the main way that we are confronting social problems like drug addiction and prostitution,” said Pérez when asked about those problems by one of the visiting U.S. youth. “Two and a half years ago in Havana there were 22,000 young people who were neither working nor in school. We have gotten 13,000 of them off the streets and into the classroom through this effort.
“Before we began this program these problems weren’t often discussed openly,” she added. “Those addicted to drugs were afraid to go to the government for help. The social workers have achieved some important results where others could not. They are not linked to the police, and what they find out in the course of their work [such as use of illegal drugs] remains confidential. The social workers get to know these young people, win their confidence, and work with them to resolve these problems.”
Participation in these campaigns is having a deep political impact on many youth. One indication Pérez pointed to is the fact that 60 percent of the current graduates of the schools of social work have joined the Union of Young Communists, which plays a central role in these initiatives and in the broader fight to advance Cuba’s socialist revolution.
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Two Militant reporters traveled to Cuba to provide first-hand coverage of the Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange. Please contribute to help cover expenses of close to $4,000. Send donations to The Militant, 152 West 36th St., #401, New York, NY 10018. |