Women in the Cuban Revolution
[3] The sex industry in 1950s Cuba was primarily based on the provision of sexual services by Black and mixed race women to predominantly white North American men.
[5] The proliferation of male American tourists in Cuba who expected these exotic experiences with a Cuban woman encouraged the rapid development of this industry.
[3] Women were active in the revolutionary movement in Cuba, composing at least 10-15% of the Rebel Army fighters and taking a number of key leadership positions.
[9][10] Melba Hernández, after being released from prison for her role in the attack, help lead the publishing and dissemination of Castro's History Will Absolve Me speech and then fought on the Third Eastern Front.
[16][17] Teté Puebla served as second-in-command of the platoon and was named director of the Department for the Care of War Victims after the revolution, later becoming the first women brigadier general in Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces history.
[18][19] Women were also active in the urban underground movements in cities, including in organizing protests, distributing clandestine information, smuggling weapons, raids on police stations, and publicizing the torture and arrests of revolutionaries.
Natalia Bolivar, who later gained prominence for her work as an anthropologist, was a leading organizer of efforts to secure political asylum for revolutionaries.
[6] However, women still faced discrimination within the ranks of the revolutionary groups and were often confined to more traditional roles, such as cooking food, repairing uniforms, and healing injuries.
In one of his diary entries, Che Guevara noted that a female soldier in his group "caused a certain resentment among the men, since Cubans were not accustomed to taking orders from a woman.
Linda Reif of City University of New York notes that "excerpts from Radio Rebelde broadcasts, the major revolutionary station, reveal no attempt to mobilize specifically women.
At a time when many of them are aging and dying, this means the Cuban government only has a small window of opportunity to discover as many of these women’s stories as they can.
She left America soon after and made her way back to Cuba and she joined the July 26th movement (she also got more involved with the opposition and Fidel Castro).
[31] It was believed by some Cuban revolutionaries that the sexist roles pressed on to women were a direct result of capitalist influences.
They believed that socialism was a woman’s route to equality and freedom; this was embodied in the attitudes that certain revolutionaries, such as Fidel Castro, pushed.
The new Cuban government made numerous promises to women that their efforts in the revolution would not be in vain; socialism would rescue them from the depths of sexism and would usher in a new era of equal opportunity.
This meant that while many new opportunities existed for young women to explore, they were restricted by domestic responsibility in their ability to actually experience them.
[3] Vilma Espín, who had also fought with the 26th of July Movement, founded the Federation of Cuban Women, serving as leader of the group until her death in 2007.
[34] In 1965, access to abortion in Cuba was expanded, no longer restricted to extreme cases and was to be carried out by public doctors free of charge, rather than by private practitioners.
[7]Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the new Cuban government saw prostitutes as victims of corrupt and foreign capitalism,Hamilton, Carrie (2012), Sexual Revolutions in Cuba: Passion, Politics, and Memory, UNC Press Books, ISBN 9780807882511 and viewed prostitution itself as a "social illness", a product of Cuba's pre-revolutionary capitalist culture, rather than a crime.
[5] Troops raided the red-light districts of Havana, and rounded up hundreds of women, photographed and fingerprinted them, and required them to have physical examinations.
[37] However, despite the improvement in rights brought by the revolution, discrimination against women and Machismo culture remain significant issues in Cuba.
[38][39][40] Dickey Chapelle, an American war correspondent photojournalist who first gained prominence for her work during World War II, further gained prominence for her work in the Cuban Revolution, with John Garofolo, author of Dickey Chapelle Under Fire: Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action stating that "she was the last American journalist Fidel Castro allowed to have [access to the Rebel Army's inner circle] at that point in the revolution.
