Sheryl L. Lutjens - The State, Bureaucracy, and the Cuban Schools: Power and Participation

Ronald H. Chilcote, Series Editor

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The State, Bureaucracy, and the Cuban Schools: Power and Participation, Sheryl L. Lutjens

Power and Participation

Sheryl L . Lutjens

First published 1996 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lutjens, Sheryl.
The state, bureaucracy, and the Cuban schools : power and participation/Sheryl L. Lutjens.
p. cm. (Latin American perspectives series ; no. 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-8241-6 (alk. paper)
1. Education and stateCuba. 2. Politics and educationCuba. 3. SocialismCuba. 4. Power (Social sciences)Cuba. I. Title. II. Series
LC92.C9L88 1996
379.7291dc20

96-8395
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29635-3 (hbk)

This book has its roots in a dissertation completed in late 1987, when rectification was in its early phase. The list of those who have provided support and encouragement for my work since then has grown long over the years; it is a list filled with the names of people and places that have created the meanings in my world, my work, and my wonderings about politics and the future of democracy. It is also a list that crosses academic disciplines and frontiers. I will not write that list here, however, believing that all the people who are in it already know that they are there. Thanks are very much in order, nevertheless.

I would like to express my gratitude to Northern Arizona University for supporting my work in and on Cuba and, especially, that of the College of Social and Behavior Sciences and the Office of Organized Research. I am also grateful for the unflagging advice and encouragement of Ron Chilcote series editor, and also the person who introduced me to the study of politics. I would like to thank Louis A. Perez, Jr., for his long-ago reading of my analysis of colonial historyonly a small part of which is included in this bookand Carlos Alberto Torres for his critical reading of ; responsibility for any problems of fact or interpretation is, of course, mine. Others who read my manuscript at different times for rather similar purposes are acknowledged with both gratitude and respect for the work they have done, including Barbara Metzger; Patricia Heinicke, Assistant Editor at Westview Press; Barbara Ellingtonwho has been a superb editor; and Joe Boles. And my debt is immense to old and new friends and colleagues who have sustained me in a myriad of ways, among them Mary Ann Steger, Susan Deeds, Jennifer Abbassi, Betts Putnam, Joel Edelstein, Teresa Chapa, Larry Preston, and again, Joe Boles.

And, of course, this book would not have been possible without the generous support of Cuban institutions, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry's Centro de Documentacin e Informacin Pedaggica, and the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP) who facilitated the earliest stages of my research. I must once again thank every single educational official, principal, teacher, parent, or student who shared perceptions and understandings with meonce or in repeated interviews. I am equally grateful to Cuban friends and colleagues for sharing their materials, their ideas, and their time with me.

Outside and inside my work on Cuba are my sons and our family (now including Jackson and Sierra); they, like Cuba, have helped me define questions that matter.

Sheryl L. Lutjens

International attention to Cuban socialism in the 1990s is oddly reminiscent of the spotlight that followed Fidel Castro and the other thirty-something barbudos as they consolidated the 1959 revolution. Much has changed, however, since those early years when an atypical socialist strategy set Cuba apart from Soviet bloc socialism. In contrast to those who in the 1960s speculated enthusiastically about the democratic potential of Cuban socialism, today's enthusiasts are intent on discovering a definitive sign of the end of Castro's rule and the Cuban revolution. In the dramatically different world of the 1990s, Cuba appears once again to be an exception that provokes critical questions. These are not, however, questions about Castro but seldom-asked questions about democracy, socialism, and Cuba's defiant survival.

In the mid-1980s Cuba began a process of reform called rectification (rectificacin) that has differed from the political and economic liberalization that is reshaping the global order. Sustaining an official commitment to socialism in the face of economic crisis and international pressures, Cuba seems exceptional indeed, and the puzzles of rectification will not be solved by importing conclusions about the causes and consequences of change in the East. Though scholarly recuperation from the shocking collapse of the socialist bloc is producing more systematic inspection of why leaders, regimes, and ultimately, ideology came tumbling down, much remains to be explained about the past, present, and future of post-socialist societies and others similarly engaged in the global processes called democratization. The crucial questions about Cuba, as an exception, are precisely the ones that are needed for a better understanding of the dynamics of reform wherever it is found.