Redefining the Revolution
For more than a decade the Cuban revolution has been undergoing profound social and political changes. These changes are, in part, responses to the island-nations integration into the capitalist global economy, in an era characterized by the fall of European socialism. Despite the ease by which many scholars and commentators discuss Cuba’s “transition” during this period of economic upheaval, anthropological analysis reveals a more complex social landscape. Through an examination of the changing forms of state governance regarding health and the environmental research, this article analyses how, thriving on the insertion of new forms of capital, state policies work to maintain the socialist ideology in the institutions and practices of everyday life, thereby forging individual social identities (the revolucionario) that are in line with rationalities of socialist governance. However, these policies are often interpreted and transformed by individuals in ways that suit their own immediate needs in a socio-political context increasingly marked by economic scarcity. Combined, these responses to state policy suggest that revolutionary identity, in Cuba’s post-Soviet economy, is complex and at times contradictory. This calls for a critical rethinking of the construction of Cuba’s socialist subject, thereby opening up new ways of thinking and writing about the country’s “transition” and more generally about issues of socialism and postsocialism.