Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
Initiatives in the field of sexology and sex education in prerevolutionary Cuba are barely known, as continuity between those experiences and the work carried out during the years following the 1959 revolution have not been researched. The founding of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), however, must be considered the product of a long process of political maturity on the part of Cuban women during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the broader context of the FMC, the developments in the fields of sexology and sex education over the past fifty years also must be considered. Drawing on FMC archival holdings, this article sets out a periodization of the four main stages of the revolutionary period of institutionalizing sex education in Cuba, as well as its main challenges.
In 1795, Father Jose Agustin Caballero presented the first project for the creation of a system of public education for all the inhabitants of the island of Cuba. It was a visionary idea, but impossible to carry out at that time. The island was a colonial possession of the Spanish Crown, and most of the population was subjected to slavery or made up of Mestizos and freed blacks, the victims of segregation and racial discrimination.
The Cuban journey on race relations denotes an adventure driven by ideology. A doctrine of equals and the need for consensus building towards national unity called for the reversal of disenfranchisement commonly practiced prior to the revolution. Public policy has affirmed a commitment to social integration of people of color yet the residue of bigotry still inflames the Cuban populace and stymies potential maturity among its people.
Discusses the importance of education for any nation and for Cuba in particular, examining its political, pedagogical and sociological foundations, and portraying its accomplishments over the last 50 years. The principles underlying the educational policy of the Cuban government are explained, as they underpin the mission of the National Education System (NES) to carry forward educational work in the country.
Demonstrate how the priority of education in Cuban social policy, from its outset after the 1959 revolution, has privileged women. Statistics chart the rapid increase in educational level and attainment over the decades and the high degree of feminization of higher education and thus the skilled labor force; and today Cuba ranks among the countries with the highest indicators in the United Nations' Millennium Goals with respect to education and gender equity.
