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CUBA: Sails of Popular Education Catch Winds of Socialist Change

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 20 2007 (IPS) - The growing role of popular education in local experiences of social change is spurring debate about the need for more active participation by the people of Cuba in the social transformations that are inevitable if it is to remain a socialist country.

The Network of Popular Educators, sponsored by the non-governmental Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Centre (CMMLK), has already made substantial contributions to the discussion in areas such as community work, local government, agro-ecology and health.

"The contribution of popular education in Cuba is related to promoting the development of a culture of popular participation in community life, organisations, and the workplace," Joel Suárez, 45, the general coordinator of CMMLK, told IPS.

"We are participants in a political culture that we inherited, and which is recreated collectively by all of us. Rigid vertical, authoritarian methods still survive in this culture," Suárez admitted. "Popular education can contribute towards more socialist and participatory ways of organising and leading social processes."

In the activist’s view, a vital sphere of action is the working methods in the "people’s power" governmental institutions that exist at the national, provincial and local levels, and are "the concrete expression of the Cuban people’s participation in government and in deciding the future of the nation."

In Havana, the Workshops for the Integral Transformation of the Barrio (neighbourhood), linked to local authorities, have started to organise training for new "people’s power" delegates (city councillors), using the concepts and practices of popular education.

"Our social and mass organisations must also be both subjects and objects of dynamic transformations, renewal and autonomy, because they are important opportunities for people to participate in decisions that affect them," according to Suárez, who said that initiatives for renewal were also emerging among workers’ organisations.

Other ongoing experiences, for instance at the Agrarian University of Havana and the Escambray experimental station for soil research in the central province of Cienfuegos, have revolutionised traditional models of community participation in environmental work and in sustainable agricultural development in rural areas.

Popular education has also influenced cultural projects, preventive health programmes, academic university activities, churches and religious communities, from Guantánamo at the easternmost tip of the island to Pinar del Río in the west.

The educational-political theory of popular education was developed by Brazilian educator, philosopher and adult literacy worker Paulo Freire (1921-1997), the author of "Education as the Practice of Freedom" and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."

"The aim of popular education is to empower individuals and groups of people to become critical subjects of their own history, aware of the realities of the world they live in," said Suárez.

Since 1995, the CMMLK has run a programme of Popular Education and Participating in Local Experiences, which trains and advises people and groups to contribute to the development and socialisation of a culture of participation, by and for Cuba’s social agents.

For the three-year period 2006-2008, the programme’s goals are to "broaden and strengthen the commitment of the social fabric to the project of equality and social justice in Cuba, promoting critical thinking and the political capability to reformulate participation styles by organised and aware social actors," according to the CMMLK.

At present the CMMLK has a network of more than 100 partners all over the island, and has set up 21 groups of Training in Popular Education with Distance-Support (FEPAD) which are developing a growing number of local initiatives in different parts of the country.

The first National Meeting of the Network of Popular Educators was held in the town of Caimito, 20 kilometres west of Havana, from Nov. 12 to 16. Prior to this, nine preparatory meetings were held in different regions, with a total of 435 participants who presented the results of 71 popular education initiatives.

The Network describes itself as "an interwoven fabric promoting social relations based on solidarity, justice, equity, the sense of belonging and identity, cooperation and social inclusion, which recognises sexual, religious and inter-generational diversity."

Exchanges between members of the Network are currently centred on three themes: local development and community work, gender and popular education, and the environment, which includes topics such as organic, as opposed to intensive, high chemical-input, agriculture, environmental education and agro-ecology.

Sessions at the meeting began with a shared analysis of the country’s situation, "in line with the debate that has been snowballing in Cuba this year, that was given a big boost by (acting President) Raúl Castro’s speech on Revolution Day, Jul. 26," said Suárez.

"It’s interesting that, in spite of people’s anxieties and the stressfulness of day-to-day life, the participants showed selfless dedication and a renewal of their love for their political and revolutionary commitment," said the CMMLK coordinator.

However, Suárez acknowledged that the concept of popular education is still at cross-purposes with "areas of our political culture where patriarchal, top-down hierarchies and authoritarianism still survive" as expressions of methods that have outlived their usefulness and were criticised by Raúl Castro.

In their debates, members of the Network said that they must fight against "windmills turned into giants by the power of bureaucracy, which are present in institutions that lack boldness and initiative and are more concerned about directives ‘from above’ than the voices that emerge from the people."

"I think ours is a modest, but significant, contribution, at a time when the country is going through a necessary and essential exploration of the roots of our Cuban socialism, in order to perfect it," said Suárez.