UWSP’s Peguero presents lecture in Cuba

An professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point says that a trip to Havana, Cuba, has opened her eyes to a sense of openness, freedom and the gradual move to capitalism she did not expect to find in the communist ruled country.

Valentina Peguero attended the International Conference of the 40th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, sponsored by the University of Havana in November. Invited as a Latino American scholar, she was one of seven political scientists and historians accepted for the conference’s U.S. delegation.

Presenting "Dominican Women and the Cuban Revolution," she discussed how the revolution in Cuba inspired many women in the Dominican Republic to become leaders in their own country‘s revolution six months later. The program also included two days of activities in Havana prior to the conference. During this period, she also met with political, neighborhood, and cooperative leaders and members of the faculty, student body, and scientific community in attendance.

A native of the Dominican Republic and a speaker of Spanish, she said she was able to talk to many different people without being considered a foreigner.

"I talked with students, people on the street, and found more openness and freedom than I expected. Not at any moment did I feel insecure. In the presentations, those in attendance were able to express themselves freely and explore both the positive and negative aspects of the revolution and the country since then." Peguero compared these changes in Cuba to the "glasnost" of Russia.

Peguero said she is anxious to begin teaching her history course on Latin American revolutions this spring, sharing her firsthand experiences in Havana with her students.

"There was a strong motivation for me to go there and see the changes," she said. "I am very glad I went. In some ways it has enhanced my understanding of the revolution and brought me new information for my teaching assignments."

In other changes, the government has been reorganizing the Cuban system in order to make it more economically efficient. Part of this process is allowing citizens to operate their own businesses, she said.

"Cuba is going through a transition period," she said. "Castro realizes he can’t keep the country isolated from democratization, so Cubans are seeing a slow process of adjustment."

The slow process is sometimes blamed on a blockade of goods from the United States, which has been in existence since 1962, she said. Other scholars blamed the strong ideological positions of both Cuba and the U.S. and a few others blame the impact of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Peguero was also surprised to see the U.S. dollar used as the official currency in Cuba. When she went to change her money in the airport, she was told that was not necessary. A few times she received Cuban coins for change, but she saw Cuban citizens mainly using the dollar.

Cuba also has an advanced education system and high literacy rate, she said, as well as government-provided free and low cost health programs.

-30-