Trois femmes dans la révolution cubaine

by Oscar Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, Susan M. Rigdon

Monica, l'étudiante bourgeoise, devenue psychologue au service de la communauté, Pilar, ancienne prostituée réhabilitée par la révolution, Inocencia, bonne à tout faire issue d'un milieu rural : trois militantes cubaines de base. Elles nous font découvrir non seulement la lutte d'un peuple pour sa dignité, mais encore la difficulté d'être femme dans un société dominée par des valeurs masculines. Dans cette enquête posthume sur la disparition de la culture de pauvreté à Cuba à la suite de la victoire de Fidel Castro, Oscar Lewis, l'auteur des célèbres Enfants de Sanchez et de La Vida, ici secondé par Ruth Lewis et Susan Rigdon, nous livre, fidèle à sa méthode biographique, une histoire orale des années qui précédèrent le triomphe de la révolution castriste, ainsi que de la première décennie d'une société communiste latino-américaine, unique en son genre. Monica, Pilar et Inocencia nous parlent, dans un langage d'une franchise et d'une candeur bouleversantes, de la répression sauvage de la police de Batista, de la vie quotidienne dans les bordels de La Havane, du monde des ouvriers agricoles de la canne à sucre et de l'avènement d'une société nouvelle, à travers la vaste campagne d'alphabétisation, l'agitation étudiante et la mobilisation politique des comités de quartier.

408 pages, Paperback

Published April 16, 1980

About the author

Oscar Lewis was born in New York City in 1914, and grew up on a small farm in upstate New York. He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1940, and taught at Brooklyn College and Washington University before helping to found the anthropology department at the University of Illinois, where he was a professor from 1948 until his death. From his first visit to Mexico in 1943, Mexican peasants and city dwellers were among his major interests. In addition to The Children of Sanchez, his other studies of Mexican life include Life in a Mexican Village, Five Families, Pedro Martinez, and A Death in the Sanchez Family. He is also the author of La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York, which won the National Book Award, and Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba, with his wife, Ruth Maslow Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon. Lewis also published widely in both academic journals and popular periodicals such as Harper’s Magazine. Some of his best-known articles were collected in Anthropological Essays (1970). The recipient of many distinguished grants and fellowships, including two Guggenheims, Lewis was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 1970.

Reviews

[Inem]

I found this book interesting for the perspectives it gave and I approached it with a very non judgemental attitude in terms of what these women's autobiographies and anecdotes represent for the Cuban revolution. The second story by/ about Pilar Lopez Gonzalez was by far the strongest to me. She gives such a valuable perspecitve on prostitution and it is so clear how the revolution transformed the course of her life. I recommend people read this if they want to understand how the Cuban revolution impacted the lives of ordinary women. All of the women were deeply flawed but also deeply committed to the revolutionary process which is profoundly human. There is sooo much racism in the book though. The racism was a bit jarring. But I also understand that these were the early days of the revolution and the Euro-Cubans who came of age decades prior to the revolution were not going to change their racist views within a few years of the revolution's triumph. Not to say there are no racist attitudes in Cuba today, but I do think that some of these views compared to now show how much progress has been made over the decades.