“Cuba has a pretty beneficial political and juridical framework since the triumph of the Revolution that had helped to take several measures in favor of the processes to eliminate violence. Gender violence in Cuba is a lot in small scale than in the majority of the countries worldwide,” in my personal opinion as specialist- and it surely has to be with the Revolution itself: there has been a policy of education, health, culture, social and legal security; there has been a macro-policy expressed in multiple policies that had placed the human being in the main interest. The Cuban Revolution has created the essential conditions with its job, so this process goes on in a different way to the rest of the world.”
This goal, developed by PhD Ramon Rivero and chief of the Scientific Department of the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex), expressed they are convinced on the necessary titanic effort carried out by this entity for years.
Cenesex is located in Vedado where philosopher Rivero and lawyer Liset Mailen Imbert work for the Cuban population. We talked to them both on gender violation, mainly at work, a pretty real phenomenon but we hardly have data and they are just under deep research.
– How does the gender violence phenomenon is globally present and especially in Cuba?
Ramon Rivero: There is a definition on violence which is rather agreed by consensus in the international scientific literature, which is defined as any action or intentional omission in the relations among members of the society, causing disrespect with physical, psychological and patrimonial damages to that person or others.
This problem is sometimes mistreated either by the society or the institutions responsible to educate the population to give a solution to these problems.
– In relation to the Cuban legislation, what is its state in relation to labor violence and which is the role of the workplace in this phenomenon?
Liset Limber: I am working on the topic of labor harassment. It is a research looking at first to see the typical behaviors of harassment. There are no statistics, because there are no accusations. Our labor process is not designed to gather complains on psychological harassment.
There are several legal forms worldwide on this matter in countries like Spain, Argentina and Venezuela that have harassment topic at work.
Nevertheless the lack of data, we really know there is labor violence in our country. We have received in our Center complains of people that had been verbally mistreated, they feel ignored, above all, when it is due to their sexual leaning and gender identity, but they are temporaries, so we can neither get to conclusions nor statistics.
– How can we deal with this topic in the future Labor Code?
We are trying to include a definition of what labor harassment and violence are, because they are indistinctively used, and they are not the same thing.
– What are the actions and services proposed by the Center about this to eliminate this phenomenon?
Besides all those actions developed by the Center from the legal point of view, we offer juridical information on Wednesdays and Fridays. We also try to give solutions to these problems with the administrations.
– Which is the perception of the Center on the consciousness of these problems by the population?
First of all we work on the awareness, training and education of this topic either on directives or workers because there are people who are used to shout and mistreat people around them and sometimes, they are not conscious of that. So we should re-educate them, have them see their negative behaviours, and train workers to identify those behaviours if they feel harassed.
Some elements that characterize violence in Cuba
– The majority of them, but not the only ones are reports of violence of men against women.
– It is manifested at all levels. According to researches carried out by the Center of Psychological and Sociological Investigations (CIPS) the psychological one seems to be the one of greater proportions and shouts are the most identified inside this modality.
– They appear at all levels of institutions no matter the age and profession.
– Highlights as determining factor the wrong opinions and practices associated to the perception of the conflicts as undesirable, and not as natural (communication problems).
