“Maybe tomorrow I'll turn capitalist,” AlejandroFootnote 1 jokingly tells me. “Today I'm staying home!” Alejandro is one of a small number of licensed self-employed workers in Cuba, or trabajadores por cuenta propia (workers for own account). Although legal in Cuba for more than 10 years, trabajo por cuenta propia remains a controversial sector in the Cuban economy. As the first Cubans to shift from the centralized state sector to self-employment in the private sector, cuentapropistas challenge the state socialist monopoly on labor and production. For a country whose constitution states that it is a nation “composed of workers, peasants, and other manual and intellectual laborers” (Constitutición de la República de Cuba 1992), the legalization of independent workers motivated by private gain is particularly contentious. Of course, trabajo por cuenta propia is not a unique change in the Cuban labor market, and the creation of joint venture and “market-oriented” state enterprises, as well as an active black market, pose equally strong challenges to the socialist labor regime. Yet cuentapropistas remain one of the most potent symbols of Cuba's changing economic, political, and ideological character—in part because of the significance outside observers have attached to their existence. Indeed, the group has frequently been portrayed as a kind of capitalist vanguard by North American commentators, the shepherds of Cuba's transition from socialism to a free-market democracy.
In examining the tension surrounding cuentapropismo, this article argues that a sociolegal approach can help expose the overly rigid assumptions that have frequently informed analyses of Cuba's limited opening of self-employment. Cuba-observers have tended to view Cuba's “transition” to a free-market economy as all but inevitable, with cuentapropistas as its personal agents. Viewed from the inside, however, the picture looks significantly different. As Alejandro's comment illustrates, cuentapropistas themselves are ambivalent about claiming a larger group identity, on the one hand taking pride in their unique position outside of the state-controlled centralized economy, and on the other hand disclaiming any kind of capitalist mentality or work culture. Rather than asking whether cuentapropistas are “capitalist” or “socialist”—rubrics that are closely bound up in Cold War ideology and hard-line rhetoric in Cuba and the United States—a sociolegal approach provides a richer, more complex understanding of the contemporary moment in Cuban society by focusing our attention on how the law constructs identity by opening up spaces for particular kinds of economic and social activity, which then become the basis for the renegotiation of citizen-state relationships. Drawing on the work of Reference SaratSarat (1990), Reference EspelandEspeland (1994, Reference Espeland1998, Reference Espeland2001), and Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick and Silbey (1998, Reference Ewick and Silbey2003), I argue that cuentapropismo is not simply a professional classification, but a legally constructed social framework with a range of consequences beyond the simple facilitation of economic activity. More specifically, changes in the regulation of labor have implications for cuentapropistas' changing self-conceptions, which in turn put pressure on traditional socialist models of state and citizen. Rather than understanding the role of law in periods of significant social change as purely instrumentalist, a sociolegal approach illustrates the ways in which the regulation of economic activity may result in new self-perceptions, which may themselves become constitutive of fundamental social change that is not easily captured by the binary of communism/capitalism.
In broad terms, this article seeks to make two contributions. First, it argues that a more complex understanding of the significance of cuentapropismo can be achieved if we bracket ideological considerations and examine not only the regulation of self-employment, but also the ways in which cuentapropistas negotiate those regulations. This approach entails exploring how the operation of law is mediated through cuentapropistas' self-perceptions. Such an investigation highlights the complex interaction between law and identity in the context of a socialist state, one which may differ in marked ways from sociolegal accounts based in Europe and North America. Equally, it illuminates how, in periods of significant change, individuals reconstruct their identities by extrapolating from existing structures, rather than entering into a kind of stark ideological “flip.”
Second, the article asserts that studies of transition can benefit from a sociolegal analysis of the interrelationship between law, identity, and work during periods of significant social change. Adopting a sociolegal lens can help complicate ideological interpretations of transition by focusing our attention instead on changing individual-state relations and conceptions of citizenship. Not only does such an approach help expose the limitations of a “modernization” view of Cuba's current transformations, but it also illustrates how the factors that shape periods of change are frequently unpredictable, contradictory, and “bottom-up” as well as “top-down.”
One of the complexities of employing the term transition is the difficulty of distinguishing a period of “transition” from the less sharply marked fluctuations of social evolution. While Cuba's direction remains unknown, it is almost certainly a country undergoing a period of profound transformation. The pace and scale of economic change since 1990, including the “dollarization” of the economy, the growth of foreign investment, and the explosion of foreign tourism, have created a fundamental shift in Cuba's socialist framework that will be difficult to reverse, despite the government's recent announcement that Cuba is in a phase of “deepening socialism.”Footnote 2 Thus while this article specifically rejects a teleological, “evolutionist” conception of transition (as do Reference Bridger and PineBridger & Pine 1998; Reference VerderyVerdery 1997; Reference KubicekKubicek 2004), it does suggest that the contemporary moment in Cuba is one of profound and radical change. As a close examination of cuentapropismo illustrates, the legalization of self-employment has important consequences for the renegotiation of individual-state relations and the construction of citizenship. This renegotiation may itself help contribute to the creation, shape, and character of a transitional period.
The article is divided into four sections. The first section briefly describes the research methodology and the context of cuentapropismo. The second section, building on extensive field research, focuses on the legalization of self-employment and the government's ambivalent reaction to the creation of an independent work culture. The third section critiques conventional conceptions of “transition” by drawing on discussions of governmentality, work, and the legal constitution of identity. The fourth section concludes by asking whether self-employed workers themselves identify with a larger “cuentapropista” identity and with the capitalist label they have often been given.
Methods and the Context of Research
This article builds on fieldwork conducted in Havana, Cuba, intermittently over a period of seven years, from 1998 to 2005.Footnote 3 From August 1998 to January 1999, I conducted fieldwork in Havana, immersing myself as much as a foreigner can in the “everyday life” of my neighborhood. My interest in the expansion of self-employment on the island took focus when I was introduced to Alejandro, a cuentapropista craftsman who sells papier-mâché to tourists, and who quickly became my primary informant on the ways and means of cuentapropismo. Several days a week for a period of three months, I accompanied Alejandro to the Malecón Market, where he has a stall. The second largest of Havana's three tourist markets, the Malecón Market turned out to be an ideal fieldwork site, with the close quarters of market stalls and the long hours of a slow day providing ample opportunity for conversation and gossip. The nature of the market as a tourist center was also particularly important since it allowed a focused look at the rapid growth of the tourist industry, stimulated by one of the most dramatic changes in recent government policy.Footnote 4
My daily observations came into sharper focus through 12 formal interviews with eight informants, which I conducted in the Malecón Market with Alejandro and four of his neighboring vendors, as well as with Alejandro and members of his family in his home. Informal visits to Alejandro's home also gave me added insight into the domestic economy of families dependent on cuentapropismo—the balance between paid work and domestic work, family time and work time—as well as relationships within the neighborhood. Informants were chosen in part as a function of Alejandro's friendships and thus cannot be said to be objectively “representative.” Particularly in the early stages of research, Alejandro's introductions were essential in allaying suspicion about my presence in the market.Footnote 5 Over time, however, my face became known in the marketplace and I was able to approach vendors of my own accord. Indeed, one afternoon in February 2005, after I conducted several tape-recorded interviews, a vendor informed me that some Cuban students had been at the market that morning seeking to interview cuentapropistas about the contribution of self-employment to the Cuban economy. Almost all the vendors, including the ones I had just interviewed, refused because they were concerned about how the material might be used. By contrast, my status as a foreigner seemed to reassure them—perhaps because it indicated that I might be more neutral, and because I would be taking my research back to North America with me, where it would be unlikely to appear in a Cuban publication.Footnote 6
In August 1999, I conducted six follow-up interviews with Malecón Market vendors, including three of the original informants, as well as an informal survey of 14 vendors in the marketplace. Interview questions focused on the individual's education and work prior to becoming a cuentapropista, reasons for entering into self-employment, perceived advantages and disadvantages of the shift in work practices and income, attempts to balance family and work time, plans for the future, and aspirations for the children. In February 2005, I again interviewed three of my original informants, as well as four new research subjects. Interview questions remained largely the same as in 1999; however, I also asked informants to comment on some of their previous observations, as well as whether they continued to view cuentapropismo as a provisional measure, and how they perceived their recent incorporation into a local union. Two of the new informants were chosen because they work in areas of licensed self-employment other than craftsmanship: running a hair salon for local Cubans, and renting a room to tourists. These activities provided an interesting contrast to the work of the vendors in the marketplace because they are run out of the home and because they represent the commercialization of “women's work.” Interviewing cuentapropistas outside of the Malecón Market allowed me to explore whether other groups of self-employed workers were also joining national unions.
The ability to return to Havana over a period of seven years added an important dimension to the research. Such revisits allowed me to compare points of variance or constancy over time, to recognize that a phenomenon first seen in a moment of apparent stability was in fact in a state of flux, or that something that seemed short-lived was able to endure. As such, my return visits did not so much constitute ethnographic “updates” as opportunities for a re-theorization of self-employment and the relationship between work, identity, and the state (Reference BurawoyBurawoy 2003).
The focus on artisans gave me a specific perspective on trabajo por cuenta propia. In some ways craftsmanship is one of the least controversial activities authorized for self-employment. Where private taxis, restaurants, or casas particulares (room rentals in private homes) are perceived as competing with their state counterparts for tourist revenue, the government is less likely to attempt to nationalize craftsmanship since the very fact that an object is handmade by an individual artisan is what gives it value. Moreover, tourists flock to craft markets precisely for the sensation of buying “authentic” local goods. Craftspeople are also able to draw on the image of the “artist,” whose work is an extension of him or herself, rather than something produced purely for its commercial value. This is particularly advantageous for craftspeople because the government's attitude toward artistic activity has undergone significant change in the past decade, involving, for example, the recognition of copyright and artistic authorship (Reference Hernández-ReguantHernández-Reguant 2004).
The focus on artisans, however, does not limit the relevancy of the analysis to other types of cuentapropismo. While the less precarious position of artisans may allow them to speak more freely with a foreign researcher, the fundamental changes they have experienced in the regulation of their daily work—the freedom to set their own schedule and negotiate their own prices, the difficulty of dealing with government licenses and inspectors, the exclusion from state welfare programs—is shared by all cuentapropistas. Furthermore, like most residents of Havana, I had daily contact with cuentapropistas at work in a variety of settings, and this article is therefore equally grounded in my informal conversations with taxi drivers, booksellers, and food vendors, as well with people in private homes. Finally, I was able to put my observations and interviews into context through discussions with several Cuban scholars at the Centro Psícologicó y Sociologico who have conducted extensive sociological studies of the Cuban labor market.
Of course, this study cannot claim to represent all cuentapropistas and remains limited by its geographical focus and small empirical base. The challenges and advantages of cuentapropismo may vary significantly in smaller communities or in regions less affected by tourism. Moreover, I only conducted one interview with a cuentapropista whose work focuses on providing services to Cubans rather than to tourists; a more comprehensive study would benefit from a comparison of self-employment in the tourist industry with self-employment in the “domestic” sector. Nor can Alejandro be said to speak for a single “cuentapropista work culture.” Indeed, a key finding of the study is that cuentapropistas themselves reject adopting a cohesive group identity, and therefore any attempt at generalization must be treated with caution. While these limitations are significant, they do not, however, undermine the broader conclusion of this study—that cuentapropistas are neither capitalist nor socialist, but are helping to redefine what it means to be a productive worker, and therefore a citizen, in Cuba.
Sometimes, of course, vendors refused to be interviewed. The position of cuentapropistas is clearly precarious, and it was understandable that some cuentapropistas were unwilling to enter into conversation. Furthermore, while most vendors adopted a largely avuncular attitude toward me, this was sometimes tempered by their recognition of my greater purchasing power or exposure to technology and world travel. It is also impossible to know to what extent my own questions influenced the direction of my informants' answers. Despite my attempts to avoid using ideologically charged terminology, it is entirely possible that when interviewees used terms such as socialist and capitalist, they were merely using the categories they thought would be most recognizable to me, or that would be most intriguing to an outside observer of the “dying days” of socialism. In daily contact with tourists, the market vendors are by no means unaware of the fascination they hold for foreigners arriving on their island with preset, and often highly romanticized, notions of the Revolution.
Finally, an analysis of cuentapropismo cannot be understood in isolation from Cuban-American politics. As Arnaldo Reference Pérez García and Pérez GarcíaPérez Garcia, a Cuban psychologist who has written about recent changes in the Cuban labor market, explained to me, “You have to remember that the disagreement between Cuba and the United States penetrates every single decision made in Cuba. You cannot understand cuentapropismo outside of this context” (Personal communication, Havana, February 2005). Drawing a circle on a piece of paper, he explained that the circle represents “the system,” and that, from the Cuban government's point of view, anything that falls outside of the system is vulnerable to manipulation by American interests and is therefore a threat. A 1997 statement by Raúl Valdés Vivo, the Communist Party's Academy Director, supports Pérez Garcia's comments. Writing in the state newspaper, Granma Internacional, Valdés Vivo effectively announced the government's intention to limit cuentapropismo, stating, “The creation of the seeds of a local bourgeoisie would bring in a social force which sooner or later would serve the counterrevolution” (Reference Valdés VivoValdés Vivo 1997:4; translated by author). American media and academics have added to this perception. For example, one analysis of self-employed workers in Cuba, presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy in Miami in 1998, suggests that the “highly visible success” achieved by cuentapropistas.
is what makes the self-employed phenomenon so interesting and important for the near term future of the country; when a transition toward a true free market economy occurs in Cuba, the self-employed will be an important minority of Cubans who have small enterprise experience, who are familiar with risk taking, investment and profits, taxes and regulation. They will be uniquely equipped to thrive in a capitalist setting. They will continue to sell goods and services to the domestic population and cater to tourists, but they will be able to expand their businesses, hire other people, and generate real wealth (B. Reference SmithSmith 1998:58).
Secure in the assumption that Cuba will transform itself into a free market economy, the author concludes, “To the extent that the self-employed can create employment and demonstrate the tangible benefits of hard work for average Cubans, they will do much to smooth the transition to a market economy in Cuba” (B. Reference SmithSmith 1998:59). Cuentapropistas, in this account, serve a symbolic function in promoting popular support for reform by demonstrating that widely held fears about capitalism are unfounded, and that hard work will result in material gain.
The specific position that cuentapropistas occupy within Cuba's economic and political infrastructure is therefore as significant as the kind of economic, “capitalist” activity they engage in. While representing only a very small percentage of the Cuban labor force—minuscule in comparison with the number of Cubans who participate in the black market—cuentapropistas pose a powerful symbolic challenge to the socialist regime. In particular, cuentapropistas embody an increasing tension between Cuba's socialist past and uncertain future. In this period of “late socialism,” many Cubans express both a deep attachment to and pride in the successes of the Revolution, and an increasing certainty that socialism is no longer economically or politically viable. Yet many Cubans are equally reluctant to embrace a “capitalist” future, which they worry will breed avarice, income inequality, and a lack of compassion. This ambivalence is further heightened by deep strains of nationalism, which lead some Cubans to rejoice at being one of the only countries to withstand the political interference of the United States, even as they decry the socialist Revolution that helped to protect Cuban sovereignty. The figure of the cuentapropista, in its ambiguous position between socialism and capitalism, captures this tension in a particularly explicit way, making the cuentapropista both a powerful and a vulnerable actor in the Cuban landscape.
The Legal Creation of an Anomaly
From its inception in 1993, cuentapropismo has been an uncomfortable development for the Cuban government. In the midst of the “special period”—a series of austerity measures and radical economic reforms adopted in the face of Cuba's dramatic economic declineFootnote 7—National Assembly members vigorously debated the wisdom of expanding the private sector.Footnote 8 Those who argued in favor of cuenta propia maintained that it would create jobs for the unemployed, provide goods and services that the state could not satisfy, increase control of illegal activities, boost tax revenues, and satisfy a popular demand. Among the opposing arguments were concerns that self-employment encouraged profiteering, that it would compete with state enterprises for labor, or that it was too small-scale to be efficient—possibly creating deformities in the system (Reference Jatar-HausmannJatar-Hausmann 1999:93–4). Even those in favor of the economic reforms were constrained to maintain that the economic pragmatism motivating the limited opening of self-employment was not indicative of changed ideological orientation.
While self-employment was ultimately authorized, political and ideological ambivalence informs its very existence, and the attempt to harmonize economic pragmatism with ideological purity has been imperfect and contradictory. At the time of the legalization of self-employment, for example, the following description of the ideal self-employed individual was given in the Cuban media:
The idea of the self-employed worker is based on incorporating people with honorable social behavior into these activities. Criminals, speculators and embezzlers will not have access to these activities. In accordance with this principle, requesters must first present a certification with information from their work center, in which their discipline is recorded. Before being approved by the labor directive of the municipality, the registrations will be submitted for consideration by the [local] People's Council since it is there where the person and the needs of the locality are known (Reference Pérez-López, Horowitz and SuchlickiPérez-López 1998:245).
On this somewhat paradoxical view, self-employment ought only to be undertaken by those who prove themselves to be model socialist citizens—these being the very people who ought not to be swayed by the economic incentives characteristic of self-employment.
The deep ambivalence surrounding self-employment must be understood in relation to the powerful symbolic role of the worker in the Cuban Revolution. The very first article of the Cuban Constitution states that “Cuba is a country composed of workers, peasants, and other manual and intellectual laborers” (Constitución de la República de Cuba 1992; translated by author). This symbolism is equally apparent in Ché Guevara's conceptualization of the “New Socialist Man” (el hombre nuevo): a figure that denoted more than a productive worker or an individual dedicated to revolutionary ideals, but the forging of a new morality and consciousness (Reference PérezPérez 1998:340). “Man dominated by commodity relationships will cease to exist,” writes Reference Ché GuevaraChé Guevara (1965) in his influential Man and Socialism.
… Man will begin to see himself mirrored in his work and to realize his full stature as a human being through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work will no longer entail surrendering a part of his being in the form of labor-power sold … but will represent an emanation of himself reflecting his contribution to the common life, the fulfillment of his social duty (Reference Ché GuevaraChé Guevara 1965: n.p. translated by author).
While el hombre nuevo was not a long-lasting economic or even ideological success, the concept continued to function as a kind of moral yardstick up until the early 1990s, and even today it carries a certain nostalgic and emotive power—helped, no doubt, by the continuing symbolic power of Ché Guevara himself. It is hardly surprising, then, that a figure as antithetical to the social ideal of worker and personhood as the trabajador por cuenta propia has received a mixed welcome from the Cuban government. As Núñez Moreno, a Cuban sociologist, observes, “Of all the changes introduced by the current reforms, the extension of private activity is perceived by many as the change that has the greatest capacity to dissolve Cuban socialism” (1998:41; translated by author).
An “Occupational Constituency”: Cuentapropistas and the Legal Constitution of Identity
It is difficult to draw a comprehensive profile of the community of people working in trabajo por cuenta propia. Government data on self-employed workers are not available and indeed may not exist. Two informal, small-scale surveys conducted in 1996 (Reference Jatar-HausmannJatar-Hausmann 1999) and 1997 (B. Reference SmithSmith 1998), however, provide a picture.Footnote 9 In the mid-1990s, the average cuentapropista earned $135 USD a month, as compared to an average state salary of $10 a month (B. Reference SmithSmith 1998:51). Thirty-two percent of cuentapropistas were women, corresponding with an estimated 33 percent of women in the total Cuban labor force (Reference Jatar-HausmannJatar-Hausmann 1999:99). Around 45 percent of cuentapropistas graduated from technical schools, while 29 percent had university degrees (Reference Jatar-HausmannJatar-Hausmann 1999:100; B. Reference SmithSmith 1998:55), making them more educated than the average Cuban worker. Forty percent of cuentapropistas fell between the ages of 25 and 34 (Reference Jatar-HausmannJatar-Hausmann 1999:100), and the average age was 37.5 years (B. Reference SmithSmith 1998:56). Because the sector has been “closed off” for a number of years, however, the average age is likely rising.
The rules governing self-employment are tightly drawn. Under Law Decree No. 141, 162 occupationsFootnote 10 are eligible for self-employment, including food vendor, taxi driver, carpenter, bicycle and car repairperson, artisan, hairdresser, shoe repairperson, and manicurist (Decree-Law #141 (DL-141), “Sobre el trabajo por cuenta propia,”Granma, 9 Sept. 1993). Renting out a room or apartment—usually to tourists—is also an activity governed by trabajo por cuenta propia. Initially, only individuals at the margins of the workforce were permitted to enter into self-employment, such as retirees or workers with a reduced ability to work, redundant workers, or homemakers. These restrictions ensured that a very limited number of workers within the labor force were eligible to enter the private sector and that those who did become self-employed workers were not “core” employees in the state sector or at the height of their productivity. Eventually, university graduates were also permitted to register for self-employment,Footnote 11 although they are not allowed to carry out self-employed activity in their own profession (for example, doctors cannot establish private clinics). Nor can state or foreign enterprises contract the services of self-employed workers (Reference EvensonEvenson 2003:265). Other regulations govern more specific details of different cuentapropista activities, such as hygiene, hours of operation, allowable materials, and so forth.
More significantly, government regulations are carefully designed to prevent the exploitation of labor and the development of significant income inequalities within the population (Reference Núñez MorenoNúñez Moreno 1998:44). Self-employed workers cannot employ others, prices may be standardized by the government if there is any evidence of abuse, and the government can adopt measures to “forestall the excessive proliferation of vendors and to prohibit the emergence of middlemen” (Resolución Conjunta no. 10/95 1995). Heavy licensing feesFootnote 12 and an annual progressive income taxFootnote 13 make it difficult for many cuentapropistas to continue their trade, or at least to accumulate a net profit. Artisans, for example, pay around $150 USD a month, while those who rent rooms to tourists commonly pay $200 or $250 USD per room, regardless of whether they are occupied.
Cuentapropistas' lives are therefore deeply shaped and informed by law. As Sarat writes about the welfare poor in the United States, law is “all over” for welfare recipients, in the sense that a significant part of their lives is “organized by a regime of legal rules invoked by officials to claim jurisdiction over choices” (1990:344). As discussed in greater detail below, however, cuentapropistas make an interesting counterexample to Sarat's welfare poor. On the one hand, they too encounter law “in the most ordinary transactions and events of their lives” (Reference SaratSarat 1990:344). But this is an experience common to all Cubans, not just cuentapropistas. Instead, what makes cuentapropistas distinct is their position outside of the normal legal regulation of labor. In choosing to leave state employment, cuentapropistas give up their affiliation to the work centers that would otherwise be a requirement of their employment. As such, they not only relinquish the social benefits distributed by work centers—everything from pensions to state subsidized child care to the use of a beach house in the summerFootnote 14—but they also remove themselves from a system of state incorporation and control. Under socialist ideology, according to Cuban sociologists José Luis, Martin Romero and Armando Capote González, “The individual existed more as a member of a group—of the neighborhood, of the work center … the ‘we’ was privileged over the ‘I,’ the interests of the collective over the interests of individuals” (1998:80; translated by author). Cuentapropismo, by contrast, depends on the decentralization of the organization of work, allowing for increased autonomy not simply in the distribution of labor and resources, but also in the realm of decisionmaking.
The partial abstraction of cuentapropistas from the centralized state labor system thus represents a fundamental challenge to the collectivist social pact underlying Cuban socialism. Arguably, it is this relational shift that, more than economic status or capitalist mentality, distinguishes trabajadores por cuenta propia from the rest of the populace and provides some sense of group identity. This restructuring of worker-state relations may also be at the heart of the Cuban government's anxiety about trabajo por cuenta propia. As Maribel, a 37-year-old cuentapropista who was an audiovisual technician before selling leather goods in the Malecón Market, comments,
Before, the state provided you with the necessities of life. Now, the trabajador por cuenta propia can acquire things, and we control ourselves. The state doesn't interest us, because it doesn't do anything for us. We even have to pay to do our work. What it does do is sell us things at a high price, and at the same time imposes more taxes and sends more inspectors. [The government] realizes that they are losing control of trabajo por cuenta propia, although we don't have any kind of capitalist mentality. Here they practically don't even let you think. And so it seems to me that that's what the government fears, not that we have a capitalist mentality, but that we don't depend on the state for anything, nothing more than to pay our $163 each month (Personal communication, Malecón Market, August 1999).
Similarly, economist Jatar-Hausmann writes in describing a cuentapropista shoemaker she interviewed, “Jorge likes to work at odd hours, he likes to raise the prices of his shoes, to lower them, to give them away … to speak out about and defend the need to develop the minuscule private sector open to Cubans. He is part of a new social breed who does not rely on the government to earn a decent living; and he is enjoying it with a vengeance” (1999:107).
Law No. 141 therefore allows cuentapropistas to step outside of the state-controlled economy and to challenge existing social and legal norms. It is for this reason that Núñez Moreno refers to the creation of cuentapropistas as the “change with the greatest capacity to dissolve Cuban socialism.” (1998:41; translated by author). Under the mantle of legal legitimacy, cuentapropistas are not only breaking down traditional institutions and avenues of power, but they are also helping to create new social norms characterized by increased individualism and autonomy (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1332–3). The result is the development of a “culturally demarcated” group whose authorized experimentation with new forms of property and market relations is leading to the formation of “a new work culture” and “a new kind of worker” (Reference Martin Romero and Capote GonzálezMartin Romero & Capote González 1998:79). Law No. 141 has not, therefore, simply facilitated individual workers' undertaking legal self-employment, but has created a kind of “occupational constituency” that has become the basis for cuentapropista identity. As Espeland observes in another context, law can act as a “mediating structure that can potentially transform the identity and interests of the group it brings together” (2001:431). It is this relational shift that, more than economic status or capitalist mentality, distinguishes trabajadores por cuenta propia from the rest of the populace and provides the basis for a new sense of group identity outside the socialist mainstream.
As Jatar-Hausmann illustrates, this “new breed” of workers is characterized by an unprecedented autonomy within the Cuban labor market. The Malecón Market vendors frequently cite their newfound independence as one of the greatest advantages of the shift to self-employment from the state sector. The ability to set their own schedule and to see the fruits of their labor is a frequently recurring theme. “We're our own masters,” Maribel comments:
Despite the regulations we have, we're our own masters because you can get up at the hour that you want … I come if I want, take vacation when I want … I don't have to wait for my colleagues to take vacation—when I want to take them, I take them, I go where I want. You understand? And we really obtain the fruits of our own effort. If we push ourselves more, we gain more. If we push ourselves less, we gain less. The difference is that the rest of the workers [in the state sector] don't have this [incentive]. Push yourself more or less, you almost always get the same. You have to establish goals in life, depending on what you obtain (Personal communication, Malecón Market, February 2005).
Like Jorge, Maribel finds great satisfaction in the increased self-reliance and decisionmaking that trabajo por cuenta propia allows her. As opposed to the “government mentality” she says is ubiquitous in the state sector, self-employment allows her to determine her own goals and the strategies she will use to achieve them. Significantly, however, Maribel's change in viewpoint goes beyond the personal; participating in private work has also led her to redefine what makes a “good” worker more generally:
I think that state work should also depend on the effort that you put in—not having a rigid salary structure for all workers. Depending on the effort that you put in, the amount of work that you want to do. I think this would raise people's enthusiasm to work in order to obtain better results and at the same time better remuneration—people would be able to have the work that they want. Just like we do here. We push ourselves and so can the rest of the population …. It would also be good for the government because they can gain with this (Personal communication, Malecón Market, February 2005).
Although the government has, in fact, incorporated material incentives into a new business model for some state enterprises—known as el perfeccionamiento empresarial—this shift toward independence and personal accountability goes to the heart of the state monopoly on employment and one of the most important sources of state power.
It is important to note, however, that not all cuentapropistas express the same sense of freedom as the Malecón craftsmen. Barbara, for example, was an economist in the sugar industry before obtaining a cuentapropista license to first sell pizzas and then to rent out an apartment in her home to tourists. Commenting that she feels tied down because she must constantly take care of clients, watch out for inspectors, and obtain food—frequently from black market vendors selling door to door—Barbara sometimes longs for her old profession. “If you could live from [state] work,” she comments, “it would be better. Because you have your work for eight hours a day, or your studies or whatever. But all this with the house is difficult. You have to be paying attention 24 hours a day” (Personal communication, Barbara's home, Havana, February 2005). Rachel, Alejandro's wife, similarly expresses a sense of being trapped inside her home as a result of trabajo por cuenta propia. Rachel is not a licensed cuentapropista, but she helps Alejandro produce, in contravention of the regulations, the papier-mâché objects that Alejandro sells. In recent years Rachel has begun to long for her old job as a teacher. As she puts it, “It's not easy. Here you're like a slave. If you work for the state you have a fixed schedule. You have your weekends free, or you spend them doing something else like reading. But I'm always here working, working, working. I know that I have to do it, but really, I'm exhausted with this” (Personal communication, Rachel's home, Havana, February 2005). Rachel misses being in the middle of things as a teacher—running to meetings, dealing with students, meeting with parents—and appears to feel isolated by her work in the home. At the same time, it is likely that if Rachel were working in the state sector in the current economy, she would spend all her available free time engaging in some kind of illegal or informal work in order to gain extra income and would have even less leisure time than she currently has.
Rachel's and Barbara's comments indicate not only that the degree of independence enjoyed by self-employed workers may vary by activity, but also that there is an important gender dimension to the benefits of cuentapropismo. While certain self-employed activities may enjoy greater autonomy and mobility, such as vending to tourists or driving a taxi, these activities tend to be dominated by men. By contrast, anecdotal evidence suggests that cuentapropista businesses that occur within the home, such as renting a room to tourists, selling snacks from a cafeteria on the front doorstep, or running a hairdressing salon, are overwhelmingly run by women. Female cuentapropistas may therefore be much less likely to enjoy the freedom and flexibility that their male counterparts do.Footnote 15
Similarly, some female vendors complain that they suffer a disadvantage as cuentapropistas because they do not receive the same state benefits as do other working women. Specifically, female cuentapropistas may not enroll their children in the free day care services, or círculo infantíl, provided to working women in Cuba. Rachel speculates that this is because the state does not consider cuentapropismo to be “real work,” but rather an activity undertaken by retired persons, the unemployed, housewives, and others on the margins of the labor market. As such, people working in the self-employed sector should not need to avail themselves of services that are designed for workers, such as subsidized day care. At the same time, it is illegal for Cubans to pay privately for child care by employing a babysitter or nanny. Thus while some cuentapropistas may rely on a family member for child care, many are caught in a dilemma. This catch-22 has been brought to the attention of the union representing the Malecón vendors, and union representatives have negotiated on behalf of individual vendors in the market to secure public child care. No sectorwide policy has thus far been developed, however. Women entering cuentapropismo are thus caught in the contradiction that the work they have undertaken to provide for their families disentitles them to the key welfare services of a socialist state.Footnote 16 It is a contradiction that arises, at least in the mind of some, from the fact that the state does not define self-employment as real work, even though it functions this way.
The gendered dimensions of cuentapropsimo, however, does not obviate the fact that cuentapropistas, both women and men, enjoy an independence of decisionmaking that is rarely seen in the state sector. If power is the ability to mobilize individuals' concerted activities (D. Reference SmithSmith 1990:80), the development of cuentapropismo represents a marked challenge to the Cuban state's control over labor, economic activity, and, to a certain extent, popular ideas about what makes a productive citizen. Once removed from the centralized state system, furthermore, cuentapropistas are rapidly developing their own networks of social and economic relations outside of state-controlled venues. Alejandro and his family, for example, sometimes rent a beach house in the summer since they no longer have access to state-subsidized holidays. The woman they rent the house from is also a licensed cuentapropista, and the transportation they use is licensed taxi drivers.Footnote 17 What has therefore become increasingly evident, as Martin Romero and Capote González argue, is that cuentapropistas are developing “a whole range of flexible options permitting each individual to structure his or her own [life-]strategies and, as a result, to continually readjust what the [social contract] has to offer” (Reference Martin Romero and Capote GonzálezMartin Romero & Capote González 1998:80; translation by author). As a result, cuentapropistas are consciously experimenting with new models not only of private economic activity, but of private social activity as well.
Of course, cuentapropistas are not the only Cubans to engage in private work, and a far greater number of Cubans are involved in informal or black market activities.Footnote 18 Yet ironically, the state's authorization of self-employment may create a situation of even greater ambivalence for cuentapropistas than for those who engage in illegal work. While black marketeers can claim that their illegal wheeling and dealing is more a matter of survival than of ideology, cuentapropistas have greater difficulty reconciling their official, “legitimate” activity with membership in a socialist state. Recognizing the liminality of cuentapropistas' structural position—one that is ideologically threatening in part because it is legally authorized—helps illuminate why they are regarded with suspicion by the Cuban government. As legally authorized private, for-profit workers, cuentapropistas throw into confusion the ideologically clear-cut categories of “socialism” and “capitalism.” Adopting the language of Mary Douglas, cuentapropistas transgress “the internal lines” of the socialist system, thereby becoming a “social pollutant” (Reference DouglasDouglas 1966:122).
The legalization of self-employment thus creates the paradoxical question of whether cuentapropistas can claim to be “socialist citizens.” Alejandro suggests that the answer lies in cuentapropistas' contributions to the everyday functioning of their country:
We're bringing in a lot of money to the country, to the government. Plus services that the government can't provide. If the private farmers' market [agropecuario] closes, where will people find things to eat? And if they stop the taxi drivers, how will people move around Havana? Or if they stop the shoe repairmen, who will repair the shoes? The trabajador por cuenta propia resolves many problems for the population that the government just can't provide for the moment (Personal communication, Alejandro's home, Havana, August 1999).
Alejandro thus emphasizes not only the financial benefit that cuentapropistas bring—which may, after all, continue to be viewed as suspect in a socialist state—but also their key role in facilitating the day-to-day functioning of the country. This is an imperfect answer, however, since it is through private, profit-making activity antithetical to the socialist paradigm that cuentapropistas are able to make this contribution. Yet it illustrates both the strength and the vulnerability of cuentapropistas as they straddle the socialist past and an uncertain future.
The Legal Regulation of Cuentapropismo
While cuentapropistas are broadening the scope of personal autonomy, they are not by any means lawless; by strictly regulating income, materials, hours of operation, and other work conditions, the government seeks to reassert some control over cuentapropistas. In March 2001, for example, the government released orientaciones (legally binding guidelines or regulations), which, among other requirements, oblige cuentapropistas to conduct business out of their own homes or designated markets (they cannot, in other words, rent a space that may have better commercial prospects), register their earnings and expenses with the Oficina de Trabajo por Cuenta Propia, buy their primary materials from assigned government stores, and so on. While some of the regulations aim at ensuring clean and hygienic workplaces, others prohibit cuentapropistas from forming cooperatives, contracting out work, or creating any kind of collective organization of production.Footnote 19 Such strict regulations have taken their toll, and there are now just over 100,000 registered cuentapropistas on the island—about half as many as there were in 1997 (The Economist, 16 October 2004, p. 33). The Ministry of Labor, which is in charge of allocating licenses, appears to have stopped issuing new licenses in 1998 or 1999, and thus cuentapropistas who drop out of the market are not replaced.
Where cuentapropistas express greatest frustration, however, is where legal regulation appears to be deliberately irrational, often pushing them into violating the law. Because cuentapropistas are viewed as a mal necesario (necessary evil), Pérez García explains, the state has taken an increasing number of steps to restrict their activities, to the point where “the relationship between the state and the cuentapropistas hasn't been one of facilitating cuentapropismo, but rather of impeding it.” As a result, “for [cuentapropistas] to carry out their activities, at certain moments in their work—sometimes at many moments—they have to act illegally” (Personal communication, February 2005). For example, strict rules limit where self-employed workers can acquire the materials used in their services—whether it be paint, clay, textiles, gasoline, or shampoo. Cuentapropistas are required to prove that all materials were acquired legally, usually from state-run stores, and inspectors frequently request receipts. However, materials in state stores are usually very expensive and of poor quality, if they exist at all. Cuentapropistas are thus faced with buying materials on the black market, thereby breaking the law, or going out of business. As Maribel explains,
Acquiring materials is getting more and more difficult. Because not only do they restrict where we can acquire materials, but they also don't help us [to buy them legally]. We have to buy materials through them, but if they don't have them, you can imagine, we are obliged to break the rules (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
The more irrational the regulations appear to cuentapropistas, the more justified they feel in breaking them—although they must still be careful of being caught—and the less they respect the state that seems to want to impede, rather than facilitate, legal behavior. As Ewick and Silbey suggest, the seeming arbitrariness of law undermines legal authority by reversing “the direction of legitimation” between power and law. Rather than viewing law's authority as derived from some higher source of morality, for cuentapropistas law sometimes simply becomes the “power of the powerful,” an arbitrary and unpredictable exercise of the coercive force of the state (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1347).
Yet despite such experiences, cuentapropistas are not “anti-law,” and many of the orientaciones that structure legal self-employment appear to them to be reasonable and valuable. Majela, who taught technical drawing in a faculty of engineering before obtaining a license to sell leather goods in the Malecón Market in 1996, suggests that some regulations are for the good of the vendors themselves:
Sometimes it's really to do with us. They've told us now that we have to be here before 9:30 in the morning to put up our stalls. But we were the ones at fault. Not me, because I'm always here early, but there were people arriving at 11 a.m. or 12 p.m. Then they'd have all their things in the passage, all their bags in the middle of the passage in the way of other sales. So this rule was for our own benefit …. They passed the law because everyone was arriving late, there were vendors who were fighting because of the blocked passageways. … When they tell us we have to be here before 9:30 a.m. and people complain, it's because they don't realize that we ourselves are a part of this (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
Majela's description of law as a benign means of conflict resolution supports Ewick and Silbey's observation that in narratives about the law, legal authority is often valued for its objectivity as well as for its ability to prevent or resolve the inevitability of conflict (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1347). But cuentapropistas may also view the basis for law's authority in another source: the benevolence of the socialist state. As Barbara comments, the government creates new regulations “as they gain experience.”“They change something every year,” she observes, “as a result of the problems that have occurred—what occurred last year with the tourists, and so forth” (Personal communication, Barbara's home, Havana, February 2005). Barbara seems to express an almost fraternal relationship to the state, forgiving government policy makers for their mistakes and recognizing that it is, in a sense, “only human” to learn from past experience. This reification and personalization of the state may be a result of the strong identification of the Cuban government with its powerful, charismatic, and seemingly omnipresent leader.
Rules protecting the health and welfare of the Cuban public may garner even more support among cuentapropistas. For example, Barbara notes with approval a recent regulation prohibiting the owners of casas particulares from renting a room for less than 24 hours, an obvious attempt to prevent the growth of prostitution and sex tourism. Similarly, a recent law against drug trafficking provides that the owner of a casa particular can be criminally prosecuted—and have the house confiscated—if it is found that he or she knowingly rented a room to someone possessing or trafficking in drugs (Law Decree No. 232, issued January 2003). Barbara seems comfortable with this provision, even though there is a risk that an innocent homeowner may be wrongfully arrested:
They have to investigate, because here, you know, the movement against drugs is very strong and organized. So from this point of view I don't see it as a bad thing [that they investigate]; we have to because young people are starting to take drugs and I don't want anyone to end up in this, you understand? (Personal communication, Barbara's home, Havana, February 2005).
Laws designed to protect the public good—particularly against moral corruption by tourists—may therefore meet with widespread support, even where it means a potential loss in profit. The fact that cuentapropistas are experimenting with private, individualized forms of economic activity does not, therefore, mean that they no longer view themselves as members of a wider social or national collective for which they maintain some responsibility.
Barbara and Majela's comments indicate an ambivalent relationship to the state. While on the one hand they decry the use of legal regulation to restrict and impede their activities, cuentapropistas continue to respect and, more important, presume the state's right to regulate in certain circumstances. Such a presumption contributes to the hegemonic power of the state and the relationship between state power and law. Yet at the same time, what constitutes “the public good” and who gets to determine its parameters may be a matter of decreasing consensus. While many cuentapropistas may support a rule preventing a tourist from dating a Cuban under age 15, for example, there may be much less agreement about the “social benefit” of rules designed to prevent increases in income inequality within the population. Similarly, rules established by the government to prevent Cubans from buying electronic equipment such as microwaves and VCRs in order to control energy consumption may be viewed as the prerogative of government by some, and oppressive by others—particularly those who have the financial means, but not the opportunity, to purchase such goods. The state's authority to foster particular visions of the social good through legal regulation may therefore be increasingly ineffectual. This is particularly true as alternative lifestyles and models of governance are transmitted through European and North American media, conversations with tourists, and the increasing number of Cuban emigrants.
Cuentapropistas have also, in some cases, been able to negotiate with state officials to modify legal obligations. For example, cuentapropista artisans are not allowed to employ assistants (ayudantes). The vendors in the Malecón Market find this particularly difficult because they are tied to their market stalls all day long, unable to take a break to go for lunch, to the washroom, or to step out of the hot sun. Many artisans in the Malecón Market have therefore unofficially hired assistants—sometimes a family member or another artisan who would have liked to be a cuentapropista but was unable to obtain a license. With the help of the union, the cuentapropistas have come to an implicit understanding with the market administrator—a state employee charged with looking after the day-to-day operations of the market—allowing them to hire assistants. When state inspectors catch assistants in the marketplace, the administrator or one of his or her assistants will often step in to smooth things over and prevent the inspector from imposing a fine. While it is unclear whether other cuentapropistas have been able to come to similar compromises—and it is unlikely that the government will legalize the practice—this arrangement demonstrates the ways in which cuentapropistas have been able to actively shape the law, rather than simply live within its confines.Footnote 20 Through such negotiations, the relationship of power between the cuentapropistas and the state remains in flux. As Ewick and Silbey point out,
Power … is exercised by drawing upon the symbols, practices, statuses, and privileges that have become habitual in social structures. Although structures … often confront us as external and coercive, they are more accurately understood as emergent features of social transactions, (re)produced with each repetitive act and transformed with each innovation or unfaithful repetition” (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1334).
Unionization and the Value of Legal Legitimacy
Given the value that cuentapropistas attach to their independence, it is perhaps surprising that the Malecón Market vendors voted to join a national union in 2004.Footnote 21 State workers in Cuba are organized into sectorwide national unions. Although Cuban unions have, historically, played a role in protecting individual workers at disciplinary hearings or in conflicts with management, critics have argued that they are, fundamentally, adjuncts of the state and function to subjugate workers' rights to the interests of the state (Reference LeivaLeiva 2000:481). Yet it is, arguably, precisely the unions' close relationship to the state that makes them attractive to cuentapropistas. While self-employed workers are proud of their position outside of the state, they are also keenly aware of the threat this independence poses to the government, and thus of the vulnerability of their work sector. As Maribel explains,
It's completely uncertain … We imagine … that we're a stable sector, because we don't cost anything [to the state] and we bring a lot—in dollars and in national pesos. But at the same time, we're a privileged sector because we've obtained independence with our work … and that brings advantages and disadvantages. Because when we've become too privileged relative to the rest of the population, we could disappear any minute. Because really, it seems to me that the government doesn't really look at what we contribute. If we compare ourselves to the rest of the population—the contribution, the revenue, what we provide to tourists—it's a lot (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
Maribel recognizes the threat posed by an independent workforce to the state. At the same time, however, her observations highlight the consternation that many cuentapropistas express that they do not receive more recognition for the economic benefits they bring. Pérez García similarly argues that despite the controversy surrounding cuentapropismo, in many cases the work sector has only reaffirmed a strong work ethic. While some state workers “simply go to work in a factory to rob,” Pérez García points out, there are many cuentapropistas “who are educating their children about sacrifice and the value of hard work …. [Cuentapropistas] are earning money with the sweat of their brow” (Personal communication, Havana, February 2005). The vilification of cuentapropistas, Pérez García concludes, may thus create a deformation in popular understandings of a good work ethic.
Like Maribel, Majela also expresses concern about the uncertainty of trabajo por cuenta propía. Despite the contribution made by self-employed workers to the national economy, Majela remains keenly aware that in the eyes of the government, self-employment is a “necessary evil.” Moreover, because cuentapropismo originated in the economic crisis, she worries that the government may decide to close the work sector as soon as the economy recuperates:
This is like anything else—today we're here and tomorrow self-employment is over, and we have to find a place for ourselves [in the state sector.] This work isn't secure, we're not secure. [Self-employment] arose because of the special period, the lack of employment …. We've brought benefits—we contribute a lot to the state. But just as quickly as this appeared, it could disappear. It appeared at a specific moment and because of a specific set of conditions in the country. If this situation ends, well, I assume we could also disappear (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
Alejandro similarly ties the fate of self-employment to the vagaries of the economy. “The country will recuperate,” he observes, “or rather, it is recuperating …. So it could be that tomorrow they tell us that we can't do this anymore.” Majela and Alejandro's comments illustrate not only the deep uncertainty that underlies self-employment, but also their profound awareness that they are living through a particular historical phase that has demanded radical—and quite possibly temporary—measures.
While cuentapropistas may value the independence they enjoy in determining their work conditions, therefore, they are also aware that this independence is self-defeating if it means that the government will continue to view them with hostility. Unionization can mitigate the threat of cuentapropismo by reincorporating self-employed workers back into the state through labor regulation. As Maribel explains,
At a minimum [unionization] incorporates us into the rest of society. Now we're no longer an isolated society …. We're incorporated, regardless of whether we work in the private sector and we have private earnings …. We want to be independent workers, but not independent in spirit (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
Unionization may therefore provide cuentapropistas with an important mantle of legitimacy, and thus with an added degree of security. It also provides cuentapropistas with valuable symbolic capital. As members of the union, cuentapropistas are no longer outliers in the system but can instead claim full membership in the Cuban state—without giving up their autonomy and material benefits. In this sense, the distinction that Maribel makes between being independent workers and being independent “in spirit” is a significant one, because it indicates a desire to be viewed as part of the same “spirit,” or social fabric, as the rest of Cuban society, even if their work habits differ from those of state workers.
As members of a union, cuentapropistas have been able to further demonstrate their social citizenship through the frequent collections that the union takes up for charitable and Revolutionary causes. Rachel, Alejandro's wife, points to these contributions proudly, if with some bitterness about the state's failure to recognize the contributions made by cuentapropistas:
They don't give trabajo por cuenta propia the value it really deserves …. The artisan—or the cuentapropista—is really contributing to the state! Alejandro, for examples, pays the MTT [local militia].Footnote 22 He helps to buy them uniforms, arms, whatever else they need. Alejandro gives money to cancer hospitals where there are sick children. He helps to collect money for the union. And he has to pay 45 pesos every time he wants to sell [to rent his spot in the market] and $159 a month. There are people in society who do nothing at all—so why don't they give them a hard time? (Personal communication, Alejandro and Rachel's home, Havana, February 2005).
Barbara similarly argues that in comparison to the many Cubans who participate in illegal or black market activities, cuentapropismo is at least a legal form of earning money. While she would prefer to return to the quieter lifestyle of state employment, she explains, “You do this because you have to; because life is so expensive and you have to get the money from somewhere. I started in cuentapropismo because it's at least an honorable way of making money, no?” (Personal communication, Barbara's home, Havana, February 2005). While the Cuban government may view cuentapropistas as potential agents of American interests, most cuentapropistas would likely be shocked by such a suggestion. Through union participation, cuentapropistas can counter the image of the parasitic, exploitative capitalist by making financial contributions to state-approved, socially valuable causes.
The Cuban government appears to have come to a similar conclusion that through unionization the government can retain the economic benefits of self-employmentFootnote 23 while reasserting some control over self-employed workers. At its national conference in 2005, the Congreso de Trabajadores Cubano (National Congress of Workers, or CTC), which coordinates the national unions and represents workers' interests to the national government, recognized that cuentapropistas are now a “substantial entity”Footnote 24 and announced a campaign to invite self-employed workers to join the national unions. Magalys, an older cuentapropista in the Malecón Market and the main representative of the Malecón vendors to the Union de Industría Lígera,Footnote 25 suggests that the government may be waiting until the private sector is organized—i.e., unionized—before it permits new licenses:
What happened was that to allow us to organize ourselves they stopped allowing new licenses. Right now they aren't giving out new licenses in order to say to people: “Stop. Let's get organized.” And after everything's organized, it will open up again …. So that when new people enter [the sector], they enter into something organized (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
While it is unclear whether cuentapropismo will be allowed to grow again after unionization is complete, Magalys's comments affirm the idea that the government is seeking to integrate cuentapropistas into the state sector. Cuentapropistas are being invited to join either the union most related to their work activity or physically closest to their home. Noticeably, no suggestion has been made of creating a “cuentapropista union,” which would allow self-employed workers to pool economic power and to develop—or solidify—a sense of common identity and purpose. Indeed, cuentapropistas are strictly prohibited from forming cooperatives or associations. It is unclear how many cuentapropistas have decided to take up the invitation to join a union, although Barbara reports that the idea was discussed and rejected at a recent meeting of cuentapropistas who are licensed to rent rooms.
Besides these important symbolic gains, unionization has also brought small but concrete improvements to the marketplace, particularly to the physical work conditions. For example, vendors used to rent space in local private homes to store their merchandise overnight. When the government recently banned this practice,Footnote 26 the vendors were left without any choice but to haul their merchandise home with them, often over a considerable distance. At the cuentapropistas' instigation, the union negotiated with the market administration to allocate a small warehouse next to the marketplace to the vendors so that they may store their products close by. As Magalys explains,
At times, the laws of the administration [of the market] are a little rigid. So the union is the organization that can persuade the administration in some areas …. Through the mediation of the union we were able to increase the space of the marketplace and now within the market itself we have our own warehouse (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, February 2005).
Similarly, as previously discussed, the union was able to negotiate a tacit agreement with market administrators to allow the vendors to hire assistants. Both of these changes made a significant difference to the market vendors' daily work and indicate that at least some officials within the state are sympathetic to the difficulties that constrain cuentapropistas. Rather than functioning purely to enforce state regulation and to restrict cuentapropistas' activities, union officials have in fact attempted to modify some of the paradoxes of government regulation—creating, where possible, unofficial compromises or alternate avenues to facilitate day-to-day operations. The fact that such assistance is limited—that union officials will not, for example, challenge the government on some of the more significant restrictions on cuentapropista activity or advocate for large-scale reform—illustrates that union officials experience their own ambivalence about the place of private activity in the economy and the role of market mechanisms in Cuba's future.
Law and Identity in Transitional Societies
As the comments of Alejandro, Maribel, Barbara, and others make clear, cuentapropistas cannot easily be cast in an ideological mold. While cuentapropistas themselves argue that their existence provides crucial support to the continuation of the socialist state, it is clear that their activities also amount to an expansion of spheres of individual autonomy and alternate social and economic networks that circumvent official state avenues. In so doing, cuentapropistas are developing new conceptions of what it means to be a productive worker in Cuban society and what kind of relationship workers will have with the state. For a country that places labor at the very center of its national and ideological identity, the impact of such changes on fundamental questions of citizenship and community are profound. By citizenship, I refer not so much to the narrower definition of citizenship as legal status, but to the broader concept of citizenship as “an expression of one's membership in a political community.” (Reference Kymlicka and NormanKymlicka & Norman 1994:369) As subjectivities change and citizenship is reconceptualized, increased pressure is brought to bear on the structures of governmental power, leading to the further evolution of new governance regimes. In other words, changes in popular understandings of citizenship bring about further changes in models of governance and exert an important influence on the evolving shape and nature of new governmental authorities.
The renegotiation of work thus has implications far beyond the day-to-day lives of cuentapropistas themselves, and it poses a significant challenge to socialist orthodoxy. In the renegotiation of social, political, and economic power during periods of dramatic change, underlying ideas about who is a productive member of society become a key battleground. This insight into the relationship between law, work, and identity during transitional periods helps complicate the conventional “transition paradigm,” in which law is represented as an autonomous force acting upon society, rather than as a product of contestation and negotiation among individuals, officials, and state institutions. As a close examination of trabajo por cuenta propia makes clear, such a unidimensional, externalized account fails to account for the powerful ways in which law opens up spaces for new kinds of economic, political, and social activity, as well as the consequences that this may have for the renegotiation of political and social relations. This process of renegotiation has important bearing on the character and scope of a transition.
A number of law and society theorists have addressed this constitutive role of law in the process of identity formation, highlighting the way in which law exists in society as a negotiation between citizen and state (Reference EllicksonEllickson 1991; Reference EngelEngel 2003; Reference EspelandEspeland 1994, Reference Espeland1998, Reference Espeland2001; Ewick & Silbey 1998). Through its functions of categorization and legitimization, law delineates how individuals and communities are valued and what kinds of activities and beliefs are rewarded. Law channels interactions with, or challenges to, the state, and delimits at what point, or under what conditions, those interactions will no longer be supported. Yet law is also regularly appropriated, manipulated, and resisted by individuals and communities (Reference EspelandEspeland 1994, Reference Espeland1998, Reference Espeland2001) who mobilize to formally change legal codes or develop alternative practices that bypass formal law altogether (Reference EllicksonEllickson 1991). In struggles to define the boundaries of community or individual identity, law becomes not only a powerful tool of legitimization, but also an integral part of the frame around which identity is constructed.
The role of law in the construction of avenues for social participation and conceptions of citizenship is particularly important in the context of the socialist state, given that a central goal of the socialist project is not only to remake the economic and political character of the state, but also to reconstruct the socialist citizen at the core of the new regime. Yet the insights of law and society theorists do not map onto socialist states with perfect precision. One of the most important moves by legal sociologists has been the realization that the production of legality is not limited to formal legal institutions, or to the official legal actors who populate them. In recognizing the pervasiveness of law, legal sociologists remind us that law is manifested in the most mundane interactions of everyday life, affecting in often invisible or unconscious ways how we structure our lives and define our relationships. Reference SaratSarat (1990:344), for example, illustrates how the welfare poor in the United States experience law almost viscerally because of the way in which their lives are organized around a heavily regimented legal bureaucracy. By comparison with other groups in society who would never expect officials to claim jurisdiction over “private” areas of their lives, welfare recipients are caught in a “web of law.” For citizens of socialist societies, however, the power of law to shape the minutiae of daily existence, or the ability of state officials to exercise this power, may come as little surprise. The pervasiveness of the law may simply be viewed as an extension of the revolutionary character of the state, which requires a unified, total commitment. (For those who view the socialist project as inherently repressive, the authoritarian operation of law is perhaps even more apparent).
In line with Sarat, Ewick and Silbey observe that in modern American society, “people generally confront legal authority within impersonal, rule-governed, functionally organized hierarchies” (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1347). In narratives of resistance, Ewick and Silbey comment, Americans “emplot law as a powerful force, describe themselves as a protagonist up against this force, and present some action that avoided or overcame, if only temporarily, this situation of relative powerlessness” (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 2003:1345). By contrast, cuentapropistas do not paint themselves in such heroic colors; rather, their comments reflect a conception of the law as fully embedded in the fabric of everyday life. Law is not something that is encountered, conquered, and vanquished, but maneuvred and negotiated through ordinary acts. In this narrative structure, cuentapropistas are neither heroes nor victims (nor socialists, nor capitalists), but individuals seeking to wend their way through the law in order to obtain the basic necessities of life.
Despite this need to “tailor” the insights of law and society to the socialist context, a sociolegal approach can enrich our understanding of the constitutive role of law in transitional periods significantly—helping the field to move beyond, for example, asking simply what role legal institutions can play in establishing democratic governance. Transition theory, as some critics have pointed out (Reference Bridger and PineBridger & Pine 1998; Reference VerderyVerdery 1997; Reference KubicekKubicek 2004:13–6), has been tainted with a kind of Cold War triumphalism that posits transition as a progressive set of stages along a unidirectional path from communism to capitalism. Such teleological and ahistorical thinking ignores the impact that changing conceptions of citizenship and state may have on the evolution of the transition itself, and on the development of new models of governance.Footnote 27 The transition literature has largely, of course, come out of the particular social, political, and geographic context of the end of communism in Eastern Europe. Cuba is clearly not “postcommunist,” and the transition literature can thus only be applied in a general way to the Cuban case. Yet the tendency to frame transition analyses in highly politicized terms is particularly strong in Cuban studies; in the ongoing political battle between the United States and Cuba, U.S. foreign policy interests, as well as the interests of many in the Cuban American community, have been particularly influential in polarizing the terms of debate.
Analyses of societies “in transition” may therefore be greatly enriched by the recognition that in the negotiation between citizen and state, law has a profound influence on individual and group identity. Law, as Espeland observes, “not only represents the interests of some group, or even constructs their interests but also, simultaneously and often implicitly, constructs the subject who is holding those interests” (Reference EspelandEspeland 1994:1171). In understanding the relationship between law and identity in the socialist context, the insight of governmentality theorists that modes of conduct, knowledge, and agency are not suppressed by government but are cultivated in “ways that are aligned to specific governmental aims” (Reference ValverdeValverde et al. 1999:4) is particularly useful. Different ideological systems will produce different subjectivities and, by extension, different conceptions of citizenship, as individuals are conditioned by particular structures of power. Where most transition studies take a “top-down” approach, focusing on the role of law in the macrostructure of governance, the concept of governmentality draws attention to the ways in which the very conception of citizenship is reconstructed during periods of profound economic and political transformation. Indeed, the “success” of a transition—the extent to which it establishes a new, stable model of governance—depends not only on its authorization of new modes of conduct, knowledge, and morality (as well as its stigmatization of old modes), but also on its ability to remake subjectivities.Footnote 28
As the focus on cuentapropismo illustrates, workplaces are a particularly significant site of governance and identity formation. The bond between individual and workplace, Martin Romero and Capote González, observe,
generates a set of relations which are incorporated, as part of the individual's experiences, into the existence of the person and, as such, into his or her subjective internal world …. Through this bond, people construct a form of existence which converts employment into a social condition necessary for self-realization (1998:81; translated by author).
By structuring workers' time, activities, aspirations, economic remuneration, and social interactions, laws governing work sites play a formative role in conditioning the interests and desires of workers to align with those of the employer and the state (Reference RoseRose 1999:157). In socialist societies, the link between work, governmental power, and the construction of citizenship is particularly clear because of the state's monopoly over employment and its ideological position as the voice of the workers. The legitimacy of the state depends, at least rhetorically, on its identification with workers' interests, and in a “workers' state” workers are presumed to share in state policies encouraging productivity and efficiency. The state, moreover, has direct control over work sites to ensure the implementation of these policies. The authoritarianism of socialist states, as well as their ideological formation, thus reinforce the importance of work sites as a “governable space” (Reference RoseRose 1999:31) for the dissemination of state power and the construction of citizenship. As Martin Romero and Capote González argue, “In the Cuban case, more then any other, inclusion in the program of employment … is a form of incorporating [individuals] into the sociopolitical project and of fostering proactive participation in the creation of the base and the socio-political system” (1998:82; translated by author).
The central role of work in the construction of citizenship makes work a particularly important factor in periods of transition. In postsocialist transitions in particular, new forms of property and modes of economic activity frequently come into existence that are completely antithetical to the outgoing regime. With the diversification of employment and forms of property typical of postsocialist economies, the individual no longer exists purely as a member of the collectivity and must begin to explore new spheres of individual decisionmaking and self-reliance. As Martin Romero and Capote González explain in the context of Cuba,
Society has been changing and we can only expect the individual to do the same. Indeed a new [social] pact is being formed in which none of the involved parties can maintain their previous positions. In the case of the individual, we must consider the implications of the changes that have occurred in his objective social position for his subjective reflection. Such changes may, in turn, lead to a new evaluation of his or her individuality in the new situation and to enhanced self-recognition under these new conditions (1998:80; translated by author).
The rise of market relations, in particular, requires workers in the new labor paradigm to assess a variety of state, informal, illegal, and private work options to develop strategies for economic survival—perhaps involving more than one work option—deal with new forms of property, and make independent decisions unnecessary under the socialist system. Such new levels of individual autonomy, risk-taking, and decisionmaking have implications far beyond the workplace, extending to other realms of social and family life, such as opening up opportunities for education, recreation, and material comfort that other Cubans may not enjoy.
In transitional societies, work—in both official discourse and day-to-day practice—thus becomes a battleground for the development of new governmental powers. Significantly, the contest to define what will constitute “work” and who will be a legitimate “worker” within the new socioeconomic model is itself constitutive of the transitional period. As Pérez García observes, “Work, as the backbone of society, is not only impacted [by external factors], it also produces them, converting itself, together with the crisis and the reforms, into a cause of the transformations occurring in the social structure” (2004:148; translated by author). As worker subjectivities are reconstructed to encompass a growing range of individual choices and opportunities, new ideas evolve about who is a productive member of society and how citizen-state relationships should be mediated. This, in turn, has an impact on how new models of governance are envisioned and within what parameters. Changing conceptions of work and worker are thus themselves inextricably tied to shifting notions of citizenship and to the evolution of new models of governance.
Conclusion: The View From the Inside—Is There Such a Thing as a Cuentapropista Identity?
Sarat relates how a welfare client reminded him “that the welfare poor are not a natural social group. They neither share a distinctive background nor common ties of sentiment; they vary greatly in their life situations, their ability to survive without public assistance, and their disposition to do so” (1990:348). In much the same way, cuentapropistas were not a preexisting community of people that the Cuban government “acted upon” through legal regulation, and the strong social cohesion that has formed around the legalization of self-employment does not necessarily reflect a coherent or consistent internal identification among self-employed workers. By focusing too closely on how government rationalities shape cuentapropistas' conduct, we may therefore miss some of the more complex intersubjective dimensions of the construction of a cuentapropista identity. For example, how do cuentapropistas relate to terms such as socialist and capitalist, and how conscious are they of the ways in which their presence is viewed by the Cuban government and the outside world? More broadly, how are images of the “good citizen” constructed, and how do they get performed “on the ground?” How do zones such as “work” become sites for the construction of “the citizen,” and how are certain kinds of economic behavior rewarded and legitimated? What is the influence of internal and external politics on the propagation of certain conceptions of citizenship? How do conceptualizations of state and citizen change in periods of profound economic and political transformation, and what influence do such changes have on the possibility for, and character of, transition itself?
These questions bring us back, in effect, to the statement with which we began. When Alejandro jokes that maybe tomorrow he'll “turn capitalist” but today he's staying home, how is he positioning himself in relation to capitalist and socialist work paradigms, and what mix of resistance and acceptance does he signal toward a larger cuentapropista group identity? At first glance, Alejandro appears to reject the capitalist label, expressing, through a combination of humor and irony, his awareness of the potency of the categorization and its importance in the ongoing dispute between Cuba and the United States. Indeed, implicit in Alejandro's comment is his understanding that regardless of his own self-conception, he will inevitably be viewed in relation to the figure of the capitalist and is better off explicitly positioning himself against it. By contrast to the common image in Cuba of capitalists as competitive, self-absorbed workaholics with little time for family or friends, Alejandro feels that his own relaxed attitude toward work and turning a profit is clear proof of his noncapitalist tendencies. Rather than being concerned about drawing ahead of his neighbors, Alejandro in fact uses his increased income to “buy” more leisure time for socializing with friends and family. Indeed, for Alejandro “capitalism” is incompatible with such Cuban cultural idiosyncrasies as sociability and spontaneity. Whether he views these characteristics as distinctly “socialist,” or not, Alejandro appeals to a broader set of values that are more public-minded than those he associates with the hyperindividualism of a market economy.
Yet despite Alejandro's attempts to distance himself rhetorically from the more negative capitalist stereotypes, the realities of his daily practice tell a different story, suggesting a second interpretation of his comment. While Alejandro may have chosen to “stay at home” today, he knows he has the potential to “turn capitalist” in the future, should such an adaptation be necessary materially, politically, or both. The ability to respond quickly and with ingenuity to changing economic circumstances is, Cubans boast, something of a national characteristic. Resolver is the operative verb, describing the combination of ingenuity, creativity, and energy required to “resolve” or obtain daily necessities. What Alejandro and the other cuentapropistas have further been able to accomplish, however, is to make a substantial living by resolving other people's needs, whether it be by supplying shoes or tourist knick-knacks.Footnote 29
Despite the obvious skill and business acumen that go into being a successful cuentapropista, however, Alejandro rejects any attempt to construct a general profile of self-employed workers, arguing, “There's no defined type. There are university graduates, professionals, workers, housewives, those who have never worked. There's no one definition of cuentapropista. There are all kinds, all kinds” (Personal communication, Alejandro and Rachel's home, Havana, August 1999). Businessman seems not to be a legitimate category, despite the fact that Alejandro has himself changed product types several times since quitting his job and is constantly planning new schemes (such as opening up a private health club), whose common feature is not craftsmanship so much as self-employment in the private sector. There is, then, an unresolved tension for Alejandro between a desire to distance himself from the image of the malevolent capitalist exploiting the labor of others, and pride in the contributions that cuentapropistas make and the modest material success that cuentapropismo has brought his family. In expressing both sentiments, Alejandro is not contradicting himself. Rather, he is asserting his ability to reject both the economic tyranny of capitalism and the bureaucratic tyranny of socialism to determine for himself the distribution of his labor and leisure time. Alejandro is clearly not unaffected by the underlying logic of either socialism or capitalism, but he is actively negotiating the host of economic and ideological contradictions that currently inform the cuentapropista work sector with his own particular blend of economic pragmatism, entrepreneurial spirit, and sense of humor.
Another way of understanding Alejandro's suggestion that he might “turn capitalist” is to examine what kinds of aspirations cuentapropistas articulate for their children. On the one hand, cuentapropistas express an almost universal desire to see their children obtain a university education. This may be a result of a continued sense that professional work is more prestigious or valuable than commerce, or a concern that cuentapropismo is only a provisional response to a historically specific problem. As Maribel comments, “Tomorrow the system will change. Being a professional will be valued again …. Cuentapropismo is necessary because of the economic crisis, I don't know how long into the future it will continue—it depends on history, on the changes that history brings” (Personal communication, Malecón Market, Havana, August 1999). Cuentapropistas do not, therefore, express any kind of explicit desire to see the growth of a “capitalist class” in Cuba, to which their children would be the natural inheritors.Footnote 30 At the same time, however, many recognize that the Cuban economy has gone through irrevocable changes from which their children are well-positioned to benefit. Thus while Alejandro himself may not “turn capitalist” tomorrow, his children—in part as a result of his efforts—will have a much greater ability to take advantage of new opportunities to work in profit-making enterprises.
While cuentapropistas frequently resist defining themselves in terms of a larger occupational identity—particularly one defined in relation to capitalism—they are equally clear that they are developing new skills and abilities that give them a particular independence—both economic and ideological—from traditional institutions of state power. In experimenting with new forms of property and profit-making, cuentapropistas are expanding spheres of individual autonomy and creating alternate social and economic networks that circumvent official state avenues. This renegotiation of work has implications far beyond the day-to-day lives of cuentapropistas themselves and poses a significant challenge to socialist orthodoxy and the Cuban government. No longer following in the footsteps of el hombre nuevo, the new Cuban worker is entrepreneurial, independent, guided by material as well as moral incentives, and self-motivated. Yet cuentapropistas are equally adamant that they are “full members” of Cuban society and in fact are making important contributions to the prosperity of the socialist state. Nor do they accept that they must be guided by stereotypical “capitalist” values, but hold up alternate culturally informed ideas about family and community. It is this duality—the challenge that cuentapropistas pose to the socialist paradigm, and their insistence that this challenge is in fact a contribution—that resonates with many “ordinary” Cubans and makes cuentapropistas a powerful actor in the Cuban landscape. In redefining what kind of work is considered productive and legitimate on the island, and therefore who is a valued worker, cuentapropistas are informing the scope and direction of a transition in Cuba and the evolution of new models of governance on the island.
