Paper Short Abstract:

How does Cuba's growing population of licensed private entrepreneurs conceptualize and interpret their efforts to earn a living? I demonstrate how multiple historical meanings of labor coexist and intersect in today's Cuba, in a process characterized by both continuity and change.

Paper Abstract:

This paper investigates how the growing population of licensed private entrepreneurs in Cuba, commonly known as cuentapropistas, conceptualize and interpret their efforts to earn a living. Can “business” count as proper labor in a nation governed by a communist party? What constitutes a valuable worker? These questions have come up for debate in new ways in recent years in Cuba, as the government has opened the way for a legal private sector, transforming how citizens can legally make a living. This paper posits that the symbolic significance of “work” (trabajo) in Cuba is undergoing a period of flux, corresponding to the ongoing rebalancing of social forces on the island.

The dynamic nature of this situation is evident in the struggles of licensed entrepreneurs to define the meaning of their livelihood efforts on various fronts, both in relation to unlicensed hustlers and the state. Cuba’s licensed entrepreneurs invent new distinctions while simultaneously perpetuating established connotations of labor, insisting that they are in fact legitimate “workers”. While constituting the “non-state” economic sector in Cuba, these licensed entrepreneurs nonetheless assert their pride and labor value by emphasizing their connection to the state. Consequently, my paper challenges the notion of a Cuban “transition” where new market actors distinctly break away from a state-led economic system. Instead, I illustrate how multiple historical meanings coexist and intersect, and how even long-gone pasts of labor organization and representation give rise to social tensions, in a process characterized by both continuity and change.