Revolutionary medicine: The body as a battleground for socioeconomic development in Cuba (post-1959)

On January 1, 1959, the Cuban rebel army marched into Havana. Almost immediately the emphasis of the new government was on expanding and democratizing access to the public health system.  A plethora of state institutions, supported by an elaborate network of mass organizations, managed to exercise an unparalleled degree of authority in promoting various public health initiatives, such as decreasing infant mortality and detecting and containing infectious diseases. Simultaneously, these initiatives, reinforced by the state’s 1976 commitment to health care as a Constitutional right, were rooted in the underlying principles of the revolution. These principles suggest that attempts to restore the health of individuals, in the broadest sense, are also attempts to restore the health of society as a whole. This paper seeks to highlight two key aspects of Cuba’s “revolutionary medicine”: (1) how in the revolutionary context health became an important index of the larger social transformations associated with the socioeconomic development of Cuba, including the elimination of hunger, inadequate housing, discrimination, and reduction of exploitative labor practices; and, (2) the changing governmental apparatuses involved in delivering postrevolutionary health services and, in turn,  the changing relationships among citizens, government institutions, public associations, and the state. This changing individual-society-state dynamic represented a distinctive shift in the art of governing the island’s population, requiring the mobilization of a new armature of techniques and practices that set out to craft a socialist citizenry that was as explicitly political as it was corporeal.