Mavis was truly my Cuban sister. She was my hero. She was brave and strong and principled and funny and kind and when she walked into a room the room was better for it. When I was not with a group, I was with Mavis. And Mavis became my teacher. Sitting on the stool in her kitchen, she shared her stories of the Cuban countryside and fed me the dishes she learned from her mother in Palma Soriano. As ANAP’s Head of International relations, Mavis took my groups of visiting Canadian farmers under her protective wing in 2002 and ANAP remained our Cuban partner for almost 2 decades, sharing with the Canadians their success in cooperation and sustainable farming practices. A badge of honour created by the hard work of Mavis and her many colleagues in the agrarian reform movement that started back in 1961 when Mavis left the University to help Fidel deliver the promise of agrarian reform. Her stories of working in the countryside in Palma Soriano to convince peasant farmers that they were now the owners of their land and to come together under the umbrella of ANAP are enchanting (La Loca de Las Yagrumas) and humbling. Below is her moving prologue to that amazing book. Mavis our heart is proudly broken. You will remain our hero forever…

 

Mavis Alvarez. Prologue. La Loca de las Yagrumas   The First Agrarian Reform Law, passed in May of 1959, provided an immediate and clear demonstration of the radical nature of the Cuban Revolution and its determination to confront widespread exploitation and misery in the countryside. The stories presented in this book, based on first-hand experience, describe events and situations surrounding the implementation of the First Agrarian Law, and the dramatic impact this had on the customs, relationships and lives of those who suddenly found themselves immersed in profound social change.

 The construction of a functional institutional structure to assure fulfillment of the Revolution’s new agrarian policies required the efforts of many people with education or experience in the details of agriculture and politics. In fact, such people were scarce, particularly in the countryside, where our story unfolds. There was only one option: to appeal directly to the will of the men and women who lived in these countryside villages.

 In the midst of all this were we, the students, many of us awaiting the re-opening of universities and professional schools closed by the Batista dictatorship. Some, particularly those f

rom agronomy, economics and related disciplines and motivated by a deep commitment to social change, were drawn to the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, the cradle of the most radical changes to be carried out by our new Revolutionary government.

 At this stage in our lives, the raw experiences we encountered as we shouldered responsibilities and roles for which we were in no way prepared, molded us as surely as rivers form the landscape. Almost overnight, we learned to face realities that in other circumstances would have taken years to work through and assimilate. At times, what we built had to be destroyed and built again, traumatic evidence of lessons learned.  

By good fortune, during that historical moment, we had exceptional teachers: the intensity of daily life, the marvelous, unnamed men and women with whom we worked who will never be found in the accounts of heroic deeds, and their personal histories which we were privileged to share. This was the classroom that provided our most effective revolutionary lessons.

 Rural women, traditionally marginalized and generally excluded from participating in activities outside the domestic sphere, faced true personal challenges. This often resulted in internal scars and mutilated emotions as women joined (or decided not to join) an open, unlimited public space where they could (and must) become social subjects, exercising the rights and duties legally theirs as citizens.

Through personal histories we can recover those tense moments in the lives of rural women and the men related to them; short pieces of life-histories containing the inflection points of their destinies and their awareness of the need to grasp the unknown, the new, the tomorrow, even as they lived in yesterday.

 It was a quick and violent transition: from a time characterized by social prejudice, male domination and women’s servitude to the family, to a very different time when women were expected to make their own decisions, assume responsibilities, and create familial and social relations completely different from their previous experience.

The individual confrontation of rural women with the process of revolutionary change in Cuban society is a silent journey, a long struggle against the prejudices and expectations of the past. Many times, the unquestionable achievements in all aspects of human and social development attained by Cuba’s rural women overshadowed the high cost of personal suffering and fractured relationships paid in this persistent, day by day, push toward tomorrow.

 This book is an attempt to provide examples, to characterize situations which illustrate these vital experiences, and most importantly, celebrate the pioneering men and women of this long and unfinished struggle.

All of those who planted in our memory and consciousness so much truth, wonder, surprise, joys and sadness are co-authors of this slender volume where actual history seems like a story and stories are like history. All are genuine; nothing is made-up except a few names that I have changed for anonymity. The rest are pure memories of people with whom we shared innocence and inexperience, along with much, very much love. So much in fact, that it yet endures.