Angela Crumdy

ANGELA CRUMDY, then a graduate student at City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, New York, was awarded funding in April 2018 to aid research on ‘Education from the Margins: Black Women Educators in 20th and 21st Century Cuba,’ supervised by Dr. Dana-Ain Davis This study, is a feminist analysis of labor and uses social reproduction theory to better understand the lived experiences of women primary school educators in Cuba during the contemporary teacher shortage. Using a mixed method approach, the researcher argues that the experiences of Black women teachers in Cuba today are in many ways shaped by the colonial legacies of slavery and gender inequality, which the 1959 Revolution failed to rectify. Interlocutors expressed discontent in knowing that they performed essential (re)productive work for the sake of the nation while their capacities to fully participate were curtailed by long work hours and low pay. Teacher shortages are not specific to Cuba, however, this case is unique in that the 1990’s Special Period, a term used to refer to the economic turmoil triggered by the demise of the Soviet trading bloc, intensified race and class-based cleavages reminiscent of times prior to 1959 when racial segregation was common and social mobility was limited. Research findings will contribute to the anthropology of education and broaden scholars’ understanding of women’s labor practices in Latin America and the Caribbean.