A Worker SeIf-Directed Enterprise in State Capitalist Cuba! The Case of Organopónico Vivero Alamar

Abstract

In June 2012, I had the pleasure of visiting Cuba for research and a conference—long before the dramatic turn of events with the United States that included the relaxation of the embargo that had been in place since the early 1960s and that was tightened in 1992. The trip was organized by scholars and activists who, like me, wanted to learn about alternatives to the economic and social structures that are currently prevalent in the United States. This was one of the most fascinating trips of my life; the culture, the politics, the economy and even the environment were quite unfamiliar to a US scholar. Many of the stories about Cuba that I had heard all my life (I was born in 1959) turned out to be simply untrue—the Cuban people were happy healthy and culturally astute, and, in the years since the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, they have been making energetic efforts to improve their living and working situations.¹