Perspectives from Havana: Sociologist and Feminist Marta Nuñez

Like the rest of the world, Havana and Cuba have just completed the first full year of Covid 19. It has done so with the full force of the U.S. embargo on its neck, including additional measures enacted by the Trump administration and so far not modified or removed by the Biden administration. What has Havana been like the past year? What is it like now? What have been the major challenges and achievements?

Marta Núñez Sarmiento (Cuba, 1946) is a sociologist and a retired professor at the University of Havana (1966-2011). Her research concentrates on women and employment in Cuba (in the public sector and in the newly opened small businesses); gender studies in Cuba; images of women in Cuban mass media; transition toward democracy projects for Cuba proposed by Cuban American and U.S. scholars. She holds a Master’s in Sociology from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Santiago, Chile (1971) and a PhD in Economics from the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, USSR (1983) and has been a visiting professor at universities in the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Spain and Argentina. She presently teaches “Gender, Race and Inequalities in Cuba” to undergraduate students from the Consortium of Advanced Studies Abroad (C.A.S.A.) headed by Brown University during their semesters abroad in Havana, as well as to students from other US universities studying in Cuba. She has been a consultant on gender for several agencies of the UN (1988-2015), for the Canadian Agency for International Development (CIDA) (2007-2008); the Association of Caribbean States (1999) and for several NGOs. Núñez-Sarmiento is a founding member of the Women´s Studies Program at the University of Havana (1991) as well as of the Casablanca Dream Group of feminist scholars from the South (since 2007). She served as an Expert for the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), (Moscow, 1978-1983) and as Counselor for the Embassy of Cuba in Russia (1993-1997). Marta was a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard (2010). She has published extensively in the US, Cuba and other countries. Her latest book Yo sola me represento (I speak for myself) came out in 2012. She is a syndicated columnist in the cultural magazines of Mérida, Yucatán, Unicornio (Por Esto! Newspaper) (2014-2020) and in Lectambulos,(2020).

Third of five conversations from Havana. Introduced by Merriam Ansara; moderated by Gloria Caballero. Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action, Center for Cuban Studies, and Latin America Solidarity Committee of Western Massachusetts

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