From the Editor
T
his issue has a marked particularity in several aspects, especially the featuring of eleven new Cuban authors, particularly young people, with the consequent variety of topics within the profile of our publication, which provides the readers with the daily realities and concerns of Cuba nowadays. For our team, it is a conclusive evidence of how the magazine is spreading among the most diverse sectors of the Cuban population. In the section Race, Class and Gender, the pieces written by Maricel Nápoles and Mathadela Tamayo,“ Within the Limits of Survival...” and“ Perception of Occupational Discrimination...,” respectively, offer a summary vision on the ravages among Cuban women, especially of African descent, because of the overall crisis during the 90 ' s. And it is an interesting coincidence for both authors, since they write from very distant locations in the Cuban geography: Santiago de Cuba and Havana. Labor layoffs, the inability to engage in better-paying jobs, and the daily needs have turned the Afro-descendant women perhaps into the most vulnerable sector in terms of survival. They are overrepresented in the thirdrated service workplaces at the state job market, with wages that do not meet their minimum needs in a consumer market that is increasingly expensive and unaffordable after the government subsidies were virtually suppressed. The only alternative— both for these women and the unemployed labor force— is to work in the underground economy: from selling the most dissimilar articles on the street and collecting waste to recycle them and to use them at work, to retailing goods unavailable or scarce at the retail stores in the state market. In Havana, the situation acquires a more lacerating hue, because it mainly involves people who emigrated to the capital in search of better living conditions, but who have been forced to live— or rather to spend the night— in makeshift neighborhoods under poor living conditions. Here, the needs of all kinds are more pressing and the ways to meet them, much more difficult. Most of the people living in these unhealthy locations are Afro-descendants. Yusimí Rodríguez continues in“ Did Hope Come to the People Sheltered in Regla?” her previous work published in the 6 th issue of this magazine. She addresses another serious problem where Afro-descendant women play a painful role: housing. It goes beyond the slums on the outskirts to penetrate the city perimeter. Her analysis takes as reference one of the shelters swarming across Cuba today. It’ s located in the town of Regla. In her first work, she had already described and analyzed the crude realities of this shelter. Many families, mostly black and mestizo, live unimaginably overcrowded, because
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