Cuban Social Policy: a review of the central elements that define it La política social cubana: una revisión de los elementos centrales que la definen

Abstract

After the end of the Cold War, Cuba maintained the construction of an economy at the service of society that implicitly contained the tensions: socialism - development, socialism - society and Cuban socialism - Social Policy. This policy was based on three pillars: Updating of the economic model, Battle of Ideas and Economic and Social Policy Guidelines. This article focuses on showing the structure and connection of this triad, in order to understand Cuba’s social policy. The objective is to show readers the genesis of the Cuban welfare system, with distance from ideological factors or affective sympathies, from the observer’s point of view. The hypothesis to be worked out points out that it would not be possible to speak of socialism in Cuba without a social policy of social vocation and statized. This is a topic that has regained relevance since the events of July 2021 in the island and within the framework of the pandemic.