By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Sep 29 2000 (IPS)

Statistics on the problem of violence against women are hard to come by in Cuba, and the government does its best to downplay the problem.

However, it is clear that despite its efforts to promote gender equality, socialism has failed to completely eradicate the violence lurking in homes and workplaces, the darkness of the Havana night or rural areas where it seems time has stood still.

Studies indicate that women in this Caribbean island nation face a similar level of domestic violence as their counterparts elsewhere in Latin America.

But shame keeps the victims silent, statistics on the question are unavailable, and the state-controlled media only address the problem in an isolated fashion.

In line with the Cuban tendency to go from one extreme to another, officials maintain that violence against women does not exist here, while dissidents protest that women on the island are among the most mistreated in the world.

“Our great weakness is that we get lost in comparisons,” Ernesto Pérez, forensic psychiatrist at the Cuban Institute of Legal Medicine said during a round table held at the headquarters of the non-governmental Union of Cuban Writers and Artists.

The ‘State of the World Population 2000’ report, released Sep 20 by the United Nations Population Fund, states that at least one out of three women in the world have been beaten, raped or mistreated at some point in their lives.

“How much violence we have in Cuba is not a problem that worries me too much,” said Pérez. “We have precisely the amount of violence that we are capable of generating and incapable of preventing. Neither more nor less.

“To the extent that specific ways of perceiving women exist, specific forms of violence towards them will inevitably be seen,” he maintained.

Other experts say the predominant sexist or “machista” ideology based on a deeply-rooted sense of “masculine superiority” is a culture medium for sexual harassment and physical and psychological violence against women.

That sense of superiority is defended by many of those in power, even though women represent 66.6 percent of the professional and highly-skilled technical workforce, more than 58 percent of university graduates, and 32.3 percent of those holding managerial or executive positions.

Studies point to the presence of domestic violence and sexual abuse in Cuba, which is described as an “invisible” problem, because most of the victims never speak out.

As in all countries, domestic abuse occurs in Cuba at all socioeconomic and cultural levels, regardless of religion or skin color.

A survey conducted among 41 couples in the province of Holguín, 800 kms east of Havana, found that violence was present in 38 of the homes (92.6 percent), mainly in the form of psychological abuse, but as physical and sexual abuse as well.

Another study by the Institute of Legal Medicine of the City of Havana found that in the capital alone, 150 cases of sexual abuse went to court in 1990 and 1991. Of that total, 105 cases involved rape, and the rest attempted rape or other forms of sexual abuse. Most of the victims were women aged 16 to 25, and 60 percent of the victims did not know their attackers.

The number of rapes, meanwhile, climbed from 650 in 1996 to 963 in 1998, according to official data made available to the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s special rapporteur on violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Coomaraswamy’s report on a visit to Cuba last year, on an invitation extended by the government of Fidel Castro, said cases of abuse reported by women totalled 5,791 in 1998 and 1,944 in the first half of 1999. She also reported 22 cases of sexual abuse and 617 cases of rape in 1999.

Coomaraswamy said 3.6 percent of the female victims of violence in 1998 were minors, while most of the aggressors were people the victims knew, like boyfriends, husbands or ex-husbands.

However, neither statistics available on the question nor the special rapporteur’s report have been divulged in Cuba.

All attempts at obtaining Coomaraswamy’s report here have been fruitless, including an endeavor to download it from the United Nations Human Rights Commission website on the Internet.

The Castro administration rejected the report, even though Coomaraswamy stated that all of her interlocutors cited the 1959 revolution in Cuba as a watershed with respect to the condition of women, and despite the fact that she called for the lifting of the 38-year-old U.S. embargo against the island.

But the report recognised political opponents of the government as a vulnerable group, recommended the dismantling of government “rehabilitation” centres for prostitutes, and called for passage of a special law that would increase legal protection for women in cases involving violence.

The special rapporteur described as “disconcerting” the view in official circles that everything was fine and the argument that the ideological principles of socialism kept people from resorting to violence.

The government-affiliated Federation of Cuban Women, the only women’s group active here, maintains that there is little violence against women in Cuba, on the argument that of the 25,239 people who came to the federation’s 185 offices attending the public, only 133 came to report cases of violence.

The website of the ninth annual “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” campaign (1999) states that Cuban men are not known for physically abusing their partners.

The website posted by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership cites no organisation or source when it adds that in Cuba, domestic abuse and violence against women are less frequent and less serious than in many other countries, due to the high level of self-esteem of Cuban women and society’s rejection of such practices.

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