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FREEDOMWAYS                 SECOND QUARTER 1980

emigrant told Newsweek, "I have an opportunity. . . .to live for myself." That's the big attraction. (We North Americans, who've been schooled from the cradle to, first and foremost, look out for Number One; who invented the "Me" generation and even use our movements to achieve social change as thin covers for negotiating our personal mobility upward-we know only too well the lure, and rehearse daily the rite, of self-indulgence, celebrate it even as some of us contemplate its bankruptcy.)

What our group found in Cuba, what the crowds at Cuba's Port Mariel are turning their backs on, is a society with limited material resources and ambitious goals wherein accountability and responsibility to family, neighbors, community and country-definitely including but transcending commitment to self-are the bottom line. This concept, for example, fuels the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, that network of block and neighborhood organizations which have been portrayed here as "vigilante" brigades.

Born spontaneously in 1960 as task forces to prevent acts of sabotage following a bomb-throwing incident during one of Fidel's public speeches, the CDR's have evolved over the years into units that perform a variety of services. These include aiding in the implementation of public health campaigns such as the vaccination of school children, conducting adult education classes, directing community maintenance-and, during the current situation, guarding the homes of people who have chosen to emigrate to prevent harm to the people or looting of their houses after they have departed. Approximately 80% of Cuba's population of 10 million participates in the work of the CDR's, which are major instruments for integration into the social life of the revolution.

It isn't difficult to understand why those who shun the principles of group accountability and egalitarianism that the CDR's embody would feel constrained in today's Cuba, and would be attracted to a U.S. society where anti-social behavior (also known as rugged individualism) is heavily promoted and rewarded if you can turn it into dollars, punished if you can't.

The predominance of men among the emigrants, of all ages but a great many of them younger men who have left wives and children behind, may reflect another fact of life in Cuba which has posed adjustment problems for many. Cuban women have made enormous strides towards the achievement of full equality. In 1959, women were overwhelmingly uneducated (female university graduates were a rarity), unemployed except as domestics or prostitutes and powerless. Today, 51% of all students, 44% of full-time university students and 39% of night students are women; 30.9% of the labor force is female in almost all spheres of work compared to 13%

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