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2014 40: 699 originally published online 6 March 2014Journal of Urban HistoryJesse Horst

1955−Shantytown Revolution: Slum Clearance, Rent Control, and the Cuban State, 1937

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Journal of Urban History2014, Vol. 40(4) 699 –718

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Article

Shantytown Revolution: Slum Clearance, Rent Control, and the Cuban State, 1937–1955

Jesse Horst1

AbstractThis essay investigates the evolution of a progressive consensus that housing had become a citizenship right and a state responsibility in Cuba. This consensus was formalized in the Constitution of 1940, and framed policies of housing construction, slum clearance, and rent control under government administrations from 1940 to 1955. This essay argues that despite general agreement behind these measures in principle, political conflict ensued when they were put into practice, expanding the importance of the political system for stakeholders. Rent controls ensured the centrality of governmental regulation in bitter occupancy disputes, while promises for public housing intensified demands for effective central planning. At the same time, the organization of shantytown residents in defense of their homes meant that slum clearance initiatives provoked charges of governmental incapacity. In sum, housing conflicts reinforced the central role of the state in Cuban society, even as they contributed to mounting social and political instability.

KeywordsCuban Republic, urban renewal, informal housing, slum clearance, rent control

Aquí pensaban seguir, ganando el ciento por ciento, con casas de apartamentos, y echar al pueblo a sufrir. Y seguir de modo cruel contra el pueblo conspirando, para seguirlo explotando . . . y en eso llegó Fidel!

Here they were planning to continue, profiting one hundred percent, with apartment buildings, casting the people out to suffer. And cruelly continue conspiring against the people, to continue exploiting them . . . and that’s when Fidel came!

Carlos Puebla, “Y en eso llegó Fidel.”1

On the morning of October 14, 1952, police officer Guillermo Rego stopped a man “in a state of intoxication” at a newsstand in an industrial section of Havana. Suspected of robbery, the man was a resident of an adjacent shantytown. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, refusing arrest. In

1University of Pittsburgh

Corresponding Author:Jesse Horst, University of Pittsburgh, 403 19th St. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104, USA. Email: [email protected]

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700 Journal of Urban History 40(4)

the confrontation that followed, a journalist reported that “the cries of the alcoholic attracted the attention of neighbors, who immediately took the side of the criminal.” Bedlam ensued. “Out of the devious alleys of the shantytown emerged men and women whose faces revealed aggressive purposes.” Women shut their doors and shouted, “abusers!” at officers, while groups of youth began to attack the police with “a shower of rocks.” The man who had originally been detained disappeared between the densely built shacks as military backup arrived. “The zone had become a battlefield.”2

Sprawling out across vacant city land, Las Yaguas was the most notorious of Havana’s shan-tytowns. “It was an immense barrio, crowded with a lot of shacks of yaguas, tin, and tarpaper,” a resident recalled. “It didn’t have any public water taps.”3 Centers of poverty, but also commu-nity, shantytowns existed precariously in Havana’s urban hierarchy. Commenting on the arrest of several of the rock-throwing youth, a police lieutenant voiced frustration: “The situation that exists in this shantytown is intolerable,” he said. “You have to go in there and get rid of the crimi-nals and vagrants who hide in those neighborhoods, turning them into centers of perversion and universities of crime.”4

By 1952 this was not just idle speculation; the rehabilitation of shantytowns had become a national concern. “We cannot feel legitimately proud of . . . our Capital while we fail to remedy these scars,” read a newspaper editorial.5 “A people without housing, a people without a future,” stated another.6 “If [housing] policies aren’t changed,” claimed a property owner, Cuba will become “an immense shantytown.”7 In 1953 a young Fidel Castro went further, making shantytowns and housing central to his criticism of Fulgencio Batista’s government: “The State sits back with its arms crossed and the people have neither homes nor electricity,” he said. “A revolutionary government would solve the housing problem by cutting all rents in half . . . by tearing down hovels . . . and by financing housing all over the island on a scale heretofore unheard of.”8 Literal battlefields for police and residents, shantytowns had become political battlefields as well.

Ironically, however, even as Castro was on trial in Oriente, Fulgencio Batista was attempting to carry out what the speech proposed—cutting rents, tearing down hovels, and financing con-struction. “Decent, healthy, comfortable lodging for families of scarce resources occupies our highest attention,” Batista said. “State initiative is on the march.”9 Indeed, whatever their dis-agreements, property owners and unions, Auténticos and Communists, architects, students—and every Cuban presidential administration since 1933—agreed on a central point: urban shanty-towns required a national solution. Residents, who were no less adamant in demanding state support, often saw the issue differently. “They would have to kill us to get us out of there,” said one.10 Why had shantytowns become so important, even to groups whose rhetoric could reflect outright disdain for residents? How had they come to be so widely seen as reflections of state capacity? And if opposing political actors agreed about the need to act against urban poverty, on what, precisely, did they disagree?

Previous scholarship has acknowledged the importance of Havana’s clases populares in the mounting instability of the 1950s and the radicalization of the 1959 Revolution. While these studies highlight the role of inequality and structural unemployment in generating social discon-tent, attention to popular mobilization is generally limited to student radicals and an institutional-ized “working class.”11 By contrast, there has been little scholarly attention to the demands that the urban poor made of the political system in terms of housing, or on the politics of urban plan-ning that shaped institutional responses.12 As a problem allegedly solved by the 1959 Revolution, urban poverty in Cuba has been an infrequent subject of historical inquiry.13 Scholars have instead focused on the technical or aesthetic aspects of Havana’s built environment, independent of social or political currents.14 The most extensive accounts of Havana’s urban poor illustrate



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the tremendous magnitude of substandard housing in Havana, and its impact on broader social dynamics such as racial inequality.15 Absent, however, are the ways in which demands for hous-ing were articulated on the national political stage, and the complicated and constrained efforts of politicians to respond.

This absence is especially striking when the politics of housing in Cuba is examined in a wider context. Coinciding with the rise of populist politics on a nearly global scale, urbanization during the first half of the twentieth century led expanding states to devote enormous resources to urban development and renewal, with significant political consequences.16 In particular, the urban uto-pias imagined by modernist planners have resonated throughout Latin America, where aspiring reformers have eagerly employed architectural methods to proclaim new political beginnings.17 As these sometimes well-intended plans met reality, new social tensions often followed and local actors resisted.18 Recently, Brodwyn Fischer has argued that squatter neighborhoods in Vargas-era Rio de Janeiro were loci of social and legal conflict where the rights of citizenship were claimed, and sometimes won.19

In Cuba, then, a political analysis that emphasizes the broad context of urban renewal has significant implications for the island’s history of state building, governance, and citizen-ship.20 Scholars have often noted the state’s failure to implement the Constitution of 1940.21 In this case, however, the constitution served to formalize a progressive consensus among diverse social and political actors that adequate housing had become a citizenship right and a state responsibility. In accordance with the constitution, all subsequent administrations enacted housing policies along three lines: rent controls, housing construction, and slum eradication. Agrarian reform was closely intertwined with these policies, but will not be treated here.

This essay argues that despite general agreement behind these measures in principle, political conflict ensued when they were put into practice, expanding the importance of the political sys-tem for stakeholders. Rent controls ensured the centrality of governmental regulation in bitter occupancy disputes, while promises for public housing intensified demands for effective central planning. At the same time, the organization of shantytown residents in defense of their homes meant that slum clearance initiatives provoked charges of governmental incapacity. In sum, housing conflicts reinforced the central role of the state in Cuban society, even as they contrib-uted to mounting social and political instability.

Although it was only one of many factors shaping events, the impact of housing on national politics was significant. Debates surrounding rent controls, public housing, and slum clear-ance provided ammunition to those who claimed the Auténtico governments of Ramón Grau (1944–1948) and Carlos Prio (1948–1952) were corrupt and ineffective. In response, Prio began new initiatives to expand central planning and private investment in the early 1950s, initiatives that Batista expanded dramatically after his 1952 coup. Yet these centralizing mea-sures exacerbated fractures in the progressive consensus: even as housing construction increased, ameliorating long-held frustrations for some, the same construction was linked to influential private investors, slum clearance, and increasingly visible urban inequality, gener-ating new frustrations for others. Often overlooked, urban policy was an important factor destabilizing democratic governance in Cuba, and in undermining the legitimacy of Batista’s 1952 regime.

The essay begins by describing the formation of a progressive consensus for state action, which was formalized through the Constitution of 1940. It continues by tracing state policies of housing construction, slum clearance, and rent control under government administrations from 1940 to 1952. The final section describes the centralization of state institutions during the Prio and Batista administrations, from 1950 to 1955.




“Capitalists of Misery”

Voices of a Progressive Consensus, 1933–1940Housing had long been scarce in Havana, but amid economic depression it was nowhere near sufficient for the masses of people who poured into the city.22 Between 1919 and 1931 the capi-tal’s population more than doubled to nearly 730,000 people, and because of widespread unem-ployment, rents were increasingly difficult to pay.23 Amid the upheaval of revolution, tenant protests multiplied.24 Families clustered together in cramped tenements where evictions were frequent. Meanwhile, thousands of poor habaneros began to settle in shantytown neighborhoods on vacant tracts of land—known locally as barrios de indigentes.25

Fierce outrage accompanied the collapse of the Plattist system—a system through which the United States had freely intervened in Cuban politics. Masses of Cubans demanded a departure from the perceived bankruptcy of oligarchic rule. In terms of housing, these demands were chan-neled into two points of consensus, tightly linked to hopes generated by the 1933 Revolution: first, housing for poor Cubans was a national problem that required action. Second, action was to be carried out by the Cuban state.

Still, while agreement was broad, the threads of consensus were many. Sometimes-conflicting concerns for national advancement, social order, local well-being, economic justice, and racial equality, were each woven into the fabric of reform. Fueled by perceptions of rural exodus, early calls focused on agrarian reform and land distribution as a solution to urban poverty. In the city, “Housing for workers” also became a frequent demand of nearly all reform-minded political groups and labor organizations, including communists and student activists.26 Intellectuals from Afro-Cuban social organizations demanded rent controls, linking informal housing to Cuba’s history of slavery.27 A 1938 article in Bohemia interviewed elderly veterans of Cuba’s indepen-dence army who lived in shantytowns, emphasizing the national importance of housing reform. “From the first day,” declared a veteran, “my desire has been to get credit for the construction of a City of Indigents from the central powers, since the root cause of this situation of ours appears to have no end.”28

Appeals to “central powers” came from architects as well, who were attuned to similar debates across Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Luis Bay Sevilla served as director of the magazine Arquitectura and was frequently recognized among Cuba’s foremost experts on popu-lar housing. He was unequivocal in presenting the issue as a national concern—“perhaps the most acute that confronts our civilization”—and one that would impact Havana’s status as a world-class capital. Bay Sevilla’s writing was rooted in a passionate desire to improve the lives of poor Cubans. At the same time, he held deep-seated assumptions of primitivism and immoral-ity, aligned with currents of social science, race, and biotypology.29 Comparing shantytowns to the “primitive houses of the Indians who inhabited the Island during [Columbus’s] discovery,” Bay Sevilla implicated substandard housing in a whole range of characteristics antithetical to a civilized life. “How will the parents . . . ensure they do not unthinkingly reveal the mysteries of sexual life!” he agonized. “And what is more horrible still, the father sent by the devil, his lechery ignited by alcohol, to the horrible abyss of incest.”30 Demanding housing legislation, Bay Sevilla was clear in his goals for shantytowns: “The Government should liquidate them with haste to liberate the city from the deplorable spectacle that these pigsties offer to the gaze of the foreign-ers who visit us.”31

As architects, politicians, tenants, and shantytown residents demanded state assistance, many agreed that shantytowns constituted a national shame. Visiting the Las Yaguas shantytown in 1935, revolutionary activist Pablo de la Torriente Brau directly linked the plight of Havana’s poor to the nation as a whole. “These are capitalists of misery,” he wrote of residents, “ . . . who,



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in reality, are more Cuban than anyone, because they have more problems, more misery, more hunger, more sickness, and more abandonment than anyone!”32 From divergent voices, a pro-gressive consensus had emerged: inadequate housing for Havana’s poor had become a national problem and its solution a responsibility of the Cuban State.

“Property Is a Social Function”

Architecture for a Constitutional Order, 1937–1940By the end of the decade, calls for reform were channeled into a national constitution, which stamped the consensus for state action on housing into the legal system. Referred to by one delegate as “the architecture of Cuban destiny,” the constitution established adequate hous-ing as a state responsibility, and ensured a central role for the state in future housing conflicts.33

In 1937, as commander of the army, Batista foreshadowed debates at the constitutional con-vention by outlining an ambitious set of policy goals known as the Plan Trienal. The plan placed stringent controls on the sugar industry, involved the state in land disputes, and committed the state to a program of housing construction for workers that would gradually eliminate tene-ments.34 Eddy Chibás, who was aligned with Grau’s opposing Auténtico party, was skeptical of Batista’s sincerity, calling the plan “a dogmatic synthesis of the revolutionary programs,” but conceded that, “as a revolutionary, I am in agreement with the Plan Trienal.” U.S. business own-ers vehemently opposed elements of the plan, fearing “a move towards social revolution, mod-eled after the Mexican pattern.”35 For his part, Batista did little to quell these fears, conspicuously visiting Lazaro Cárdenas in Mexico during 1939.36

The plan framed debates within the constitutional assembly, where delegates hoped to usher in “the constructive phase of the revolution.”37 The constitution was finalized in 1940, and codi-fied housing as a state responsibility. Article 79 stated, “The State shall support the creation of low cost dwellings for workers” and also enact legislation requiring businesses to construct worker housing.38 This responsibility was initially decentralized, divided between the national government and local municipalities where housing commissions were to “be concerned with everything related to the dwellings of workers.”39

Batista’s Plan Trienal also offered a new vision of private property. “Property is a social func-tion,” he explained in 1937, echoing progressive constitutions across Latin America.40 “We must rationalize this right, respecting and protecting everyone in what is theirs, but at the same time preventing its reprehensible use.”41 The concept of property as subordinate to social interests—especially interests opposed to those of U.S. capitalists—resonated among a wide range of politi-cal actors. In debates preceding the Constitutional Assembly, many political parties made direct mention of property’s “social function.” The phrase was deliberately vague, and debates over measures designed to proscribe latifundia revealed divergent interpretations of its meaning.42 In terms of urban property, some understood it to allow the state to limit urban rents, preventing “the eviction of any tenant if the state or municipality does not provide a place to deposit his pos-sessions,” but this view was not unanimous.43

The assembly passed Article 87 without debate. The Article recognized “the existence and legitimacy of private property in the broadest conception of its social function and without limitations beyond those that may be established by law due to public necessity or social interest.”44 In theory, the constitution clarified the state’s obligation to provide housing and limited the interests of private property according to “social interest.” These obligations would shape future struggles over housing policy. In practice, however, their meaning would be contested.




“A Concrete Demonstration of Incapacity!”

Slum Clearance, Rent Control, and a Neighborhood for Workers, 1940–1952In the decades following the constitution, the progressive consensus of the 1930s framed gov-ernment housing policies regardless of the governing administration. A divergent array of social actors appealed to the same consensus, often in pursuit of conflicting ends. In response, all administrations enacted policies along several lines: the regulation of rents, the clearance of slums, and the construction of homes. Expectations around these measures proved damaging for incumbent politicians. Nearly universal dissatisfaction with Havana’s rental market com-bined with failed public housing initiatives and the politicization of slum clearance to amplify criticisms of Grau and Prio’s governments. Even as disagreements emerged around each set of policies, however, actors appealed to the state for solutions, reinforcing its central role in housing.

Rent control was a potent political weapon, and was often deployed at key political conjunc-tures such as presidential elections. Congress initially froze rents in 1939 before elections, and the legislature extended the freeze periodically until 1944.45 At a campaign stop in 1940, Batista rallied supporters, calling Grau “a millionaire known for evicting the poor from his property.”46 When a faction of congress sought to repeal rent controls later that year, a U.S. consul reported that, if successful, the move would “arouse violent hatreds and antagonisms.”47 Prior to the 1944 presidential campaign, Batista strengthened rent controls through several executive decrees, pro-viding the “right to permanence” for tenants against many forms of eviction.48 After securing the presidency, Grau added several new decrees, extending those declared by Batista, and notably allowing tenants to halt an eviction by paying their rent after an eviction sentence had been reached—payment that could be delivered “at any moment prior to the act of removal [lanza-miento].”49 In 1949, Carlos Prio lowered rents on newer apartments that had previously been exempt, also by decree.50 Seeking to establish legitimacy after his 1952 coup, Batista’s adminis-tration lowered rents again by as much as 30 percent, this time acting through a newly constituted legislative body.51 In 1950, the U.S. Consul noted that it was “difficult to dispossess an occupant, even for non-payment of rent, and virtually impossible to evict him for other causes.”52

Unsurprisingly, landlords found ways to evict. Regulations only exacerbated a longstanding hustler’s war between owners, tenants, and sub-renters. If landlords could not legally remove tenants, water and repairs might come up short. If they could not raise rents, they turned their properties over to professional managers whose off-the-books dealings involved subdividing units again and again, and charging unregulated, often-excessive rents for deteriorating homes. “They demand a rent that exceeds by 200% what a property owner earns for the entire house,” wrote a contributor to Bohemia.53 In turn, savvy tenants fought back and sold their permanency rights to subrenters, making profits of their own. “The sale of permanency rights,” claimed an editorial in Diario de la marina, “today is more scandalous and prosperous than illegal drug sales.”54

The intensity of conflicts between tenants and landlords reinforced the role of the state as a mediator. Havana courts became central sites for occupancy battles. Page after page of the prop-erty owners’ journal Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana was devoted to legal technicali-ties through which landlords could remove tenants—technicalities that ultimately led tenants to mobilize through the political system. “For the past ten years the arguments of lawyers and judges—and between judges . . . provoke questions of public order,” explained a judge.55 The centrality of the state was confirmed as tens of thousands of men and women appeared in court before judges who attempted to interpret whether the laws conflicted with property’s ambiguous “social function,” as defined by the constitution. Responding to a judge who called property owners “greedy and self-indulgent,” another grappled with the implications of constitutional



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article 87: “We are the first to proclaim and applaud the existence and legitimacy of private prop-erty with the broadest conception of its social function,” he wrote. “That is not to say, however, that we need to deny the property owner salt and water.”56

For all their importance, however, rent controls ultimately highlighted a larger state obliga-tion: the construction of homes.57 In 1944, Grau pledged to design a massive housing complex known as the Barrio Obrero (Worker’s Neighborhood) near the shacks of Las Yaguas. “The miserable shanties which have been seen in Habana for many years will disappear entirely and will give way to decent housing facilities such as every inhabitant of a civilized country requires,” Auténticos promised.58 “Our hope,” said Grau, emphasizing the project’s ambitions for moral reform, “is to raise a huge neighborhood of houses, not for indigents, but for workers.”59 Yet the neighborhood’s 1947 inauguration was a strange ceremony with the homes unready for distribu-tion. An official publication claimed that five hundred houses had been built, but the actual number was probably less than two hundred.60 “[Eight] million pesos have been spent and they need 5 million more to complete the Barrio Obrero,” wrote a journalist in 1950. “So these are not low cost houses.”61

What had symbolized a triumphant fulfillment of the 1940 consensus was becoming evidence of state failure, and charges of corruption were abundant. Splitting from the Auténticos before 1948 elections, the opposing Ortodoxo party seized on the disappointment of Grau’s public hous-ing efforts, promising the construction of multiple “Barrios Obreros.”62 “What a concrete dem-onstration of incapacity!” wrote prominent scholar Herminio Portell-Vilá, referring to Grau and Prio. “What criminal waste of national funds by idiots and fools!”63 Homes from the neighbor-hood were finally completed and distributed after Batista’s 1952 coup, but it was increasingly clear that housing construction would need to come from elsewhere.64 More than twenty-six thousand workers from Guanabacoa and Havana entered their names in a raffle, but only 433 homes were available—a number that paled before the rapid growth of shantytowns.65 As criti-cism against Auténtico governments mounted, demands for more effective state action came from all sides.

Halting the expansion of shantytowns was indeed the ultimate scale through which govern-ment effectiveness would be measured. Nearly everyone agreed on the need for state action to improve or eliminate the neighborhoods; however, slum clearance was exceptionally compli-cated. Already tense efforts at relocation were made more so through the inadequacy of public housing initiatives like the Barrio Obrero. Without public housing, plans for rehabilitation often became acts of exclusion, and throughout the 1940s, efforts to eliminate shantytowns were politi-cized and resisted with increasing force.

Property owners demanded the eradication of Las Yaguas as early as 1937.66 With the help of law students, residents successfully resisted through the courts.67 In 1944, officials from the health ministry along with police again planned eviction. The ministry of health “closed all the stores and cut off the water supply, hoping to provoke a riot. We remained calm and waited for reporters to come,” said a resident.68 When police arrived, remembered another, “I, along with some others, rebelled. We tore down the [quarantine] posts and armed ourselves with sticks and knives. . . . We . . . put up pictures of Maceo, Grau, Guiteras, and José Martí, along with the Cuban flag.”69 Emphasizing symbols of national pride to combat government-led eviction, resi-dents recounted a tense standoff with police. “Look, captain,” said one, “for X number of years we’ve lived here in this poverty, and if there has emerged a president so completely Cuban and good that he’s making a Barrio Obrero for us, why don’t we stay here until he finishes the neigh-borhood, because look, the Magna Carta [constitution] of the Republic says that nothing and no one can divide families.”70 In the meantime, student activists publicly criticized eviction efforts and supported residents in successful legal efforts against property owners. “The land was ours and nobody could evict us,” a resident explained.71




In 1959, after Batista had razed the majority of shantytowns in Havana City, Las Yaguas remained—a monument to poverty and inequality, surely, but a monument to the ingenuity of its residents as well. In resisting eviction through the legal system and with reference to the constitu-tion, these residents appealed to a consensus for national solutions. Meanwhile, the importance of the state continued to grow.

Other shantytowns were cleared throughout the 1940s and 1950s, undertakings that involved a complicated mixture of reform and exclusion, and generally meant moving at least some resi-dents to more distant locations where they could be “rehabilitated.” In 1944, Grau boasted of successful slum eradication through a national radio broadcast:

The government acted quickly to move the indigents. . . . True, this was often done against the will of many. . . . But facing the resistance of those who did not want to understand our efforts, we did not stop working towards the civilizing and humanitarian endeavor of removing them.72

Because it was politicized, however, state action could easily be seized by critics and used against the government. An editorial reported that the Auténtico president cleared away tenements by “expropriating and destroying houses without building new ones in their place”; another referred to the frequent use of fire as a means of clearing neighborhoods.73 As urban planners attempted to build a monument to national hero José Martí in Havana’s Plaza Cívica, the government threatened to clear thousands of nearby shanties. Residents publicly resisted. “Act with our Martí,” their signs read. “Unite in the battle against eviction.”

Despite these clearance efforts—and contradicting various politicians eager to claim “suc-cess”—government agencies counted 16 shantytown neighborhoods in 1944, and 21 in 1952.75 To make matters worse, by the early 1950s the price of construction materials had risen, and credit flows for development projects were stagnant. Migrations to Havana accelerated. By 1958, the city’s population had again doubled, approaching 1.4 million.76 During the 1950s close to one fourth of the city’s population lived in crowded tenements or shantytowns—perhaps as many as 300,000 people.77

Even as shantytown residents appealed to constitutional norms to protect themselves from evic-tion, the same constitution held that the shanties in which they lived were state responsibilities—and symbols of state failure. For tens of thousands of tenants fighting eviction, this failure was reproduced daily in courtrooms across Havana, reinforced by the incomplete Barrio Obrero.78 These perceived failures served as political weapons against Presidents Grau and Prio as social and political actors demanded solutions that would generate construction. More than ever, the state was at the center of these demands.

“The Constructive Phase of the Revolution”

Construction, Demolition, and State Centralization, 1950–1955Driven by a widely perceived housing crisis, state initiatives during the 1950s diverged from previous patterns in several ways: midcentury technocrats gained unprecedented authority to regulate the construction industry, leading to the centralization of state functions, while new credit institutions fueled a surge in private capital investment in housing. These efforts would engender conflict, calling into question the specific meaning of constitutional housing mandates, including property’s vaguely defined “social function.” More broadly, centralizing reforms exposed fractures within the progressive consensus for state action: On one hand, they responded to long-standing demands for new construction. On the other hand, they delivered new and visi-ble influence to private investors at the expense of shantytown residents and many poor tenants. Ultimately these contradictions weakened Batista’s legitimacy, reinforcing perceptions that he had abandoned the progressive consensus entirely.



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The 1950s were years of fast change in terms of urban development policy in Latin America, as modernist planning took hold. Havana’s housing shortage reflected regional patterns, and its housing initiatives were often developed in conversation with regional solutions. Schooled in principles developed by the French architect, Le Corbusier, Havana architects worked in close contact with counterparts from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere, where housing policy generated debate. Architects studied U.S. Federal initiatives as well, which focused on expanding mortgage credit to homeowners in place of public housing.

Modernist ideas were not new in Cuba, but they gained increased political traction at midcen-tury. During the 1930s and 1940s Architects repeatedly called for a planning bureaucracy, with limited success.79 By the early 1950s, however, these demands intensified, focusing on legisla-tion that would channel private investment toward public ends, guided by technocratic plan-ning.80 As rent control legislation and public housing measures generated dissatisfaction, Prio was responsive. In 1950, after extensive talks with Havana’s College of Architects, he created a National Housing Commission to centralize state initiative and stimulate private construction.81 Amid widespread agreement that central planning would prove effective, Batista expanded these efforts.82 Scientific planning, architects promised, could potentially put an end to “legislation controlling rents that does such harm to the national economy.”83 In 1955, as rent control contin-ued to fuel social conflict, Batista created a National Planning Board within the executive branch to oversee public works across the island, superseding municipal authority.84 The prevention of shantytowns and easing of rents was a major justification for the move. “If we look at planning from a practical point of view,” explained an architect, “it will . . . oversee the general develop-ment of our communities . . . so they won’t produce shantytowns.”85

Planning initiatives were augmented by national efforts to stimulate credit and investment in construction—efforts that were heavily influenced by similar measures pursued by other govern-ments. In 1949, Havana architects interviewed Mexico’s influential urbanist, Mario Pani, who proposed addressing housing shortages by subsidizing home-ownership for middle class fami-lies, a “social group capable of struggling for a house and its conservation.”86 In 1950, Prio established a national Bank of Agrarian and Industrial Development (BANFAIC) to stimulate credit, and his administration began to collaborate with U.S. housing experts to plan the creation of a housing bank; later Batista expanded these efforts, establishing the Bank of Economic and Social Development (BANDES).87 In 1953, Batista’s ministers consulted the U.S. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to launch a Cuban FHA. The purpose of the institution, like its U.S. counterpart, was to provide cheap credit to investors for the purpose of building homes. By 1954, investments through the FHA were substantial and would continue to grow.88 In the same year, Batista signed a “horizontal property law,” influenced by Rio de Janeiro legislation, allow-ing the sale of units in cooperatively owned buildings.89

Despite new measures, Prio remained skeptical. In 1951, he concluded that “the legislation that favors the housing construction industry has not been able to solve the housing problems. . . . The Government has to come to the rescue of those who are not capable of paying high rents.”90 At the same time, investors and architects attacked rent control as “demagogic”—a lingering obstacle to growth in construction and state efficiency.91

After seizing the presidency in 1952, months before scheduled elections, Batista’s position on housing was closely scrutinized by multiple actors. Linking his regime to the progressive consen-sus of the 1930s, he claimed that his housing program was part of a “triumphant revolution.”92 Soon after taking power, he announced plans to overhaul the original rent legislation from 1939, a move he hoped would align the legislation with centralized planning and generate housing. “For not being an elected government, and because it has pledged to govern Cuba well, whatever the citizens think,” noted an editorial in Diario de la Marina, several months after the coup, “this government is in an exceptional position to forget about everything except economic conditions and the measures recommended by technocrats.”93




Batista sought legitimacy, however, and changing such popular measures was not simple. Rents affected virtually everyone in Havana: in 1953, 74.5 percent of all habaneros rented their homes.94 After Batista’s announcement, speculation dominated the press. When it initially appeared that the government would allow rents to rise, a scathing editorial in Bohemia made the stakes clear: “If they wanted . . . to discredit [Batista’s] March 10 regime, they could not have found a better way to do it. It is not only the opposition who protests . . . it is the immense major-ity of the people regardless of political orientation.”95 By the end of May, the U.S. State Department noted that “rent control agitation was so widespread that real estate operators, inves-tors, and the building trades felt called upon to publish lengthy polemics in the press in defense of their interests.”96

The debate began within the Consultation Commission, the regime’s legislative body, where Batista hoped that a solution could be found for “the profit and wellbeing of all.”97 When a lead-ing representative from the pro-rent control faction threatened to resign, however, the entire project was cast in doubt. “Batista himself made his influence felt and the irritated functionary withdrew his decision,” explained a reporter. With Batista’s backing, momentum temporarily shifted toward the pro-rent control faction, but there was inadequate middle ground. Pressure from the Center for Urban Property moved the committee toward those who allegedly wanted “to decapitate the hopes of tenants.”98 The bill recommended by the commission drastically favored the demands of property owners, allowing rents to fluctuate according to property values and weakening permanency rights. The Commission’s work was done, but the bill still needed modi-fication and the approval of Batista and his ministers before it became law.

Protest was almost instant. As the final result of the Commission’s bill was announced, the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) threatened massive action against the government. “The Rent Law Project approved by the Consultation Commission . . . has provoked numerous protests on behalf of workers,” reported El Mundo.99 Yet the proponents of the bill defended the Commission’s work as part of the national interest—a necessary, if painful, measure that would soon benefit Cubans of all classes. “The grave issue of housing and rents in our country could not have taken a first step without considering . . . the indigents [shantytown residents],” argued a column from Diario de la Marina. This “action, [however], depends almost exclusively on what private capital might invest in construction.”100

In constructing their arguments, both sides appealed to progressive consensus, represented by the now-suspended constitution. “The housing crisis is a social fact,” announced a rent control supporter. “The right to permanence has been founded on article 87 of the Constitution of 1940.”101 In response, property owners and capitalists also articulated their demands in the lan-guage of consensus. “The very announcement of this measure has paralyzed construction,” wrote a lawyer. “If the decrees . . . are what prevent new constructions . . . it is these decrees that go against the social function of property.”102 Buying large advertisements in major newspapers, the Association of Urban Property Owners offered their interpretation of the constitution: “Here is the social function of property: would someone start a business without a building, or are they going to take advantage of capital invested by property owners?”103

With legislation still pending, Batista sought to head off protests and marshal support for his government by sponsoring a massive rally. Peasants were transported from the countryside and workers were excused from their jobs to attend. Offering the CTC’s cooperation, Eusebio Mujal called the rally “the beginning of a popular conversation between the great national masses and the Executive Power of the Nation.”104 Leaving the question of rent controls unanswered, Batista emphasized the promise of centralized urban planning. Reports estimated that three hundred thousand people gathered to listen as he promised to develop “urbanistic plans,” stimulating “the investor and the property owner while also attending to men and women who work to pay their rents.”105 When he announced that his low-cost housing plan would generate the construction of “thousands of homes for the people,” his voice was drowned out by applause.106



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In early October, the Council of Ministers met to finalize “one of the most discussed ordi-nances in Cuba in recent years.”107 Batista presided over the meeting, and after a full seventeen hours of overnight deliberation, the basic points of the legislation were settled.108 In some respects, the law was a complete reversal from the August draft and represented a victory for the popular classes. Rents were reduced for all homes by as much as 30 percent and permanency rights remained in force. Response from tenant organizations who had asked for greater reduc-tions was lukewarm but supportive; property owners were vehement in their protest.109

However, law 449 had different goals than previous rent laws. A massive and complex work of legislation, the law’s most innovative provisions were intended to stimulate construction and align rent controls with central planning. The National Housing Commission would now have increased authority to evict tenants and expropriate homes, while landlords would be allowed to evict tenants and demolish their buildings after providing six months’ notice. Demolition was conditioned on the construction of new modern apartments, which would not be subject to any prior rent freeze—though evicted tenants could initially claim a new unit with no more than a 25 percent increase from their previous rent.110 Through the new law, the state now claimed a central role for technocratic planning, not only in occupancy disputes, but also in demolition and con-struction throughout the city.

Combined with other reforms, the law’s passage unleashed a construction boom in Havana, and development reached an all-time high. Buildings like the Focsa tower and the Havana Hilton transformed the skyline, as a new tunnel offered access to the central city from the bay’s eastern shore. Of all buildings in Havana province in 1976, 43.4 percent—almost half—were constructed during the 1946–1958 period.111 Fueled by FHA investment, a horizontal property law promoted rapid high-rise constructions in Vedado, Miramar, and along the Malecón, alleviating a once-impossible housing market. For many wealthy habaneros, the housing crisis had indeed been solved.112

Yet this construction had a dark side: battles between landlords and tenants continued through-out the 1950s—battles that now included the demolition of entire buildings. A 1953 initiative to construct a new neighborhood for workers was apparently not completed.113 Shantytowns were cleared from Havana as tenements fell, aided by the new rent law and directed by increasingly centralized planning. “Construction,” one writer lamented, had led to “the frequent demolition of tenements.”

[They] construct new apartment buildings, for offices and businesses that charge the highest rent and bring in the largest earnings and investments. . . . Poor homeless families are hurled out to isolated . . . tracts of land. A problem that was localized . . . is now spread out dangerously . . . aggravating social conflict.114

Between 1954 and 1956, Batista’s government cleared approximately twenty-five thousand peo-ple from their homes in and around the capital, against the protests of residents and student activ-ists.115 Shantytowns, explained a government minister in 1955, are “nothing more than a thankless memory for habaneros.”116 Batista declared: “We will . . . complete the plan, initiated with extraordinary success to eradicate the so-called ‘shantytowns’ just like . . . other unhealthy tene-ments.”117 Meanwhile, informal housing continued to expand in the rapidly growing suburbs of Marianao and Guanabacoa.118 “Instead of offering funds for constructing new houses,” recalled a resident, “they began to destroy the repartos where the poor lived. They told the residents, ‘if you rent a house and land elsewhere, we’ll give you 200 pesos.’ . . . The money would be spent before the rent was due.”119

Novelist Jesus Díaz described the violence that sometimes accompanied shantytown eviction during the 1950s. As a Vedado slum was razed at the insistence of a neighborhood association, “white, black, and mulatto agents went down howling like beasts, destroy[ing] the huts that had




scarcely been rebuilt on the mud and, beating them, made the inhabitants of the bottom climb up. Beating them, they stacked [the residents] into trucks without allowing them to take a cot, a radio, a saint.”120 The web of conflicts entangled in Havana housing meant that state initiatives, which some considered successful, could also be used as evidence of violence and neglect. Batista’s reforms achieved a visible surge of lavish urban development, but above an increasingly unequal city. On Havana’s edge, journalists watched closely as the National Housing Commission began to evict rent-delinquent tenants from the Barrio Obrero.121 In 1955, construction of a new statue of José Martí was underway above an empty Plaza Cívica, where shanties had once stood. For many habaneros, housing in Cuba still required a national solution.

ConclusionFrom a crisis of economic depression to a crisis of insufficient construction, Havana housing had plagued a series of Republican governments. Across the city, property owners, tenants, and shan-tytown residents demanded action from the state. The Constitution of 1940 reinforced these demands, formalizing a progressive consensus that deficient housing had become a problem of national scale and a state responsibility. Thereafter, governments pursued action around three points—housing construction, slum clearance, and rent control. On each point, however, action proved complicated: reductions in legal rent brought heated occupancy battles to Havana court-rooms. Stalled initiatives to construct public housing intensified demands for the state to promote new construction. The growth of shantytowns and the mobilization of their residents transformed efforts at clearance and rehabilitation into potent symbols of state failure. Conflict emerged from each point of action, undermining support for Grau and Prio’s governments. In each case, how-ever, conflict reinforced the central role of the state in delivering comprehensive solutions, expanding the importance of the political system for stakeholders.

With these conflicts as a backdrop, Fidel Castro’s speech, “History Will Absolve Me,” circu-lated through Havana streets offering a clear interpretation of the 1940 Constitution. “Four hun-dred thousand families in the countryside and in the cities live cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements,” it read.

Two million two hundred thousand of our urban population pay rents which absorb between one fifth and one third of their incomes. . . . The nation’s future, the solutions to its problems, cannot continue to depend on the . . . cold calculations of . . . ten or twelve magnates. . . . In this present-day world, social problems are not solved by spontaneous generation.122

These criticisms were deeply rooted in Cuban political tradition and embedded in ongoing con-stitutional debates. Responding to pressures from a wide array of actors, Castro demanded fidel-ity to the progressive consensus.

Significantly expanding on initiatives begun by Prio in the 1950s, Batista presided over a shift in urban policy. Empowering national institutions for credit and central planning, Batista’s regime oversaw a surge in construction throughout Havana. Yet it was a surge that reached the city’s margins in the form of demolition and exclusion, beneath skyscrapers financed by private investors. While Batista and his supporters situated these policies within the consensus that emerged from the 1933 Revolution, critics pointed to the same policies and claimed that the consensus had been abandoned. As they had under Grau and Prio, housing conflicts became weapons used to attack Batista’s legitimacy.

The Revolutionary Government moved to alleviate these urban conflicts after 1959, but it also expanded on existing trends. When Castro took power, the importance of the state had been well established for numerous social actors, and central planning had been institutionalized. Castro’s first major policy actions were familiar—to lower rents by as much as 50 percent and to suspend



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evictions.123 New public housing initiatives followed, though within a context of expanded regional development and lagging construction in Havana.124 By 1960, efforts to eradicate shan-tytowns and rehabilitate their residents continued.125 In sum, even as Castro’s reforms signaled a rejection of Republican excesses, they were also built on the foundations of the old political system. A look at shantytowns in the Republican Period therefore highlights ruptures generated by the 1959 Revolution—but it also invites close attention to underlying continuities.

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

FundingThe author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-cation of this article: This research was supported by a fellowship from the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami, funded by the Goizueta Foundation, and by fellowships from the University of Pittsburgh via the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the University Center for International Studies with the Tinker Foundation. An earlier version of this article was awarded the 2012 Jorge Pérez Lopez student essay prize by the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), whose members offered comments and support. Participants in a Cuba dissertation workshop at NYU and the anonymous reviewer from the Journal of Urban History also provided helpful feedback. For crucial insights throughout this project, I am especially grateful to Kelly Urban, Orlando Rivero-Valdés, Ted Muller, George Reid Andrews, and Alejandro de la Fuente. Finally, I thank Sarah, David, and Caitlin Wiederkehr for their generous hospitality.

Notes 1. All translations are mine, except where indicated. Carlos Puebla, “Y en eso llegó Fidel,” Y en eso llegó

Fidel (Madrid: Phonomusic, 1985). 2. “Atacan a la fuerza pública los vecinos de un barrio de indigentes,” El Mundo, October 14, 1952, 12. 3. Oscar Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon, Four Men: Living the Revolution (Chicago: University

of llinois Press, 1977), 353. 4. “Atacan a la fuerza pública los vecinos de un barrio de indigentes,” El Mundo, October 14, 1952, 12. 5. “Los barrios de indigentes,” El Mundo, November 28, 1951. 6. Waldo Medina, “La vivienda, una de las muchas tragedias del cubano,” Bohemia, May 11, 1952, 83. 7. “URGE RECTIFICAR,” Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana, April 1949, 3. 8. Fidel Castro, “History Will Absolve Me,” in The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Aviva

Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 310, 312.

9. “Promotió el Presidente la Elminación de la Actividad Comunista,” El Mundo, June 13, 1952, 10.10. Douglas Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura: The Relocation of Slum Dwellers in

Postrevolutionary Cuba (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 13.11. For an overview of historiographical debates on the role of the working class in the 1959 Revolution,

see Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1930-60 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1976), 14–27; and Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 112–36. On the concept of “working class revolu-tion,” see Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (New York: Princeton University Press, 1970), 277–84; Jorge Ibarra takes a wider approach, emphasizing the role of social inequality in generating the 1959 Revolution. Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958, trans. Marjorie Moore (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 161–74. Other authors highlight broader social dynamics, while still noting the role of Cuba’s clases populares in generating social instability and radicalization. For example, see Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7; Lillian Guerra, “‘To condemn the Revolution is to condemn Christ’: Radicalization, Moral Redemption, and the Sacrifice of Civil Society in Cuba,




1960,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89, no. 1 (2009): 94; Louis Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 450–53; Louis Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 230–31.

12. The most thorough study of shantytown communities in Republican Havana comes from Oscar Lewis’s anthropological research project undertaken in the late 1960s. Lewis interviewed former resi-dents of the Las Yaguas neighborhood after they had been relocated to housing projects. Rather than politics, Lewis was primarily concerned with exploring his famous notion of a “culture of poverty” amid a period of revolutionary transition. See Oscar Lewis, “The Culture of Poverty,” Trans-Action 1, no. 1 (1963): 17–19; Lewis et al., Four Men; Oscar Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon, Four Women: Living the Revolution (Chicago: University of llinois Press, 1977); Oscar Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon, Neighbors: Living the Revolution (Chicago: University of llinois Press, 1978). Also part of Lewis’s project was Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura.

13. Until recently, this absence included the study of contemporary urban poverty as well. Examples of new attention to the topic include Mayra Espino Prieto, “Introductory Note: The Social Mobility Perspective and Its Usefulness for the Analysis of Inequality and Social Policy in Cuba,” in Cuban Economic and Social Development, ed. Jorge Domínguez, Omar Everleny, Pérez Villanueva, Mayra Espino Prieto, and Lorena Barberia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2012), 251–60; Lucy Martín Posada and Lilia Núñez Moreno, “Geography and Habitat: Dimensions of Equity and Social Mobility in Cuba,” Ibid., 291–320; Pablo Rodríguez Ruiz, Los marginales de las Alturas del Mirador: Un estudio de caso (Havana, Cuba: Fundación Fernando Ortiz, 2011); Ramón Torres Zayas, Relación barrio-juego Abakuá en la ciudad de la Habana (Havana, Cuba: Fundación Fernando Ortiz, 2010); Mayra Espino Prieto, Políticas de atención a la pobreza y la desigualdad (Buenos Aires: CLACSO-CROP, 2008).

14. Scholarship on Cuba has begun to explore the complex relationship between architecture and gover-nance. E.g., see Timothy Hyde, “‘Mejores Ciudades, Ciudadanos Mejores’: Law and Architecture in the Cuban Republic,” in Governing by Design: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Aggregate (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); John Loomis, Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999). On housing, see Joseph Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Roberto Segre, “Havana, from Tacón to Forestier,” in Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, 1850-1950, ed. Arturo Almandoz (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jill Hamberg, Under Construction: Housing Policy in Revolutionary Cuba (New York: Center for Cuban Studies, 1986); Juan Vega Vega, Comentarios a la ley general de la vivienda (Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1986); Roberto Segre, La vivienda en Cuba en el siglo XX: república y revolución (Mexico: Editorial Concepto, S.A., 1980); Francisco García Vázquez, Aspectos del planeamiento y de la vivienda en Cuba (Buenos Aires: Colección Planes, 1968).

15. Both de la Fuente and Scarpaci et al. offer accounts of the specific quantitative dimensions and social compositions of shantytown neighborhoods in Havana. See Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 73; Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 114.

16. On the rise of populist politics, and the incorporation of social demands into the realm of state pol-icy, see Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). For examples of studies addressing urban planning and politics, see Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 175–214; Jon Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Lauren Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 66–108; Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

17. A classic analysis of the role of urban planning in shaping political and cultural hegemony in Latin America is Angel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). On Modernist planning in relation to political ideology, see James Holston,



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The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). For more recent work on Modernism and politics, see Mark Healy, Ruins of the New Argentina: Peronism and the Remaking of San Juan after the 1944 Earthquake (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

18. For an overview of resistance to urban renewal across the North Atlantic, see Christopher Klemek, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); for exam-ples of local resistance to urban renewal programs in Latin America, see Teresa Meade, “Civilizing” Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889-1930 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); Andrew Wood, Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers, and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870-1927 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001); John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).

19. On the relationship between informality, resistance, and citizenship, see Brodwyn Fischer, A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio De Janeiro (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

20. For general analyses of state structures in Republican Cuba, see Robert Whitney, State and Revolution in Cuba: Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Jorge Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); Jorge Domínguez, “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” in Sultanistic Regimes, ed. H. E. Chehabi and Juan Linz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998).

21. Documenting congressional failures to implement legislation upholding the constitution, as well as inconsistencies in the document itself are Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 92–98; Charles Ameringer, The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico Years, 1944-52 (Miami: University Press of Florida, 2000), 14; Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution, 36. However, other authors have begun to emphasize the enduring and concrete applications of the 1940 Constitution. See de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 209–22; Hyde, “‘Mejores Ciudades, Ciudadanos Mejores,’” 103; Sarah Arvey “Making the Immoral Moral: Consensual Unions and Birth Status in Cuban Law and Everyday Practice, 1940-1958,” Hispanic American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (2010).

22. Public housing had been a priority of the Liberal administrations of José Miguel Gomez, who con-structed the Pogolotti neighborhood for workers in 1910, and later of Gerardo Machado who expanded the neighborhood in the 1920s. These projects had traditionally been distributed to political support-ers through patronage networks. Luis Bay Sevilla, “Por que la barriada obrera de Pogolotti fue un fracaso,” Arquitectura, January 1941, 30; Secretaría de Obras Públicas, Boletin de Obras Publicas (Havana, Cuba, 1927). On Havana’s shortage of housing in the early twentieth century, see Luis Bay y Sevilla, La vivienda del pobre (Havana, Cuba: Montalvo, 1924), 23–29.

23. Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 117.24. “Graficas,” Bohemia, December 17, 1933, 20.25. The phrase “barrio de indigentes” literally translates to “neighborhood of indigents”; I have instead

used the term “shantytown” throughout the essay.26. See, e.g., “El Aprismo ante la realidad cubana,” Editorial APRA (Habana: 1934) in Latin American

and Iberian Pamphlets II (Library of Congress Microfilms); “Directorio Estudiantil Universitario al pueblo de Cuba,” in Manifiestos de Cuba, ed Roberto Padrón Larrazábal (Sevilla, Spain: Universidad de Sevilla, [1933] 1975), 169; “Joven Cuba,” Ibid [1934], 182; “Se impone sea aprobada la Ley de los Alquileres: rebaja de alquileres es una demanda popular inaplazable,” Noticias de Hoy, February 19, 1939.

27. Solares and barrios de indigentes were predominantly populated by Afrodescendants, although by all accounts they were spaces of multiracial, multiethnic composition. De la Fuente writes that “the identification of solares as black spaces was a construct aimed at excluding the poorest from the city’s geography and society, a cultural validation of social hierarchies,” A Nation for All, 114. In 1944 Juan Chailloux found that 95.7 percent of the solar residents he surveyed were black, while the National Convention of Cuban Societies of the Colored Race in 1936 reported that 97.5 percent of barrios de indigentes were “of the colored race.” In 1950, Ames reported an afro-descended population of 69 percent in several solares. After the 1959 Revolution, Butterworth reported 67 percent of residents resettled in “Buena Ventura” from Las Yaguas to be black or mulatto; David W. Ames, “Negro Family




Types in a Cuban Solar,” Phylon 11, no. 2 (1950): 159–63; Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura, 24; Convención Nacional de Sociedades Cubanas de la Raza de Color, Programa (Habana: Imprenta Molina y Cía, 1936), 4; Juan Chailloux Cardona, Los horrores del solar habanero: Síntesis histórica de la vivienda popular (Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, [1945] 2008), 149; “La lucha contra la tuberculosis,” Adelante, July 1937.

28. “Viejos libertadores habitan el reparto de Cuba Las Yaguas,”Bohemia, November 27, 1938, 32–33, 45, 47, 49.

29. For an overview of the eugenics movement in Latin America, see Nancy Leys Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). For an overview of eugenics and social science in Cuba, see Alejandra Bronfman, Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); for an analysis of biotypology as it related to government policies toward the urban poor in Mexico from 1920–1960, see Alexandra Minna Stern, “From Mestizophilia to Biotypology: Racialization and Science in Mexico, 1920-1960,” in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy Applebaum, Anne Macpherson, and Karin Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); linking ecological science to urban planning in the United States is Jennifer Light, The Nature of Cities: Ecological Visions and The American Urban Professions, 1920-1960 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

30. Luis Bay Sevilla, “La vivienda del campesino,” Arquitectura, June 1936, 9.31. Luis Bay Sevilla, “La vivienda desde el punto de vista urbanistico,” Arquitectura, November

1941, 403.32. Pablo de la Torriente Brau, “La escuela pública en fernando poo,” Ahora, February 13, 1935.33. Carlos Saladrigas, “Exposición del programa,” in Club Atenas, Los partidos políticos y la Asamblea

Constituyente, 272.34. Plan Trienal de cuba: plan de reconstrucción económico-social, 41, 45; Ministerio de Gobernación,

Líneas básicas del programa Plan Trienal (Havana, Cuba: Carasa y Cía, 1940), 22.35. Ibid., 24.36. Whitney, State and Revolution in Cuba, 171.37. Carlos Saladrigas, “Exposición del programa,” in Club Atenas, Los partidos políticos y la Asamblea

Constituyente, 272.38. Andres Lazcano y Mazon, Constitución de Cuba (con los debates sobre su articulado y transitorias,

en la Convención Constituyente), 3 vols. (Havana, Cuba: Cultural, S.A., 1941), article 79.39. Ibid., article 215.40. Many progressive Latin American constitutions have defined private property as a “social function.”

This is a departure from U.S. constitutional norms, which establish private property as an individual right that may be denied only with “just compensation.” The intellectual roots of a “social function of property” can be traced to Mexico’s 1917 Constitution; however, Mirow argues that the specific word-ing, “social function,” originated independently in the 1925 Chilean constitution, promulgated under Arturo Alessandri, and emerged via French, not Mexican, law. See M.C. Mirow, “Origins of the Social Function of Property in Chile,” Fordham Law Review 80 (2011–2012), 1183–5.

41. “El Coronel Batista expone al Dr. José Rivero,” Diario de la Marina, December 20, 1937, reprinted in Plan de reconstrucción económico-social, 18.

42. See debates on Article 90 of the Constitution, from Andres Lazcano y Mazon, Constitución de Cuba, 568–71.

43. Gustavo Gutiérrez, “La discriminación racial ante la Convención Constituyente,” in Club Atenas, Los partidos políticos y la Asamblea Constituyente, 178.

44. Lazcano y Mazon, Constitución de Cuba, 561.45. In an effort to avoid suppressing new construction, the legislation exempted all new buildings from

reductions. Cuba, Laws, Statutes. Ley de Alquileres con todas las modificaciones introducidas hasta el 7 de Abril, 1949 (Havana, Cuba: Cía Editora de Libros y Folletos, 1949). Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, Piedras y leyes (Mexico: Ediciones Botas, 1961), 309; Milo A. Borges, Compilación ordenada y completa de la legislación cubana de 1899-1950, 2nd ed., vol 2. (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Lex, 1952), 203, 408, 576, 640.



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46. “Un Discurso del Coronel Batista,” El Avance, June 15, 1940. Article included in George Messersmith, “Colonel Batista’s Campaign Speech at Santiago de Cuba,” June 20, 1940, Confidential U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, Reel 64/769.

47. George Messersmith, to the Ambassador, August 20, 1940, Confidential U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, Reel 64/50.

48. The right to permanence refers to ongoing restrictions against evictions for reasons other than nonpay-ment of rent. Cuba, Laws, Statutes. Ley de Alquileres, 14–16, 19.

49. Ibid., 21–25. Borges, Milo A. Compilación ordenada, 860, 877, 1051, 1127.50. Ibid., 1193, 1198, 1212, 1215, 1224.51. Fulgencio Batista, “Ley decreto no. 449,” Gaceta Oficial, October 9, 1952; David Green. “New Rent

Law,” October 13, 1952, United States National Archives, Frederick, MD (Hereafter USNA), RG 59/837.02/10-3152.

52. Ibid., 29; R. M. Connell, “Housing and City, Town and Country Planning-Cuba,” August 11, 1950, 15, USNA, RG 59/837.02/8-1150.

53. Waldo Medina, “La vivienda, una de las muchas tragedias del cubano,” Bohemia, May 11, 1952, 31.54. “Emiten opiniones sobre el Derecho de Permanencia al proyecto de Ley de Alquileres aprobado por el

Consejo Consultivo y el anunciado desfile mañana,” Diario de la Marina, September 11, 1952, 6.55. Eduardo Acha, “Una nueva Ley de Alquileres,” Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana, December

1947, 8.56. Juan Moré y Benítez, “La interpretación judicial en los arrendamientos,” Repertorio Judicial, May

1947, 81–85; José Más y Obregón, “La interpretación judicial en los arrendamientos,” Repertorio Judicial, June 1947, 107.

57. Roberto Segre, “Havana, from Tacón to Forestier,” 208.58. Quoted from Eddy Chibás’ weekly radio broadcast, as translated and edited by the US Embassy in

Havana, August 4, 1946, USNA, RG 59/837.00/8-946.59. Ramón Grau San Martín, “Al primer mes de gobierno,” in La revolución constructiva (Havana, Cuba:

Editorial Neptuno [November 11, 1944], 1947), 9.60. The official bulletin mentions eight apartment buildings but only shows four partially completed.

Photos from 1948 show six buildings. In 1950, observers counted 201 houses. República de Cuba, Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Memoria del plan de obras del gobierno de Ramón Grau San Martín (Havana, Cuba: Alía, 1947), 279; Manuel Febles Valdés, “El problema de la vivienda en Cuba,” Arquitectura, April 1948, 102; Armando Mirabona, “Escasez de viviendas baratas (Trabajo leído en la Universidad del Aire),” Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana, July 1950, 12.

61. Ibid., 12.62. “Plataforma de gobierno del Partido Ortodoxo,” in Elena Álvarez Martín, Eduardo Chibás: clarinada

fecunda (Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, [1948] 2009), 177–78.63. Herminio Portell-Vilá, “Casas para pobres en Brasil y en Cuba,” Bohemia, October 7, 1951, 7.64. “Houses, apartments to be raffled July 4,” Havana Post, June 26, 1952, 1; “Various Departments

Collaborate on Public Works,” Havana Post, July 4, 1952, Special Supplement, 5.65. Initial raffles were open to all workers, but later distributions were only made available to those of low

income, yet many complained that rents were too high. “Terminadas las inscripciones para el sorteo de las casas de Luyanó,” El Mundo, July 2, 1952, 6; “Various Departments Collaborate on Public Works,” Havana Post, July 4, 1952, Special Supplement, 5; “Fueron sorteados las 433 casas construidas en el Barrio Obrero,” Diario de la Marina, July 5, 1952, 1, 22.

66. “Al margen de la alegre vida de la capital,” Bohemia, March 21, 1937, 29; Pedro Luis Padron, “¿Que república era aquella? el intento para el desalojo del barrio de ‘Las Yaguas,’” Granma, May 13, 1970, 2.

67. Resident Lázaro Benedí stated, “We knew how to work our case and we studied the laws and found out that Cuban landownership laws originated in Greek law. Any piece of land occupied by no less than twenty-five people for at least twenty-five years and not reclaimed by its original owners during that time became property of the squatters.” Another legal challenge in 1944 was based on the claim that no rent had ever been paid to the property owner, thus they could not be evicted for nonpayment of rent. Lewis et al., Four Men, 62; Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura, 12.

68. Lewis et al., Four Men, 65.




69. Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura, 13.70. Jorge Calderón González, Amparo: millo y azucenas (Havana, Cuba: Casa de las Americas, 1970), 190.71. Lewis et al., Four Men, 62.72. Grau, “Al primer mes de gobierno,” in La revolución constructiva, 9.73. “La vivienda en la desinflación económica,” Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana, December

1948, 3; Rodolfo Rodríguez Zaldivar, “Erradica la bochornosa lacra,” Bohemia, August 7, 1955, sup-plement, 12; Aída García Alonso, Manuela la mexicana (Havana, Cuba: Casa de las Americas, 1968), 318–19, 353.

74. F. Rodríguez Piedra, “Un negocio, 4 mil familias a la calle,” La Ultima Hora, February 7, 1952.75. Lewis et al., Four Men, 58; Herminio Portell-Vilá, “El eterno engaño,” Bohemia, October 12, 1952,

111–12.76. Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 117; Connell, “Housing and City, Town and Country Planning-

Cuba,” August 11, 1950, USNA, RG 59/837.02/8-1150.77. The U.S. State Department (with information from Cuba’s National College of Architects) estimated

that 15 percent of Havana’s population lived in solares and 5 percent in barrios de indigentes in 1950—one-fifth of the city. By the mid-1950s de la Fuente estimates that two hundred thousand people lived in solares with an additional forty to fifty thousand in barrios de indigentes—approximately one-fourth of the city. Scarpaci et al. place the total figure slightly higher at three hundred thousand. They, and other authors, note that the urban poor may have been undercounted in 1953 because of technical issues with the census. Connell, “Housing and City, Town and Country Planning-Cuba,” August 11, 1950, USNA RG 59/837.02/8-1150; Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 73; de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 114.

78. Jorge Ibarra reports that there were 60,000 eviction cases in Havana courts during 1952. Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution, 66.

79. Luis Bay Sevilla, Proyecto de ley de casas baratas (Havana, Cuba: Úcar, García y Cía, 1938). On a 1944 master plan for Havana, see Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 71.

80. Manuel Febles Valdés, “El problema de la vivienda en Cuba,” Arquitectura, April 1948, 102–3.81. Carlos Prio Socarrás, “La comisión nacional de la vivienda: decreto numero 2786,” reprinted in

Arquitectura, December 1950, 560–561; Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Luc Zephirin, “Central Planning,” in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 146.

82. “Urbanismo, planificación y plusvalía,” Diario de la Marina, September 29, 1952, 4.83. “Información general sobre la ley de planificación nacional,” Arquitectura, May 1953, 183.84. The merits of plans proposed by the board have been a subject of debate, which falls outside the scope

of this essay. See Timothy Hyde, “Planos, Planes y Planificación: Josep Lluís Sert and the Idea of Planning,” in Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-69, ed. Eric Mumford, Hashim Sarkis, and Neyran Turan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 65, 75fn30; Orlando Naranjo Marin, “Comentarios sobre la ley de planificación nacional,” Arquitectura, March 1955, 104.

85. Ibid. On the National Planning Board, see Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 76–85; Hyde, “Planos, Planes y Planificación,” 55–72.

86. “El Problema de la Habitación En Mexico: Realidad de su Solución. Una conversación con el arqui-tecto Mario Pani,” Arquitectura, October 1949, 286; Scarpaci et al., Havana: Two Faces, 77–80.

87. U.S. Embassy, Habana, “Cuban Government Note on Low Cost Housing Project and Loan Application Export-Import Bank,” September 1, 1951, USNA RG 59/837.02/9-751; Mesa-Lago ed., Revolutionary Change in Cuba, 146.

88. The Cuban agency was referred to as both Fomento de Hipotecas Aseguradas and Fondo de Hipotecas Aseguradas—literally translated: Insured Mortgage Stimulus or Insured Mortgage Fund. Harold Randall, “Development of the Cuban FHA,” April 21, 1954, USNA, RG 59/837.02/4-2154.

89. Horacio Navarrete, “Una ley de propiedad horizontal,” Arquitectura, May 1948, 129–33; Angel Gutierrez Cordovi, “Seria amenaza a la construcción,” Arquitectura, March 1956, 135.

90. Aracelio Azcuy, Hacia la victoria: Comite Auténtico (Havana, Cuba: n.p., 1951).91. Mirabona, “Escacez de viviendas baratas,” Revista Nacional de la Propiedad Urbana, July 1950, 14.92. “Promete Batista que el gobierno dará garantías,” El Mundo, September 5, 1952, 10.93. Gastón Baquero, “La Ley de Alquileres: una esperanza dramática,” Diario de la Marina, October 5,

1952, 4.



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94. García Vázquez, Aspectos del planeamiento y de la vivienda en Cuba, 74.95. “Una ley de extorsión al pueblo,” Bohemia, September 7, 1952, 65.96. David Green, “Government Plans for Low-Cost Housing Developments,” August 1, 1952, USNA, RG

59/837.02/8-152.97. Fulgencio Batista, “Ofrece Batista garantías a obreros y capitalistas,” El Mundo, June 11, 1952, 8;

“Apoya la cámara de comercio el proyecto de ley sobre alquileres. Pide el Jefe de Estado la aprobación de esa legislación y felicita al doctor W. Albanés,” Diario de la Marina, September 4, 1952, 1.

98. “En Cuba,” Bohemia, September 7, 1952, 87.99. “Protesta Obrera por la Ley de Alquileres,” El Mundo, August 29, 1952, 1.100. Gastón Baquero, “La Ley de Alquileres: problema económico o político?” Diario de la Marina,

September 10, 1952, 4.101. Waldo Medina, “Ley que se alquila o el eterno pleito del casero y el inquilino,” Bohemia, October 5,

1952, 26.102. Rodolfo Rodríguez Zalvidar y “Tony” Martin, “‘El solo anuncio de esta medida ha paralizado las

construcciones.’ afirma el doctor Raúl de Cárdenas,” Bohemia, June 8, 1952, 61.103. “La permanencia es un privilegio,” El Mundo, September 18, 1952, 10.104. “Preparativos para el desfile pro-Derecho de Permanencia: Adhesiones de las Asociaciones Comerciales

y Cámaras de Comercio de todas las provincias,” Diario de la Marina, September 11, 1952, 1.105. “Ante 300,000 personas ratificó el General Batista su respeto a la propiedad privada y el deseo de

armonizar todos los intereses,” Diario de la Marina, September 13, 1952, 1; “Ratifica Batista su res-peto para la propiedad privada,” El Mundo, September 13, 1952, 1.

106. Ibid.107. “Prolongada reunión del gabinete,” El Mundo, October 2, 1952, 1.108. “Rebajan alquileres de casas construidas después del año 1945,” El Mundo, October 3, 1952, 1; “Esta

noche o mañana se pondrá a la firma del jefe del estado la nueva Ley de Alquileres y de Permanencia,” Diario de la Marina, October 3, 1952, 1.

109. Ibid.110. The measure presumably did not help those residing in illegally subdivided tenements. In 1953 the 25

percent requirement was weakened; Fulgencio Batista, “Ley decreto no. 449,” Gaceta Oficial, October 9, 1952; David Green, “New Rent Law,” October 13, 1952, USNA RG 59/837.02/10-3152.

111. Cuba, Dirección Central de Estadística, La situación de la vivienda en Cuba en 1970 y su evolución perspectiva (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Orbe, 1976), 20.

112. “La piedra y el cemento, refugio del capital atemorizado,” Bohemia, January 23, 1955, 117; “Seria amenaza a la construcción,” Arquitectura, March 1956, 135–36.

113. Timothy Hyde, “An Architectural Constitution: Law, Planning, and Architecture in Cuba, 1937-1959” (PhD Diss., Harvard University, 2007), 252–78.

114. Samuel Feijoo, “La Vivienda del Pobre,” Bohemia, March 10, 1957, 105.115. The Housing Commission reported moving ten thousand people from sixteen Havana neighborhoods

in 1955, with four others slated for removal. Batista reported in 1961 that he had moved twenty-five thousand people from various barrios de indigentes. Although Las Yaguas was not cleared, migration to the neighborhood slowed dramatically after clearance efforts from 1954 to 1956. Batista, Piedras y leyes, 315; Rodolfo Rodriguez Zaldivar, “Erradica la bochornosa lacra,” Bohemia, August 7, 1955, supplement, 13; García Alonso, Manuela la mexicana, appendix.

116. Clearances were carried out by the National Housing Commission. Like previous efforts, they were accompanied by plans to rehabilitate residents on work farms or other alternative locations. Testimonial accounts indicate that residents sometimes abandoned these locations and returned to shantytowns. The clearances from 1954 to 1956 were enacted in accordance with decree 139 of 1953, which read: “A ‘Service of Rehabilitation of the Urban Barrios de Indigentes’ will be established with the objective of: 1) making urban barrios de indigentes disappear, moving the residents who have gainful employ-ment to another part of the urban center previously selected by the commission and 2) reeducating those who don’t have gainful employment in labor workshops and farms.” On this law see Fulgencio Batista, “Ley Decreto 139,” June 12, 1952, USNA, RG 59/837.02/8-152; on the 1954–1955 clear-ances, see Rodolfo Rodríguez Zaldivar, “Erradica la bochornosa lacra,” Bohemia, August 7, 1955, supplement, 12–16; and on previous efforts to rehabilitate shantytown residents, see García Alonso, Manuela la Mexicana, 287, 327.




117. Fulgencio Batista, “Mensaje presidencial al congreso,” Información, March 1, 1955.118. Eduardo Cañas Abril, “Indican los arquitectos como ofrecer al pueblo casas económicas,” Bohemia,

March 13, 1955, 68; Morel Guirel Moreno, “Los Barrios de Indigentes,” Atenas, October 1954, 39.119. Lewis et al., Four Men, 88.120. Jesús Díaz, The Initials of the Earth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, [1967] 2006), 47.121. “Protestan los inquilinos del barrio obrero,” El Mundo, October 2, 1952.122. Castro, “History Will Absolve Me,” in Chomsky et al., The Cuba Reader, 310–12.123. Butterworth, The People of Buena Ventura, 18.124. Cuba, Dirección Central de Estadística, La situación de la vivienda en Cuba en 1970 y su evolución

perspectiva (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Orbe, 1976), 20.125. Ibid., 21.

Author BiographyJesse Horst is a PhD candidate in Latin American History at the University of Pittsburgh, currently con-ducting dissertation research on urban poverty and informal housing in Havana, Cuba from 1920 to 1970. He can be reached at [email protected]



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