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