I must say that I’m surprised to have been invited to address this issue. Those who work in the medical field, whether in clinical service or in academia, are not generally considered intellectuals in Cuba. After graduating from Medical School, I began in general practice at a clinic up in the mountains, and only later entered genetics, the specialty that I practice and also teach. Coincidentally, I am married to a writer and I can tell you that, for the most part, I face the same problems that he does as an artist and intellectual—even though I am a scientist and thus not supposedly an intellectual, according to common lore.
Too often there is a compartmentalized view of knowledge, one emphasizing the particularities of each discipline rather than one that looks at the whole.
Thinking about my current role in Cuban society, it is undeniable that Cuba has projected itself as a medical power because of what we have achieved, something unthinkable for underdeveloped countries like ours and akin to First World medicine. My own specialty, genetics, is not practiced everywhere, and to the surprise of many, Cuba is at the forefront in this field. And not only in Havana; here in Granma, where I live, no one would expect genetics to be so developed in such a remote location.
Yet, the high standards for specialists like me apply across the entire country, even though in more than a few cases the expected results might be hard to reach in Granma. The result for us professionals is a constant state of stress. However much energy one wants to put into the scientific work, there are mountains of difficulties surrounding us, since we don’t live in a glass jar and suffer the same bureaucratic, labor, housing, and transportation problems as the rest of the population.
To that, add the specific difficulties of carrying out scientific work, summed up as lack of resources, resulting from the economic crisis that we have been enduring since the beginning of the 1990s. The crisis can be traced to internal errors in the management of the country, but also to the effects of the iron-clad blockade, or as they say in the USA, the economic, commercial and financial embargo.
To carry out scientific work in Cuba, one must acquire commercial products; sometimes we have to go through hell in order to buy a specific microscope, to give just one example. So long as the economic problems in Cuba remain unsolved—something that we hope to achieve some time although nobody knows when—my role as a public intellectual will be limited by the very objective conditions that I have to face daily, however much effort I make to contribute to society from my position as a geneticist and professor. Obviously, the role of the intellectual differs from country to country, and the material constraints he or she encounters differ from situation to situation.
As far as how my own work as a geneticist can be of social relevance: that is a very interesting issue, and is closely related to what I expressed before. I can say with confidence that we will increasingly hear terms like “genetics”, “the human genome”, “genetic mapping”… The work I do will have a leading social role in the near future, both in Cuba and places around the world, where we are collaborating. Some time ago, I worked on a genetic survey in Nicaragua, and colleagues of mine have similarly worked in various other countries. However, for my line of work to contribute as much as possible, some of the roadblocks I referred to earlier need to be addressed. For example, scientific cooperation between Cuba and US researchers needs to be facilitated, and that includes eliminating obstacles to obtaining visas. In my case, the US Interests Section in Havana denied me a visa to attend a professional development program in the USA three years ago, under the pretext that I was a possible immigrant.
Bilateral collaboration between our countries is, in my opinion, fundamental for this work to contribute effectively in one way or another to the dynamism of the Cuban public sphere.
Specifically, such collaboration would entail sharing data, resources and knowledge with our American colleagues, something that is impossible today. Even if some limited avenues are open to facilitate this, the full collaboration we need will not take place so long as the blockade is not eliminated.
Yesenia Hidalgo Smith, Professor of Genetics at the University of Granma
Translation by Tavid Mulder and the Editors