Following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, Cuba experienced an acute economic crisis in the 1990s known as the “Special Period”. This crisis challenged not only the state’s ability to provide for Cubans’ material needs, but also the moral vision of creating a “New Human” within the Revolution’s political framework. During the Special Period, a variety of new religious and civil society movements emerged to meet both the material and spiritual needs of Cubans. Permaculture, a holistic design system that arrived from Australia in 1993, promotes more harmonious relationships between human beings and nature through a set of three ethical principles: (1) Care for the Earth; (2) Care for People; and (3) Sharing Resources. Within the Cuban context, the growing permaculture movement is part of a larger set of religious and civil society revivals since the fall of the Soviet Bloc. Using qualitative fieldwork, this paper argues that permaculture is functioning as a religious-like movement in Cuba because it provides both spiritual and material benefits to individuals through networks of mutual aid and social solidarity. The permaculture movement also provides flexibility for individual perspectives about nature as sacred and having intrinsic value apart from usefulness to humans.

Permaculture is a holistic sustainability movement brought to Cuba from Australia in the early 1990s. In addition to a set of twelve design principles that permaculturalists use to organize their houses, backyards, and farms, the movement is grounded upon three main ethical principles: care for the Earth, care for people, and share resources through the recognition of limits to consumption. Using etic analysis of qualitative interviews from the provinces of Havana and Sancti Spíritus, I argue that permaculture in Cuba is a religious movement that is meeting both the spiritual and material needs of individuals. This environmentally engaged religious movement promotes the idea that the Earth is alive and is therefore worthy of reverent care, and this care extends to humans through the growing of food produced within permaculture systems using ecological methods.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract