"The People Live Practically Like Beasts": Informal Housing and Local Government in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, 1959–1965

Abstract

This article draws from local government documents and a private archive to examine housing policy and daily life in 1960s Santiago de las Vegas, now part of Havana, but then a separate municipality with its own government. There, local officials sought radical solutions to the city's housing crisis but, faced with intractable resistance from national government officials, were ultimately unable to enact meaningful reform. As a result, many residents who would otherwise have been able to acquire new homes, many of them of African descent, remained trapped in substandard housing. This speaks to the possibilities and limits of local control after 1959, as well as new forms of vulnerability that were created as the revolutionary government consolidated its power.