Original article

Cultural practice and family fishing tradition for local development in the municipality of Caimanera

0000-0002-0576-8890Roilber Peña Galano^{1  *}  , 0000-0002-0900-8653Migdalia Tamayo Téllez¹  , 0000-0001-9061-2585Alisa Natividad Delgado Tornes² 

¹Universidad de Guantánamo

²Universidad de Granma

ABSTRACTS

The planning of local development requires a different view where sociological science intervenes as a guide to reveal and understand the cultural traditions that contribute to this end. The fishing cultural practice, as a family tradition, is a potentiality in several localities of the country and the municipality of Caimanera is one of them, however, it is a problem that requires investigation and it is intended to analyze its importance. The use of theoretical and empirical methods made it possible to expose the regularities of the phenomenon. The evaluations made revealed that the fishing tradition support is a potentiality for community development.

Key words: Cultural practice; Family tradition; Local development; Cultural model; Fishing tradition.

Introduction

The contemporary world outlines the need and relevance of showing the importance of local development, but it is an insufficiently understood element and this is observed in the many obstacles seen in the local development process undertaken in Cuba in line with the updating of the economic and social development model.

The above is motivated by the poor warning of the differences from one context to another; the idea and action anchored as paradigmatic configuration in the actors persists and imposes a burden to the longed and necessary autonomy of local governance, together with the disparity in the indicators of development reached by the municipalities which places them in inequitable levels to undertake a development process in conditions of autonomy and decentralization that distinguish such process.

This is generalizable to most Cuban municipalities and Caimanera is no exception. Rather, and unlike other municipalities in the last half century, this territory has other elements that make it special: the traditional practice of fishing, salt production and the existence of the only land border of the Cuban archipelago imposed by the illegal occupation of the imperialist power of the United States, which necessarily led the Cuban government authorities to establish a development projection adjusted to the geopolitical conditions referred to.

In the current scenario, undertaking local development planning in this municipality requires a different conception, where sociological science contributes to unveil and understand the potentialities of the fishing tradition in accordance with the aims of the aspired local development.

Hence the importance of identifying in a clear way for all the localities, which are the elements of their development potentials that can constitute the greatest sources of synergies by their coordinated action and to try to structure a development strategy that contributes to their full utilization. In this sense, it is pertinent to explore the potentialities of the locality, and the fishing tradition, although it does not constitute a strategic economic line in the territory, is worth observing.

Social studies on fishing are scarce in Cuba despite the fact that the island condition could well condition this line of research and those that exist, ^{Núñez (2006}), ^{Pérez and Beatón (2007}), are all associated with environmental problems, the management of coastal areas or the study of marine resources and their use for the promotion of the industry.

Other studies from sociology also address cultural practices in the development of environmental culture and its meaning ^{Hernández (2010}).

Therefore, the research aims to address from a sociological perspective the delimitation and inclusion of all the potentialities that characterize the municipality of Caimanera, emphasizing the fishing tradition in its links from family and neighborhood networks with a strong support in the family productive culture and its contribution to local development.

Development

The theoretical configuration on local development has been the most important turning point for most contemporary societies-nations and where some sciences have directed their steps. In the academic and political discourse on the subject, it has prevailed to consider the economic dimension of development as determinant, due to its capacity to drive the other spheres of social life, which has reached the point of defining it as a tendency in the reduction of the concept to a single dimension, when it is called Local Economic Development, ^{Madoery (2001}), ^{Alburquerque (2003)}.

A positioning to a certain extent overcome by researchers, world and regional organizations that have noticed its multidimensionality in the articulation of economic, sociocultural, environmental and institutional variables.

Conceived as an approach, tool and style of development, the local has been the option in the face of the crisis of Latin American neoliberalism in the face of the growing indexes of poverty, social exclusion and inequality, precariousness and informalization of labor and the environmental destruction that the free market generated and could not solve. In Cuba, the updating of the social economic model emphasizes decentralization and focuses on the municipality as a scale and space, with possibilities for the integration and articulated management of development units and the entities that carry it out as a joint strategic exercise.

Regarding the study of local development, scientific production in recent years with respect to its economic, cultural and environmental dimensions has taken place in institutions belonging to the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education (MES), among which we can find the Center for the Study of Integral Development of Culture (CEDIC), today the Center for Social Studies José A. Portuondo Social Studies Center at the University of Oriente (UO), the Center for Community Development at the Central University of Las Villas (UCLV), the Center for Local and Community Development of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment of Cuba and the Center for Local Development in Las Tunas.

The researchers who contribute in the first one emphasize the cultural dimension of development in its community and cultural aspect ^{Álvarez (2001)}, ^{Álvarez, (2008)}) and ^{Tamayo (2002)}, ^{Tamayo, (2012)}) and in the second, third and fourth ones they emphasize the methodology of local self-development to overcome social asymmetries and the management of knowledge to generate local development processes ^{Garcés (2012}).

Local development is considered by (^{Alburquerque, Aghón and Cortés 2001}, p. 22) to be

... a process of growth and structural change of the economy of a city, county or region, in which at least three dimensions can be identified: an economic one, characterized by its production system that allows local entrepreneurs to efficiently use productive factors, generate economies of scale, and increase productivity to levels that allow competitiveness in the market; a socio-cultural one, in which the system of economic and social relations, local institutions and values serve as the basis for the development process; a political and administrative one, in which local initiatives create a favorable environment for production and drive development.

The process of local development seen from the sociological sciences involves searching for the contributions of social practices demonstrated in the history of mankind, which, when reproduced, contribute decisively to the growth of groups, communities, societies and nations, and therefore involves the exploration of this in terms of development and its treatment from the agencies and scientific productions.

In this sense, the cultural practices resulting from the readings of traditions, configured around productive activities as ancient as fishing, can become strong arguments against the cultural hegemonisms that mark contemporary social reality and become an obstacle to the intentions of blurring or making invisible peoples and nations from the great centers of power.

Marine and freshwater fishing is considered one of the oldest productive activities carried out by man. It has been analyzed from a technical and biological point of view, but has not received sufficient attention from social research. In particular, anthropology has succeeded in deciphering the evolution of fishing communities, and economics tries to determine the maximum exploitation rates of marine resources, while sociology has not had a systematic approach to the subjects who practice it nor to their systems of relationships as an object of study.

In its technical report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that almost 95% of the world's fishermen are small-scale fishermen and together they catch almost half of the fish destined for human consumption, around which there are a considerable number of small-scale producers, processors, marketers and distributors, plus the support workers and people who depend on them, representing more than 200 million people worldwide, who constitute different ways of life and lifestyles (^{FAO, 2002, p.9}).

The above allows us to infer that as a practice, the fishing occupation expresses the personal and cultural identity of those who carry it out, that is; in addition to ensuring subsistence, it contains values and symbols that highlight the vitality of this way of life, perpetuated through socializing institutions, such as the family, formal and informal educational processes, and the mass media, all involved in a continuous process of reproduction (of these practices) in which the technological, economic, political, environmental and cultural changes of the broader social contexts, not always studied in depth or taken into consideration for government management in the management and regulation of fishing activities, are also sheltered.

Fishing traditions have evolved significantly; however, the processes are not the same in all regions. The specific type of daily actions of community members make the community perfectly identifiable. The proximity of the fishing areas, the intense man-sea link, the boats and fishing gear, the type of housing, which reveal part of the cultural heritage of the community, allow us to assume that the cultural identity maintains strong links with the fishing tradition.

According to the National Office of Statistics and Information National Office of Statistics and Information in Cuba there are a total of 245 coastal settlements, distributed in four fishing zones, with a consolidated population culturally expressed in the social practices around fishing as an economic activity for family sustenance, rooted as a tradition and shaper of senses regarding the sociability of the groups that are nucleated from the work for the capture, distribution and consumption of marine products and the rest of the elements that surround it, that is, the groups of fishermen, the work instruments and the means of navigation and fishing, among others. (^{ONEI, 2019, p. 33}).

Despite this, there are not enough studies that reveal and describe the process of reproduction of the fishing activity through the description of the tradition within the family group whose results can be taken as a basis for the management of the communities in view of the sustainable development objectives to be achieved by 2030.

In the southeastern zone of Cuba, Caimanera stands out, a municipality that, without exhibiting high indexes as an economic contribution, has in fishing a tradition that contributes to community cohesion. A community that has moved between salt and fishing and in which geopolitical and environmental conditions have a direct impact on the fact that fishing is not considered today as the main economic line and source of development, even not recognized as such in the development strategy until 2030. In spite of this, entire families rely on fishing as their main element of cohesion. A solid fishing tradition is the foundation that sustains Caimanera's culture, which is expressed in the meanings attributed to fishing by the actors in the family context.

Caimanera is the head town of the municipality of the same name in Guantánamo province. Its settlement began in the second half of the 19th century, after the establishment of the important means of communication represented by the railroad. Since then, two fishermen's neighborhoods known as El Cañito and El Nunque were established.

The first, an extremely poor neighborhood, is where the prostitution zone was opened and where the Yankee Naval Base is located; the fishermen who lived here built their houses above the sea, a construction system that facilitated their daily work. These houses were generally built of wood, with a zinc roof, and at the back they added a simple dock that served as a berth for their small boats, and as a maintenance place for their nets and other gear.

To the north of the town was erected El Nunque, where Spanish families from different villages of the peninsula settled down, fleeing from social misery and military service, who were also dedicated to fishing and brought with them their customs and instruments, among them: naza, chinchorros and nets woven with cotton thread, the use of these arts ensured a life a little more advantageous than the others. Currently, El Nunque is the area that has maintained a traditional attachment to fishing with means of popular creativity, among them rafts, polyfoam boats, rustic boards and other means that are used to carry out their work in an informal manner.

About Caimanera, local authors such as ^{Cruz Díaz (1977}) and ^{García Campusano (2009}) recognize fishing as an important economic activity since the genesis of the territory that demonstrates the practice of continuous fishing anchored to the daily life of the inhabitants in Caimanera and although access to the preparation of trades related to the activity does not currently have a systematic presence in the offers of continuing studies, the knowledge of the fishing tradition finds in the family environment a favorable space for its plausible reproduction to be considered in the planning of local development.

According to the register of consumers at the end of March 2019, there is a total of 2269 families in the town of Caimanera, 1528 of them have a family fishing tradition, which means 70%, data that allows us to corroborate that fishing is a living practice that has not been sufficiently studied, nor sufficiently exploited to generate income, employment and promote the quality of life of its inhabitants, in addition to contributing to the full development of these cultural practices and family fishing tradition.

The idea is defended that the meanings expressed in the set of fishing gear and in the fishing language, as well as the imaginary through which the myths and legends of the subjects involved come to life, configure the cultural practices as a family fishing tradition in Caimanera, whose potentialities can be a source for local development planning.

Conclusiones

The study carried out allows to approach from theoretical, methodological and empirical elements from anthropological and sociological perspectives, in particular the sociology of culture, the importance of the family fishing tradition that allows to explain the cultural practices that shape them. The proposal of the family fishing tradition activity in Caimanera, its particularities and potentialities that can be considered for local development is approached. All this will favor the conformation of positive behavioral patterns, the fishing management based on the family fishing tradition and that it becomes a strategy for the creation of employment and the study of a trade.

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Received: March 20, 2022; Accepted: July 10, 2022

^*Autor para la correspondencia: [e-mail]