Striking for Streptomycin

This chapter explores the arrival and distribution in Cuba of the antibiotics (e.g., streptomycin) that promised to cure tuberculosis in the 1940s and 1950s. The history of streptomycin in Cuba helps explain the disjuncture between improved health outcomes, specifically the tuberculosis mortality rate, and highly critical citizen perceptions of the public health sector in the Auténtico period. The Grau and Prío administrations’ distribution of chemotherapy did offer partial or total cure to some tuberculars; however, it was plagued by graft, negligence, and patronage. Tuberculars and their allies (including, but not limited to, individual Communists, the Popular Socialist Party, and the Ortodoxo Party) responded. These grassroots activists voiced new health rights and pursued various forms of mobilization, such as sanatorium strikes and unionization. The state responded with increasingly authoritarian methods to shut down tuberculosis activism, a sign of weakening democratic norms. Still, tuberculars and their allies crafted a convincing narrative of state failure to ensure health citizenship. As elite and middle-class charities returned to the antituberculosis campaign, helping poor Cubans obtain the drug, state legitimacy further eroded.