Julio César Guanche their will (Article 101). A constitutional mandate was required to force a citizen to change their domicile (Article 30) and intervention in it required judicial authority. It established as citizenship duties to serve the homeland with arms; to contribute to public expenditures; to comply with the constitution and the law and to observe a civic conduct, “inculcating it to their children, promoting in them the purest national conscience” (Article 9). Within the nationalist spirit that adopted by the Constitution, Cuban citizens received exclusive benefits for their nationality. In addition to political rights, such as carrying out public functions and positions, they also received other social rights: social assistance, public cooperation, preference for work (Article 10) and, potentially, affirmative action for sectors suffering from historical exclusion, such as black Cubans19. Universal, equal and secret suffrage was established for all Cuban citizens as a right, duty and function, and for the first and only time in Cuban constitutional history, it was established as mandatory (Article 97). A popular legislative initiative was stipulated, exercisable by ten thousand citizens (Article 135), and a declaration of unconstitutionality by 25 citizens (Article 194). For passive suffrage, in order to be Municipal Mayor, Manager, Commissioner or Councilman, it only required to be a Cuban citizen and be twenty-one years of age (Barriers 1940). The issue of preference in employment for Cuban citizens/nationals was a field of conflict. Of the nearly 4 million inhabitants populating Cuba in 1938, at least 600,000 people (15.6%) were white Spaniards. Several social sectors considered that these were “the progenitors of the majority of the native population, to which they have transmitted all the psychic characters that they brought from the peninsula” (Marinello 1937, pp. 384-385). Access to jobs for such sector was limited by laws of affirmative action in favour of native workers that demanded up to 80% of employment for nationals20 (Whitney 2010, pp. 264265). Given this scenario, the distinction between Cuban citizenship by birth or by naturalisation become important, in favour of the former21. Cubans by birth accredited such condition by means of a document denominated “Certificate of Nationality” in the law, while 19 Article 74 of the constitution of 1940 regulated: “The Ministry of Labour, as an essential part of its permanent social policy, will ensure that no discriminatory practices of any type prevail in the distribution of opportunities for labour in industry or commerce. In the removal of personnel and in the creation of new places, as well as new factories, industries or businesses that are established, it will be mandatory to distribute work opportunities without distinction of race or colour, provided that the suitability requirements are met. The Law will establish that any other practice will be punishable and prosecutable ex officio or at the request of the affected party”. 20 The crisis of 1929 had been devastating for the Cuban economy. When growth began, during the 1930s themselves, this was due to non-structural factors. Opportunities to substitute imports arose, but it was due to the fact that land and labour (with the systematic lowering of wages) were available to expand and diversify agriculture. At the same time, a partial non-payment of the external debt was possible without suffering sanctions or losing advantages, since direct investment was scarce and there were no credits. Daily life was perceived as a tragedy by the majority. In the 1930s the following situations were common: non-payment of wages, “slavery-like” working conditions, the dismissal of those who protested, payment in vouchers and tokens, scholarly exclusion, the breach of social laws and the transferal to the workers of the cost of newly acquired social rights. Practically, every day the press reported suicides of people “bored” with life, whose living conditions in most cases were described as very serious. According to contemporaries, the “most tragic problem in Cuba” was unemployment: “It is worthless for the active worker to earn a few more pesos of salary, if at the same time there are thousands of workers at rest oscillating between extremism, despair and delinquency” (Editorial 1937, p.17). 21 Measures such as these had already been requested in light of a serious finding. A sentence of the Supreme Court of the Republic, of 1936, affirmed that: “for historical, social and economic reasons, the notoriety of which is expressed in this verification, the Cuban native has been successively and progressively displaced from the domain of land, commerce and industry, for the most part by foreign hands, and in the same fate, has been banished from jobs of all kinds in establishments, companies and private businesses, where communities of origin and kinship relations made traditional the constant preference and the importation of elements related to the employer” (Arredondo 1939, pp. 103-104). RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/3 - © 2020 Author(s) 15