Deep Green and Social: Permaculture, Spirituality, and Society in Cuba

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.