Cuban Freemasons in the Development of Civil Society and of a Political Opening 175
tury, the current composition of CF. We will then present the main
qualities of CF, and how these can positively impact civil society.
Finally, we will suggest specific ways that CF can influence an opening
of the Cuban society, and we will propose specific tools they require
to successfully accomplish such goal.Summary of the Demographic StudyThe time series of annual development of the membership of Cuban
Freemasons is shown in Figure 1. Part A (left) shows the annual mem-
bers in thousands. Part B (right) shows the population at risk which we
call Effective Masons. Since women cannot join the Freemasons, neither
men below the ages of 21, nor the sick, or those with police records,
or very poor, this reduces the population at risk to approximately one-
fourth of the total population. Hence, we divide the total members by
one fourth of the population. These results yield the number of Free-
masons, per thousand men eligible for belonging to the Institution,
which is what we have defined as Effective Masons. Such indicator
allows a fair comparison of membership across countries, and across
different time periods. It is akin to what demographers, studying a
specific cohort such as pregnant women, would do to assess their
impacts and results.
Freemasons have lost membership in many countries, during the
second half of the XX Century. For example in 1960, of 180 million
US citizens, there were 4.1 M Freemasons, yielding 91.5 Effective
Masons, or masons for every 1000 eligible males in the country. In
2000, this indicator had dropped to 25.6 per 1000 eligible: a four-fold
reduction.
In Cuba, due to the political and economic changes brought in by
the 1959 revolution, the situation is somewhat different. Membership
first follows a stronger decay that abroad. Then, after 1990, the insti-
tution recovers strongly. Highlights of the membership figures, by
decade, for Total and Effective Masons, are given below.