Breathe
By Sonia Serrano Íñiguez
In Cuba they no longer serve yucca. Yes, after eating in different paladares and restaurants in Havana, I realized that tubers, that vegetable that always accompanies Cuban food and is served in abundance, is no longer a courtesy. There is no yucca with that delicious Cuban mojo, no fried malanga or fried sweet potato.
The change in the cuisine may seem simple, but it is actually a great social change. The modernization of Cuban restaurants has arrived and now, if you want a tuber or rice congrí, you have to ask for it and pay for it separately. In other words, Cuba is becoming more and more like any other Latin American country.
Since my daughter was born, I have traveled at least once a year to the island for family reasons, except during the pandemic. So we have seen the changes of the last two decades, from Fidel Castro's Cuba to the current one, which I would not know how to define.
A few days ago, while participating in the Julio Cortázar Latin American Chair, Leonardo Padura said: "My relationship with Havana has become complicated, as I have the feeling of feeling more and more alienated from it," and he spoke of the concepts of alienation and deconstruction. Then, he affirmed: "Everything has been fading away, but it is still a cultured city. However, misery creates misery. I feel alienated from the city because I grew up with other codes of behavior that had always worked".
Padura was in Guadalajara to talk about his most recent book, Ir a La Habana (Going to Havana), and who better than a Havana native to talk about these inexplicable changes?
Whenever I travel to the island, I always call the family to find out what is needed. On my penultimate trip, the surprise was that they suggested I take beans, rice and coffee, three products that Cubans consume in significant quantities. So I paid for a checked bag to fill it with 25 kilograms of whatever I could. Then I realized that it was not necessary. In the same airport I could buy coffee, even cheaper than in Mexico, and that everywhere you could get "sacks" (a measure that can be 5 or 20 kilos) of rice and beans.
In Cuba there were those products, but you have to buy them from any cuentapropista or SME, two words that by the way are heard more and more. On the other hand, those products almost disappeared from the "libreta", a system of distribution of the basic food basket to which any Cuban is entitled, but which has been diluted almost to the point of disappearing.
The opening for Cubans to set up their own small businesses, as cuentapropistas, or their small and medium enterprises, has meant that there are Cubans who can have practically anything and, on the other hand, that poverty is becoming more evident.
Now many Cubans travel to other Latin American countries, mainly Panama and Mexico, to buy goods that they then sell in "timbiriches" (a kind of market stall) or in their "garages" (garages). One of these businesses, which sells candy, soft drinks and bags of fried snacks, earns its owner about one million Cuban pesos a day (about 3,125 dollars). There are also companies that sell household appliances, clothing, construction materials, among other products also brought from other countries, but in containers that arrive at the different ports.
Almost nothing is left of Cuban socialism. That is why, in the Cuban streets, you will find a woman asking you to buy a bottle of milk for her son in the store, because the store's milk book doesn't give milk either, or another woman driving a Mercedes Benz van.
The social difference is marked by access to dollars, which move at an uncertain value. You can change a dollar at the bank for about 200 Cuban pesos or pay with a credit card in any restaurant where they will take it at 120 pesos. There is also the possibility of changing it on the black market at 350 pesos, where with a hundred dollars you will receive a huge bale of bills that will make you feel rich.
