Misery is part of the tourist experience, although the travel agencies promote it as “cultural immersion,” and they are not wrong
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 16 May 2024 — “Look what I brought,” says one seller to another, jokingly, this Tuesday at the Havana market at 19th and B, in El Vedado. In his hands he carries – a true extinct species from the Cuban table – three lobsters with fat tails, orange tails, like the rust of the tray that carries them.
As mythological as the lobster, whose capture this year is now prohibited until June, a group of young tourists – Canadians, Americans, English? – takes a tour of the market. Very white, blonde and with red cheeks, of that tone that the sun and the “historical proteins” put on the visitors’ faces, the kids take photos of everything they see.
Misery is part of their tourist experience, although travel agencies promote it as a “cultural immersion,” and they are not wrong. For telephones, modern and minimalist, dwarf onions, rancid chili peppers, outdated guavas and stinking meat, to which the butcher’s ancient fan does no favors, pose.
They also find the empty shelves, the hospital green walls, the heat of the tropics and the sweaty salespeople who approach them in search of purchases “in hard currency.” The kids look around restlessly and it seems to them that they are visiting a poor camp in Africa, a refuge after the war, an orphanage in Vietnam. They prefer not to be touched and to everything – what they understand and what they don’t – they respond with a pitying smile.
Vendors and tourists do, however, have one thing in common. They recognize in the food market, contradictorily, the stench of hunger. Hot, they press their backpacks against their bodies and leave. For Cuban merchants, toasted and sticky, they leave only the desired and unmistakable “smell of yuma*.”
*Translator’s note: “Yuma,” previously used to refer to Americans, now applies to foreigners from any non-Spanish speaking country. ’La Yuma” refers to the United States.
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