This week, in the market of 19 and B in El Vedado, black beans reappeared after being absent for days from the stalls
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 3 September 2024 — She has never left Cuba, but the crisis has forced her to learn the names of some basic products from other countries. Janet now knows that corn is also called ‘choclo,’ that avocado is called ‘palta‘ in some parts of Latin America and that lemon is the sonorous ‘lima persa‘ (Persian lime) in other places. But it’s the beans that are known by the most names. Faced with the fall in national production, this 42-year-old from Havana has to buy imported beans that say ‘porotos‘ or ‘alubias‘ rather than ‘habichuelas‘ on the package.
“At first I often made a fool of myself by asking the MSME on the corner if what is called ‘caraota’ is cooked in the same way as our beans,” the woman recalls. “In my house I had never bought anything foreign; what we did all our lives was go to the agromarket and choose between the Creole products, which we liked the most.” But the plummeting of national production, the high prices of the legume that comes out of the Cuban fields and the presentation, many times, in packages of poor quality with split beans or stones included, have pushed Cuban diners to prefer the imported beans .
“If he were alive now and saw that we prefer the alubias and imported caraotas, he would have a heart attack and die again “
“I don’t know how they do it, if it’s with a machine or manually, but you don’t have to pick through the beans that come from outside to cook them: they arrive clean, without dirt, without pieces of branches, without different colors,” explains the woman. A one-kilogram package of black beans in a private store in her neighborhood of Cayo Hueso costs between 700 and 800 pesos depending on the quality and the brand. “They say ‘porotos‘ on the package, but now I know it’s the same bean with another name.”
This week in El Vedado’s 19th and B market, black beans reappeared after being absent for days from the stalls. A pound can go up to 300 pesos, but Janet prefers to “pay more for a package from Argentina or the United States, which arrives cleaner and with beans that get soft when cooked.” The woman regrets that this preference has also been extended to other families she knows. “My grandfather was from Abreus, in Cienfuegos, and he was devoted to planting beans. If he were alive now and saw that we prefer the alubias and the imported caraotas, he would have a heart attack and die again.”
In the province of Cienfuegos, the harvest of black beans planned for 2024 is 1,300 tons, below that of five years ago, when, according to official data, at least 1,500 tons were produced and the trend was to increase each year by 7.8%. At the national level, the numbers also plummeted. In 2018, Cuba reached 161,513 tons of this food, but in 2020 production decreased to 65,779, and in 2021 it was 57,642 tons.
If the Cuban fields are still so depressed, Janet may have to start calling the watermelon ‘sandía,’ the cabbage ‘col‘ or ‘repollo,’ and the cassava ‘mandioca.’
Translated by Regina Anavy
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