Translator: Ricardo Recluso – Page 2

A Story of Two Confusions

For Cubans, Babel is not a myth, it is the K Tower, built by military gods and dead generals

Flemish panel ’The Tower of Babel’ 87 x 115.5 cm painted by Jacob Grimmer’s fraternity and exhibited in the Universal Art Building / National Museum of Fine Arts

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 15 March 2025 – If I close my eyes I can see myself standing in front of two paintings. I don’t remember which is to my right and which to my left. Memory brings me first to the Tower of Babel by Jacob Grimmer – it was in fact painted by one of his students – and then the one painted by Marten van Valckenborgh’s fraternity. Grimmer was born in Amberes in 1525; Valckenborgh in Lovaina in 1534. I don’t know how their panels – that’s to say panels painted in their workshops but by anonymous hands – came to be in Havana.

I’m in the National Museum of Fine Art, in the mansion which used to be the Asturias Centre. I’m here, and I’m not here, because it’s almost ten years since I last saw these paintings and, for the moment, in order to study them I’m only able to rely on poor reproductions, as well as memory. Both panels represent a biblical myth – the building and destruction of the Tower of Babel.

In Genesis chapter 11, after the Flood but before the patriarchs – that is, during a time that is more than imaginary – men decided to build a tower that reached the sky. No God would have liked this idea. Yahvé, take a look at all those foundations, all that mule activity, all those masons down there in the Sinai Desert and stop their project in the cruelest way possible: “Let’s go down there then and mess up their language so that none of them can understand each other any more”. The worst thing wasn’t that man didn’t manage to get up to the sky but that God had had to descend to Earth.

Tarot cards, always on the ball at reading the Old Testament, represent this second fall literally: on the tarot card, or great mystery no. 16 (The House of God) a bolt of lightning destroys the top of the tower. Men fall to earth and a confetti-like red and blue rainfall covers the plain. Yahvé’s intervention here is the language of fire. For Kafka, a reader of the rabbis, what came from the sky was a gigantic fist which gave forth five successive blows. continue reading

Almost all important museums have a painting of the Tower of Babel. The myth was a huge obsession with the Flemish masters

Almost all important museums have a painting of the Tower of Babel. The myth was a huge obsession with the Flemish masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during the Protestant Reformation. For Juan Benet, who wrote a fine essay on the subject, the tower became fashionable as a way to criticise Rome. At that time, St Peter’s Basilica was under construction and for Northern Europeans this was a symbol of arrogance comparable to that of Babel itself. God’s giant fist was about to punch down at the Pope.

Grimmer and Valckenborgh were both working in this religious climate. Their model is Brueghel the Elder’s ’Tower of Babel’, which today hangs in Vienna’s Art History Museum. An erroneous examination of Grimmer’s ’Tower’ concluded that it too was painted in Valckenborgh’s studio. This was eventually corrected in 2001.

Grimmer’s panel is the one which most resembles Brueghel’s. The foundations are white, and round, and it loses its solidity and three dimensionality as it rises up. It ends up a house of cards, an origami that wouldn’t stand up to any gust of wind; an ants nest in which, although the ant workers keep on labouring it’s obvious that the whole thing is about to collapse. Most of the characters in the picture are lost in their own world: in business, walking about, playing. For them the tower is already lost.

There’s a river right at the gates. The Sinai desert was surrounded by the river Tigris, and the Euphrates, and it’s pretty much accepted that the tower described in the myth was nothing more than a Babylonian ’ziggurat’ (temple tower). In the Brueghel there is a city right there next to the building; Grimmer, however, places the city inside the tower itself; it’s as if the weight of all those little houses consumes the entire project – a cancer of poor planning there in the actual innards of the project, and not sent by Yahvé.

Finally, there’s a long line of travellers being received by a god. He reminds one of Hermes with his staff in his hand or of Zeus wielding his lightning bolts. For the jealous Hebrew Yahvé this is unforgivable. Grimmer, or his student, insist on the isolation of the valley: there’s nothing beyond Babel. It was all or nothing, as Benet said. And it was nothing.

Ten years ago I preferred Grimmer’s painting, but today I like Valckenborgh’s more. It’s stranger, more metallic, his tower feels like a shipwrecked vessel. The ship’s keel rears out of the frame and pokes itself at the viewer. The project is Orwellian, oppressive, symmetrical. All there is to see is hard work; and clouds, which, if we weren’t in the sixteenth century you would say were industrially produced steam. The ground plan isn’t round but four sided, like a skyscraper: even God cannot tear it down with any ease. If a wall is destroyed, then another, smaller one is revealed. We are in front of a beehive whose robustness symbolises human obstinacy.

Which Cuban millionaire bought the two towers that are today kept on the fifth floor of the museum?

Unlike Grimmer’s version, this project doesn’t admit foreign bodies. There are no houses to ruin the outline of its walls, rather arches and then more arches, buttresses, archivolts and mainstays. For him, the Sinai isn’t a flat plain but rather a truce between mountains as high as the tower. Despite it all, Valckenborgh’s style is austere. It befell him to live during the “iconoclastic fury” which led to the destruction of hundreds of Catholic images. Valckenborgh was a Protestant but ended up in exile and died in Frankfurt.

Which Cuban millionaire bought the two towers that are today kept on the fifth floor of the museum? In 2002 both panels were restored by European specialists and were exhibited for a time in Holland. They had waited decades for someone to look after them – so said, with horror, the people who paid for the maintenance of these and other works, in Maastricht.

Babel brings, along with itself, a moral lesson, but this teaching – human pride, divine punishment, futility, confusion – arrives in the tropics diluted and ridiculed. For Cubans, Babel isn’t a myth but rather the Tower K, built by military gods and dead generals. For Babel to be able to shine, Havana has to take on darkness. Our Babel, with a Kafkaesque K, doesn’t belong to those who built it, as in Grimmer and Valckenborgh, but to foreigners. The Tower K isn’t the communist utopia, the first of many beacons of progress, but rather it is the gravestone of a country.

Babel en el trópico. / Xavier Carbonell[

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Dangerous Art of Avoiding the Lumps of Stone which Fall Off the Bazar A&M Building in Havana

Four days after the incident happened, the heavy pieces of stone remained in the middle of the street. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, 14 March 2025 – Finding heavy bits of building spread about at the foot of 909 Calle Infanta, on the corner with Carlos III, in Havana’s centre, doesn’t surprise anybody. The building – especially the top floors which are still inhabited – has been in a ruined state for years. The only surprise is that there hasn’t been a more serious accident: in the ground floor of the building the new branch of Bazar A&M attracts hundreds of people every day.

This Friday, four days after the incident happened, caused by the recent cold weather front, the heavy pieces of stone remained in the middle of the street, hardly even cordoned off properly by a police tape. The shop not only remained open, it was heaving with people.

Customers were indeed in two minds about entering. “Oof, how terrible it looks!” was what the majority said when they looked up and saw the big hole in the top storey and the eaves destroyed, and with the wall ready to continue collapsing. “That’s very precarious, something disastrous is going to happen here at any moment”, said one woman who decided not to take the risk of entering the shop.

The Las Avenidas building, has been in a ruined state for years, especially the top storeys, which are still inhabited. / 14ymedio

Since it first opened its doors last November where the state-run cafe Las Avenidas used to be, which lent its name to the building, the store has become one of the busiest in the area. “Yes, it’s quite expensive but it’s well stocked and has all the right departments: ironmongery, food, sweet shop, continue reading

toiletries, everything”, one customer explained. “Nothing like other shops like La Época, where you go in and it’s like a deserted graveyard”.

The store is Bazar A&M’s third branch. The firm already had two stores in the same district of Havana, one on Neptuno/Lealdad and the other – a market – on Neptuno/Gervasio. A WhatsApp group run by someone calling themselves Valentina Vale announces its latest offers and prices.

The actual owners continue to be a mystery. Unlike other small/medium sized private businesses, Bazar A&M doesn’t have a website, and, although they sell a whole range of produce, they are registered at the Ministery of Planning and Economy with “Paper and Cardboard production” listed as being their main activity.

Bazar A&M not only remained open, it was heaving with people. / 14ymedio

All three of the firm’s stores used to be state-run outlets, and, as has been seen repeatedly in recent years, they all opened without public tender or prior notice. For example, the “mixed” bazar Neptuno, which opened in 2023, occupies a space which used to be a clothing store that was falling into ruin.

Whoever the owners are, they don’t appear to be concerned about the condition of the building on Infanta/Carlos III. An elderly gentleman summed it up like this: “When you look up and see that part of the building is about to fall off, you say, ’Dear God, is there no one with the common sense to realize that a shop with such a large number of people shouldn’t be situated here!’ You can see that there are other bits of the wall that are going to fall off at any time. Certainly when the next rain comes. Hopefully they won’t fall on top of anyone”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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‘That Was My Home!’ Cry the Ten Families Who Were Victims of a Building Collapse in Havana

It was a three-story building located in Santos Suárez and declared uninhabitable years ago.

The building collapsed at the weekend leaving ten families without a roof over their heads. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, José Lassa, Havana, 17 February 2025 – Steel girders exposed to the sun, the front of the building turned into rubble, and dozens of distressed residents standing around it, this was the scene on Monday morning at the building in Calle San Bernardino between Durege and General Serrano, in the Havana suburb of Santos Suárez in the Diez de Octubre district. The building collapsed at the weekend leaving ten families without a roof over their heads.

Sitting in a wheelchair on the pavement out in front, one resident of the collapsed building pointed to the ground floor and said “That was my home!” Around twenty people had brought onto the street the few belongings that they had managed to find among the chunks of wall and twisted metal: a cushion, a washer, and a few pictures which had once adorned the living room walls of those homes which no longer existed.

A group of public workers equipped with a crane spent some hours pulling down the remaining bits of the three-storey building – which had been declared uninhabitable for years but in which a number of families still lived. Down onto the stopped traffic, and onto the neighbourhood itself – braced against every sledgehammer blow to the walls – the yellow dust drifted down and covered everything. “At first they said that they were only going to demolish the top floors but now they’re saying they’ll have to demolish it all”, the woman in the wheelchair explained to 14ymedio.

“My home was on the ground floor”, she said, and pointed towards an area of the building in which the tops of the windows themselves were barely still visible, being surrounded as they were by a mountain of rubble. While she spoke, the crane was lifting a worker upwards so that he could help to bring various belongings down from the upper apartments. Every rescued item was greeted by the residents with cries of jubilation, but also with some concern: “I don’t know whether I’ll be able to rescue my bed”, expressed one young woman with a child in her arms. continue reading

“At first they said that they were only going to demolish the top floors but now they’re saying they’ll have to demolish it all”. / 14ymedio

Disregarding warnings not to enter, some residents attempted to get access via the doors in a side passage, in order to try and bring out kitchen appliances, a purse, or family photos kept in a drawer. They came out a short while later with something in their hands but with shocked expressions on their faces. “It’s terrible in there, it feels like it’s going to carry on collapsing”, said one man who had managed to bring out various pairs of shoes and an electric stew pot.

The uncertainty about what will happen after the demolition was also a topic of conversation. “They’ll probably send us to a hotel or who knows where now”, speculated one of the victims who hadn’t managed to recover even one object of value from within the collapsed walls. Until now, neighbourly solidarity had provided them with water and something to eat, but those affected knew that they couldn’t remain indefinitely out on the street in front of the ruin overnight.

“It’s terrible in there, it feels like it’s going to carry on collapsing”.

Building collapses are a frequent reality in the Cuban capital, especially when the rains and the bad weather soften the mortar in structures which are already in danger of collapse. At the end of June last year, when Havana experienced several days of storms, at least 19 buildings suffered from either partial or complete collapse, according to a 14ymedio source who preferred to remain anonymous.

Video footage of the collapse of a villa in Calle 26, between 27 and 29 in Playa district, filmed by various passers-by and neighbours, was one of the most widely shared videos at that time – an incident which was estimated to have claimed at least one life and caused a number of people to be injured.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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In Havana, the Return of La Rampa Fair, with Fewer Tourists and More Chinese Junk

In its early years, it was only possible to market national productions on its premises.

The reopening of the space, just metres away from the Hotel Habana Libre, comes with a change of image. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, José Lassa, Havana, 8 February 2025 – La Rampa Fair has returned to its traditional site in the heart of El Vedado. Dozens of sellers gathered there this week on Avenida 23 between Calles M and N, with products running from artisan items to counterfeit Chinese goods of low quality. And if, until only a few years ago, the ideal customer was a tourist looking for souvenirs, today, with the fall in numbers of foreign visitors to Cuba, the focus is on local buyers.

The reopening of the space, just metres away from the Hotel Habana Libre, comes with a change of image, which makes it look more like a foreign import shop than a local produce one. Along with the traditional maracas, the cedar carvings (that depict an elderly couple dressed to dance a good danzón) or the seed necklaces, it’s the imported trinkets, everyday items, and toiletries which are gaining ground.

“How much are those wireless headphones?”, a youth enquired on Friday morning. “5,000 pesos”, replied the seller, continuing to eat his sandwich. An adolescent asked about a Xiaomi Smart Band – a device which, among other things, should monitor the number of steps taken every day, and which costs 50 dollars on the black market. Nevertheless, at the La Rampa Fair, 2,000 pesos will get you this counterfeit version, which, although visually very similar to the genuine article, unfortunately will only tell you the time.

Along with traditional artisan goods, cheaper trashy items from abroad are gaining ground. / 14ymedio

Sitting next to the headphones were counterfeit Casio watches for 3,000 pesos, and sharing space on the same tablecloth were a whole variety of other products: nail trimmers, cotton buds, hairbrushes, skin cream and a face mask which promises to leave the face fresh and clean. With this range of options the stall resembles, more and more each day, the street markets of the less glamorous but very popular neighbourhoods, such as La Cuevita.

La Rampa Fair was founded in 1993. That summer, trapped in an economic crisis, Fidel Castro relaxed the prohibition of the Dollar, opened up the island to tourism and legalised small private businesses. The street market was then a very closely observed and controlled shop window, given its central location. In its early years it was only permitted to sell national products on its stalls, so that there was an abundance of leather sandals, knitwear, and an infinite variety of souvenirs to take away from the island – from palm tree fridge magnets, to berets in the style made popular by Che continue reading

Guevara, to miniature versions of the old ’almendron’ saloon cars which are everywhere in Habana, or the façade of the Bodeguita del Medio bar.

In the past decade those limits have loosened up and now poor quality foreign imports have taken over parts of the fair, which has also experienced some aesthetic changes. In the market white is now the colour of the parasols, of the sellers’ sweatshirts and of the tablecloths that cover their tables. Maybe it’s a way of exorcising that official argument that they “spoilt” the area, an argument which they used to move the whole thing, some six years ago, down towards one side of the Coppelia ice cream parlour, a change of location that brought losses to the vendors’ pockets and a loss of interest from shoppers.

Payment can be made in cash or by electronic transfer. / 14ymedio

Despite the invasion of plastic junk and counterfeit versions of expensive watches, there is still a variety of artisan produce on sale that is made in Cuba. Leather bags, footwear, goldsmith crafts, women’s dresses for around 4,000 to 6,000 pesos, wooden sculpture and papier-mâché ornaments. Payment can be made in cash or by electronic transfer. You have to show the QR code in each case to do this.

Although on Friday the majority of customers at the fair were Cubans, the few tourists that did approach the site were received like unicorns who had just popped out of a dense forrest. The vendors know that foreigners almost always prefer to pay in their own currency, so they offer to settle the bill in dollars or euros at an informal rate of exchange. The same thing occurs at the other nearby fair in the Don Quixote park. Below the ungainly figure of the famous nobleman, dollars are presented for a pair of flip-flops for the beach just as much as for a guerrilla cap with a red star on the front.

Below the ungainly figure of the famous nobleman, dollars are presented for a pair of flip-flops for the beach just as much as for a guerrilla cap with a red star on the front. / 14ymedio

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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When Cuba Was On The Goldrush Trail

The very rare ‘Californian Album’, a jewel of colonial lithography, was published in the Havana workshops of Louis Marquier

The illustration, ’A good carriage ride’, shows gold prospectors on board the emblematic Cuban buggy. / Zoila Lapique

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 1 February 2025 – On the 24th of January 1848 General John Sutter – christened Johann August in his native Switzerland and don Juan Sutter in his adoptive Mexico – found some gold nuggets in the river running through his land. He tried to keep the find a secret. Two months later a newspaper published a headline, which we would imagine to be in huge black letters, like those which John Wayne used to read in the Westerns: “Gold Mine Found!”

The news was, in actual fact, presented in just one paragraph, and in a modest font. Three or four rather frenzied sentences which promised seams of gold “in almost every part of the country” and “great chances for scientific capitalists”. And so began gold fever in California, a magnet for all types of treasure hunters and bandits. Very soon the very President of the United States had to admit that on the other side of the continent – there are more than 4,000 km between New York and San Francisco – there were people who were about to get very rich indeed.

For gold seekers, who arrived in California with a pick, a spade, buckets and divining rods, it was the journey of their lives. John, or Johann, or Juan Sutter was eventually ruined by the flood of migrants who arrived on his land (and on the rest of the American east coast) over the following decades, without asking permission. (One of these migrants was, for certain, a German hairdresser named Frederick Trump, who ran away to the United States in 1885 to escape military service. Cured of fever in remote Alaska, he dedicated himself to hotels and real estate… and a president for a grandson… Finally wealthy, he returned to his native village in Bavaria. And was deported). continue reading

For gold seekers, who arrived in California with a pick, a spade, buckets and divining rods, it was the journey of their lives.

One usually arrived in California by boat, via Panama and the Pacific. Other adventurers arrived in Mexico, reaching Sutter’s property overland. In 1850, in Cuba’s golden age, Havana was an obligatory stopover.

The treasure seekers arrived on the island en masse, just as many on their way home as on their way out. It’s undeniable that some of them, more seduced by the mulata women, the tabacco and the climate (coming, as they did, from colder countries, just like Herr Trump) forgot all about their original mission. They crowded into the port and the city squares, the taverns and the walkways, each one having the appearance of a long-bearded beggar, and it’s not hard to imagine their stuttering attempts to beg for a drink, some food or a smoke.

Witness to that invasion were two artists – Ferrán and Baturone (who for me resemble Hernández and Fernández, from Tintin), ubiquitous, with their sketchbooks in hand – who dedicated themselves to record, in a published book, these “types” and their customs, in twelve printed plates. It’s the extremely rare publication, the ’California Album’, an absolute jewel of Cuban lithography, born in the Havana workshops of the French printer Louis Marquier.

The ’California Album’ was sold in instalments, some of them exquisitely coloured and others in black and white. Ferrán and Baturone were not only skilled at creating their drawings, but they were also ingenious at titling them. The titles were translated into English, perhaps to make them marketable to the gold prospectors as a souvenir of their stay in Havana.

The ’California Album’ was sold in instalments, some of them exquisitely coloured and others in black and white

‘A Fortune Made’ – of which there is no version in colour – is the title of one picture which shows a typical prospector, posing formally, standing upright like a biblical patriarch, with a sombrero, a three-quarter length jacket and a beard reaching down to his chest. In another, the same character, along with two colleagues who are clearly hungover, now swigs from a bottle of moonshine, all three now posing in more ’comfortable’ positions. They drink, more and more, as though they didn’t have to leave soon for a new destination – a destination which would be in a place of temperance.

Wearing a neckscarf, and with his shirt open, the traveller goes into the street looking for conquest. He looks like a vagabond, but he has money. He’s in good spirits – like a ’patron of the arts’ -and he doesn’t hesitate to sit himself down in Havana’s Alameda de Paula to peel an orange with a knife, surrounded by habanera women who entertain him with tambourines and a barrel organ. He meets up with other prospectors, all of them just as drunk as he is, and they hire a seven-seater buggy and pay for a good ride.

Gold prospectors are – as the rascally Ferrán and Baturone observe – in favour of letting things just drift along: they are calm, pleasure-seeking, always drunk and never changing. If José Antonio Saco had not already written, in 1830, a report on vagrancy in Cuba, then one would have said that it was these guys who were the first to establish such a thing.

But not everything is rosy for those who have found a little gold. It’s with some discomfort that we observe a pair of friends almost levitating through the effects of cheap and rough alcohol. Two others, perhaps through having lost a bet, or having lost their last gold nuggets, wildly gesticulate their predicament. And there, next to a cannon, his gaze lost somewhere out in the bay, a melancholic prospector with a broken shoe attempts to soothe the corns on his feet.

It would seem that habaneros were not oblivious to these Californian gold nuggets, and it’s likely that these were the root cause of numerous disagreements

It would seem that habaneros were not oblivious to these Californian gold nuggets, and it’s likely that these were the root cause of numerous disagreements. In the engraving, ’Realization’, three prospectors are quarrelling with a jeweller, or a valuer. To settle the dispute, the islander lifts up a pair of weighing scales.

My favourite image from the ’California Album’ continues – naturally – to be: ’What Great Tabacco!’ You can smell it and you can taste it. One miner’s delight with his cigar caddy, and another’s delight in a whole box of them – with its official seal – seems to sum up their fantastical lives: smoke, dreams, frenzy … and ash.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Mysterious A&M Bazaar Opens its Third Shop in a Ruined Building in Havana

The supermarket is located where the state cafeteria Las Avenidas used to be, on Infanta and Carlos III

Since the supermarket was opened on 11 November there have been crowds thronging through its doors hoping to buy. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, 8 January 2024 — Number 909 Calle Infanta / Carlos III, central Havana, appears to be bipolar. The upper storeys, where the majority of apartments continue to be inhabited, are falling apart, whilst the ground floor, which used to house the state operated cafeteria Las Avenidas – which gave its name to the building among the locals – with its prosperous, recently opened private store, is all bright and shiny new.

Since the supermarket was opened on 11 November there have been crowds thronging through its doors hoping to buy. Beneath its newly painted arches there are ornamental plants and powerful air conditioning units, and there’s no sign of the ruined state of the rest of the building, which has been denounced by its residents on numerous occasions. On the contrary, it feels like another place entirely.

Number 909 Calle Infanta / Carlos III, central Havana, appears to be bipolar. / 14ymedio

Items of ironmongery, decor, articles for the home and white goods, along with other objects such as oriental smoking pipes, all mingle with foodstuffs, themselves also wide ranging, such as tinned foods, sauces and jams and even fresh produce, including dairy and meat. Everything is priced in pesos, and, as is usually the case with private shops, it’s all well stocked but at prices beyond the reach of most people’s pockets, and of poor quality.

A ’kitchen’-based toy, 1,000 pesos; a plastic container with two scouring pads, 450; two packets of incense, 900; a small pack of nuggets, more than 1,000; a tin of beans, 900; a small carton of juice, 700, and straws for 200 pesos – these are some of the products that you can find from day to day. The activity of loading and unloading is feverish. continue reading

Everything is priced in pesos, and, as is usually the case with private shops, it’s all well stocked but at prices beyond the reach of most people’s pockets, and of poor quality. / 14ymedio

The business doesn’t display any name plate outside, but pink letters on the employees’ black sweaters reveal that it belongs to Bazar A&M. The company, which already has two other stores in the same Havana district – on Neptuno/Lealdad and on Neptuno/Gervasio – has made the most of this third branch’s launch by opening a WhatsApp group where it announces new products and prices.

The products advertised on Sunday, the eve of the Epiphany / Three Kings day, are all toys, made in China. A toy truck fitted with beach-rakes at 2,500 pesos, a Jenga puzzle at 1,100 and a game with hoops for babies at 1,950. The company doesn’t allow public comments to be made, and someone who goes by the name of Valentina Vale is in charge; she is also the person who promotes the shops on Facebook.

The business doesn’t display any name plate outside, but pink letters on the employees’ black sweaters reveal its name: it belongs to Bazar A&M. / 14ymedio

Its owners are, beyond this detail, mysterious. In contrast to other micro, small or medium sized businesses (’mipymes’ or ’MSMEs’ in English), they don’t have a website, and, although they sell just about anything, they are registered with the Ministry of Economy and Planning as “producers of paper and cardboard goods” as their principal activity.

“I don’t know who they are, but not just anyone gets to use this logo”, one customer told this journal as she was waiting to get into the store, pointing to the message printed on the door: “Havana lives in me” – a logo created by the authorities for the 505th anniversary of the capital and distributed to government institutions. “What you can see, is that they’ve spent quite a lot of money here…”, the woman observed.

“I don’t know who they are, but not just anyone gets to use this logo”, one customer told this journal. / 14ymedio

Vigilance inside the store is also very noticeable. The staff don’t just visually monitor those who have made purchases, but they check the goods at the exit. “Carefully check your purchase before you leave, as we don’t do refunds”, says a notice.

Elsewhere, the buildings in which the company has established its other branches all used to be state owned, and, as has been repeated in recent years, they have been reopened without public tender and without advanced notice. The “mixed” bazaar Neptune was established in 2023 in a former clothing shop which had fallen into disrepair.

“Me and my sister used to love it, because you’d enter through a door at one side, go round the interior in a ’U’ direction and come out through another door, where there was also the stairway up to the residents’ flats on the upper floors”, María, a resident of the Cayo Hueso quarter, remembers of the old building.

Bazar A&M is, in any case, one of those establishments which have proliferated in Cuba in recent times, and, joining the list of these new “dollarized” businesses, it all in effect goes to demonstrate the end of the old convertible currency shops.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Christmas For Emilio, Jorge and Carmelo: Three Beggars Who Sleep on the Streets of Matanzas

Lack of food and cold are no worse than the lack of hope for the most vulnerable these days

Religious institutions and associations put on recitals and encourage cultural activities, but the poor of Matanzas aren’t up for partying. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Matanzas 24 December 2024 – “I sleep wherever I can” is the ’calling card’ of Emilio, one of the beggars who trawl through Matanzas after sunset looking for a shop doorway in which to bed down. A quiet man, he asks for 20 pesos as a condition of talking to us. “I’ll buy a coffee with this”, he says, putting the note in his pocket. “It was quite cold last night and it got very uncomfortable towards dawn”.

His worst enemy is a cold weather front. “When one of those arrives I think I’m going to die”, he says. “So far it hasn’t happened. I try to keep going. I sell stuff that I find in people’s refuse, and if I can’t find anything I just beg for something to eat”.

His base for the moment has been the area around Matanzas Cathedral. The two yellowish towers of the old church shield him against the light. “They say that before Christmas they are going to have a dinner and there’ll be a crate of food”, he says, pointing towards the church door. “I’ve been invited. After that, who knows what’ll happen”.

As in other dioceses on the island, the bishoprics and parishes usually organise initiatives for the city’s beggars, at which Cáritas (the international support agency of the Catholic Church) distributes food and clothing. They also put on recitals and encourage cultural activities, but the poor of Matanzas, Emilio admits, aren’t up for partying.

It’s enough just to take a stroll around the centre of Matanzas or around the cathedral to see that the number of beggars has grown. / 14ymedio

It’s enough just to take a stroll around the centre of Matanzas or around the cathedral to see that the number of beggars has grown. With his bits of junk and improvised sales displays, his mission is to “find a few pesos to get through the day”, as Emilio puts it.

For Jorge, who has suffered from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for years (a degenerative illness which gives rise to progressive muscular paralysis and is ultimately fatal) the kindness of strangers is indispensable. When he needs breakfast he goes to the dining room at the Kairós centre, continue reading

which is an institution run by the Baptist church. From time to time he also attends other religious centres.

“Not even adding that one to my coupon book is enough to get me to the end of the month”, he says, sorrowfully. With his physical condition “every mouthful counts”. Every minute too.

Matanzas (’massacre’) lives up to its name – a name which, according to legend, came from the slaughter of a group of Spaniards by indigenous people in 1510. And life is hard not only for its citizens but for its animals too. Just like during the Special Period [after the fall of the Soviet Union] the rumour now is that when there’s nothing to eat, people have to go out hunting for cats, or dogs.

Nor is it unusual to find beggars living off families’ discarded food scraps (frequently used to make “sancocho” pork stew), collecting them to use as raw material whenever they can. You can also often see them at the city’s refuse tip “diving” amongst the rubbish to fill up a bag with old tin cans or scrap metal. Sometimes you’ll even see the families themselves doing this kind of scavenging – including the children.

In the city, the beggars’ worst enemy is a cold weather front. / 14ymedio

Living like this finishes you off in the end. Carmela knows this well enough. By trade a “seller of mousetraps and other useful items”, he suffers from untreated ulcers on one of his feet, which was injured in an accident. He has worn the same clothing for years, and his hands, full of calluses, are testimony to his way of life.

Carmelo used to be a delivery man. Riding on his work tricycle – a very creole artifact – he would deliver whatever his customers ordered from him. But after his accident he had to find another way to make a living. Now he sells what he can find, and if “things get bad” he goes to the notorious Calle del Medio to beg.

He says he doesn’t like going to the charity canteens. This New Year’s Eve he plans only to shut himself up in his tiny single room. The silence inside the little cubicle – without any visitors – is the closest thing he’ll have for a party.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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In Holguin, Cubans Gather En Masse To Buy Liquid Gas Before The Arrival Of Hurricane Oscar

The power cut of more than 30 hours, leaving mobile phones and radios without charge, left Holguín residents unaware of the arrival of Hurricane Oscar / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Holguín, 20 October 2024 – Hundreds of Holguín residents have been gathering en masse since this morning at retail outlets of liquid gas, in order to buy fuel that will allow them to cook food over the coming days before the arrival of hurricane Oscar. According to the island’s Meteorology Institute, Insmet, the hurricane will hit eastern Cuba this Sunday at category level 1 and with winds of up to 140 km/h.

“There are more than 300 people here, and there are even more of them stretching around the corner”, Mariana, a resident of Hilda Torres provincial district explains to 14ymedio; she has joined the queue for gas at sales point number 14. “There are 18 points in total and all are in the same situation”.

Because of the huge power cut that has affected the island since Friday morning, Mariana has lost a number of food items. “A lot of things have gone off because the fridge stopped working”. In that situation, she says, she doesn’t know how she’s going to cope with hurricane Oscar, which threatens to bring heavy rains to the western provinces.

To make things worse, she points out, the hurricane will arrive at a moment of maximum tension when official information is only circulating on social media but internet connections are sparse and unstable. “I have a radio connected to a rechargeable lamp, and taking this up to the third floor we can manage to hear some reports”, the woman explains, but adds that her situation is “privileged” because “although more than half of Holguín continue reading

residents know that a hurricane is coming they don’t have any details about it”.

The General Staff of Cuban Civil Defence put out an alert on Saturday night, before Sunday’s impact of the hurricane on the east of the island. The hurricane, which, the day before had reached category 1, also threatens the Turks and Caicos islands and the southeast Bahamas, according to the U.S National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The Municipal Defence Council session in Nuevitas before the “fake news” declaration about Hurricane Oscar / Facebook /Yara de Cuba

Sitting opposite Miguel Díaz-Canel at a nighttime meeting which produced more promises than solutions, the authorities issued advice to Guantánamo, Holguín and Las Tunas, Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Camagüey.

At six in the morning the eye of the hurricane lay over the island of Gran Inagua in the eastern Bahamas, at 130 km to the northeast of Punta de Maisí, at the extreme eastern edge of Cuba, and at 240 km to the east of Punta Lucrecia, Holguín. When it arrives this afternoon on the north coast of the provinces of Guantánamo and Holguín its speed and movement will gradually start to diminish.

Image of hurricane Oscar’s trajectory / Conagua

Civil Defence directed an increase in vigilance, in risk reduction and an increased watch on areas which are most vulnerable. “People are advised to keep an eye on information from Insmet and the Civil Defence, and to comply with instructions”, he added.

Insmet specialists forecast for Sunday a gradual increase in the area of showers, “rain and electrical storms – which may be intense in some eastern and mountainous areas”. There are also warnings of increased wind speeds, which, in the afternoon and evening will reach between 85 and 100 km/h.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Enveloped in the Surrounding Darkness, the First Christmas Decorations Shine in Havana

Santa’s red costume reigns in the private shops, but the regime’s olive green reigns in places under state management

The figure of an elf, with beard and pointed hat, stood out against the poor lighting in the shop.

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 7 December 2024 – The Christmas decorations have begun timidly to appear in Havana. The private sector, with its cafeterias, its bars and its shops, is at the forefront of the decorations, with lights and garlands that set officialdom’s teeth on edge. This December, however, there haven’t yet been any published diatribes from officials or party ideologues criticising all the little Christmas trees and Santas’ sleighs. Perhaps it’s because at this particular year’s end the principal enemy of any festivities is the crisis, and especially the power cuts, that leave the nativity scenes in semi-darkness.

Inside an independent outlet in the National Bus Terminal in Rancho Boyeros Avenue on Thursday night, the figure of an elf with beard and pointed hat stood out against the poor lighting in the shop. Having a certain visual mixture of garden gnome and Santa Claus, the inflatable doll reigned over the dimly lit display counters with their packets of sweet biscuits (cookies) and crisps (chips), all of them imported.

“Better not to even look at the prices, otherwise you’ll be shocked”, advised a young girl who’d arrived at the station carrying only a small backpack. “I’m going to need more than a wizard in a hood to see if I can manage to get on a bus”, she said. In front of her, on a counter full of goodies, piles of polystyrene snow surrounded a number of decorations in the form of Christmas presents. continue reading

Two men in the armed forces uniform of the Prevention Troops patrolled with their dogs

A string of tiny blinking lights attempted to bring some kind of festive atmosphere to the scene, but most people just hurried by and didn’t even glance at the Christmas display. Close by the business, two men in the armed forces uniform of the Prevention Troops, known as the Red Berets, patrolled the terminal with their dogs.

Santa’s red in the private shops, and the regime’s olive green in the places under state management. A reindeer transporting presents on one side, and on the other side a German shepherd dog seeking out drugs, cheese, meat or seafood in passengers’ luggage, and, all about them, the semi-darkness of a station which had as little illumination as the buses that departed from it had.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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A Wannabe of Science

For a long time science was conducted in the field notebook – with pencils and watercolours – as well as with the microscope.

One of the ’anthomedusae’ drawn by Ernst Haeckel, which today illustrate the Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s books, published by Impedimenta / Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms in Nature)

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, 17 November 2024 – Salamanca. To draw an object is to understand it. I leave the house with Faber-Castell pencils, a case of Staedtler felt pens and a hard-backed notebook in my jacket pocket. The pencil line forms quickly and shakily. It’s cold. Hardship can determine style: disjointed, austere, or brief – all virtues which one would want to have also for writing. The world moves on quickly and one wants to keep something of it. Snails, spiders, branches, puddles, voices.

To categorise is to capture; to draw is to hunt. “Regrets: not having continued to draw”, wrote George Steiner, “with charcoal, pastels and ink, in order to illustrate some of my own books. The hand can speak truths and happinesses that language is incapable of articulating”.

For a long time science was conducted in the field notebook – with pencils and watercolours – as well as with the microscope. The German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, whose work is as electrifying as the books of Darwin or Humboldt, is the best example. Better known as an artist than as a zoologist, his prints of jellyfish, radiolarias and cephalopods still make you dizzy. They make you dizzy because they seem to be alive and moving beyond the page. continue reading

Better known as an artist than as a zoologist, his prints of jellyfish, radiolarias and cephalopods still make you dizzy

Haeckel called his subjects enigmas of the universe, wonders of life, artforms of nature. Tentacles, spirals, membranes, strange multicoloured clusters, translucent, viscous and retractable. He dreamt of defining a complete morphology of these organisms. After immersing himself off the beaches of Naples and Sicily and investigating the composition of the Mediterranean waters, he painted some 1,000 images. He moved from art to biology and from biology to theology. He claimed to have defined God as a gaseous vertebrate.

Art, science and writing have one necessity in common: imagination. The scientist Carlo Rovelli says that science is, above all else, a visionary activity, and as such it requires sensitivity. Severo Sarduy, however, warns that: “it is possible that, when confronted with science, a writer is never much more than a wannabe”.

Antonio Parra was, to put it like that, our Haeckel, the man who united science and imagination. Born in Portugal in 1739, he arrived in Cuba as part of an infantry regiment after the English had taken Havana. He settled, left the army, and married a creole girl. In 1787 he submitted for publication one (and perhaps the most celebrated) of the 300 Cuban books that still survive from the eighteenth century, and which someone has called ’our incunables’.

’A Description of Different Types of Natural History, Most of them Marine Life’, with 75 copper engraved plates – in colour in some editions – was the first ever scientific work written on the island. If the military engravings of Dominic Serres and Philip Orsbridge mark a new way of seeing Cuba, or at least Havana, then with his Book of Fishes we have a visual discovery of its nature. The eighteenth century, Lezama explains, “shows us the character of Cuba”.

Science was born on the island through thought, drawing and the desire for exploration. Parra doesn’t write a scientific work, but a catalogue, a guide for his cabinet of curiosities. What curiosities? “The multitude of remarkable works of nature that abound on the island of Cuba and in the seas that surround it – in the the three kingdoms of animal, vegetable and mineral – all inspired in me, from the very first moment I set foot there, a great desire to put together a collection”.

With a “remarkable respect” for his adoptive country, Parra, enraptured, describes the nature of the tropics

With a “remarkable respect” for his adoptive country, Parra, enraptured, describes the nature of the tropics. He preserved and varnished specimens of the creatures that interested him, like Haeckel, the most – fish and marine creatures. He was, he says, praised for this work by some of his friends and this gave him encouragement. After a year the collection had grown significantly, and, despite a “scarcity of engravers”, Parra got his son to illustrate the book. The boy posessed, says the father with some irony, “a somewhat superficial style of drawing”, but he was nevertheless up to the job. He may perhaps have had some help, because the 75 plates are not the work of a beginner.

This improvised naturalist explained all of this to no less than the King of Spain himself, to whom he sent various pieces from his collection. With little preamble, the creatures begin to line up: some of his descriptions are poetical, others are almost tender – one fish has “two little arms, from which come two fins, like hands”. Another “eats with some suspicion”. The devil fish has stilettos in the form of horns, “whose use we don’t yet understand”.

There are [amongst others] wreckfish, bonefish, swordfish, hawkshead turtles, loggerhead turtles, furry and toothy crabs, teleost fish, prickly prawns, the mother of all snails: a kind of beehive that engenders an infinite number of molluscs, and a worm that’s a nightmare worthy of the planet Solaris…

Parra ended up being ignored by the King, who denied him Spanish citizenship. He had collected tropical seeds for sowing in Madrid and Aranjuez and had become a celebrity in illustrious circles on the peninsular, but even in the eyes of his admirers he was little more than a mere empiricist, an improviser, a mere artisan of curiosities. No more, as Sarduy would say, than a wannabe.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Cabbage, Veteran Protagonist of the School Dinner, Now Too Expensive for Cubans

It is one of those products which, along with the cooking banana, is inextricably linked, in the collective imagination of this island, with times of the most extreme penury

Cabbage on sale at the market on Calle 19/B, Vedado, Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 27 October 2024 – In the 1995 film Madagascar, directed by Fernando Pérez, around a dinner table, a family of “vegetable eaters” creates, out of the act of chewing, a physical and aural embodiment of the difficult years of Cuba’s ’Special Period’. The sound of crunch, crunch, crunch dominates the scene in which the characters seem trapped inside a hunger which forces them to eat only leaf vegetables every day, with nothing else as accompaniment. It would cost much more to reshoot that scene now, in these times of inflation and shortage.

Cabbage is one of those products which, along with the cooking banana, is inextricably linked, in the collective imagination of this island, with times of the most extreme penury. Resistant to the damaging effects of transport, easy to store and capable of filling several plates from one single item, it has as many admirers as it has critics. The majority of those who keep it away from their table tend to be people who are marked by the trauma of an infancy or adolescence in which Mrs Cabbage was all too often present.

“I was a pre-university student for three years in Güira de Melena and they gave us cabbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day”, jokes Lázaro, who, at 51 administrates a small fruit and veg stall near Calle Carlos III in central Havana. “I don’t eat it anymore, I can’t even bear the smell, but thanks to cabbage I can at least feed my family”, he says, pointing to some cabbages still enveloped in their dark green outer leaves. continue reading

“I was a pre-university student for three years in Güira de Melena and they gave us cabbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day”

“I sell them individually and on some days they’re the best quality but on others they arrive a little bit bruised because, although they’re a hardy product it’s best to transport them in boxes so they don’t get as knocked about or damaged”, he says. Most of the ones he sells are from the San Antonio de los Baños municipality, in Artemisa, where he has contacts “with a peasant farmer who harvests a little bit of everything”.

When a customer leaves Lázaro’s stall with a cabbage in his shopping bag, it is then that begins the new life of the vegetable which is later transformed according to who is to cook with it and the ingredients which are to be added. It may end up being just some rough dry strips on a prisoner’s tray, or, some thin strands spiced up and sprinkled with olive oil on a plate in a luxury restaurant. One’s expertise with a kitchen knife and the spices one has to hand can elevate it from the mediocre.

“The trick with cabbage is to peel off the leaves one by one”, says Julia, 81, who worked for years in a canteen based on the now defunct Cuban Fishing Fleet. “On the days when it was my turn to cook nobody left any cabbage on their plate, they ate it all up because I knew how to cut it, unlike my colleagues who just hacked away at it, producing only thick, hard pieces, which no one wanted to eat”.

Julia explains her technique like the surgeon describes to his students an incision to be made in a delicate area of bone, veins and tendons. “Once you’ve removed the leaves one by one, you wash them thoroughly and then you need to remove the central part which is difficult to chew and has a rather pungent taste”. On the table rests a very sharp knife, with which, after rolling up each leaf into a long tube, she cuts them into thin rings. When they unfurl and reveal their multiple layers, they look like slender noodles. “To season them I prepare separately a mixture of oil, salt and vinegar, although if I have some lemon juice that’s even better”.

Served immediately after seasoning, “this recipe for cabbage is irresistible”, says Julia. She also likes to sauté it, put it in preserves and make it into soups, but her speciality is “the cabbage salad for people who say they don’t like cabbage”. Given her level of skill, the only problem now is that her principal raw material is no longer that cheap product which used to fill the market counters and made Cubans chew unenthusiastically several decades ago.

Starting with an average-size cabbage, and using my technique of taking off one leaf at a time, and of using a very sharp knife to cut them into very thin strips, my husband and I can have salad for a whole week

Inflation has also had an effect on this vegetable, which has seen an increase in price in recent years. If one cabbage cost 80 pesos at the Plaza La Calzada (Cienfuegos) market a year ago, by the end of October this year the price had gone up to 100 pesos. Nevertheless, the price in this agricultural region par excellence is still massively lower than the 500 pesos needed to buy one at the Calle 19/B market in El Vedado, Havana.

“Starting with an average-size cabbage, and using my technique of taking off one leaf at a time, and of using a very sharp knife to cut them into very thin strips, my husband and I can have salad for a whole week”, Julia explains, but then adds, immediately: “That’s if my pension allows, because what I get per month isn’t really enough for even three cabbages, and with what my husband earns we can barely afford to prepare the dressing”.

Scattered across the world, some of those fishermen who, in the 80s and 90s sat down in front of a food tray in a state canteen where Julia was working, must remember those thin strands that she cut with such care and which they chewed with delight, tasting every mouthful.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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La Plaza de Armas, Tourist Heart of Havana, Is Dying

Contributing to the square’s racy image was the proximity of El Templete – a foundational site of the city – from which name derived a joke, given the colloquial use of the verb “templar” / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 24 October 2024 – Once upon a time there was a place that was pure noise. Legend has it that in Old Havana’s Plaza de Armas “you had to ask one foot’s permission to place the opposite foot down”. Luis Mario, who worked in the nearby restaurant La Mina when it was “overrun with business and the employees left every night with a wad of banknotes”, can’t believe what he sees now. Damp, blackened through lack of cleaning and empty of visitors, the square, which is also home to the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, the Palacio del Segundo Cabo, the Santa Isabel Hotel and the Museo Nacional de Historial Natural, looked like a desert this Wednesday.

Damp, blackened through lack of cleaning and empty of visitors, the square looked like a desert this Wednesday / 14ymedio

Anyone familiar with the square since the 1990’s used to call this place – which once was brimming with sales activity – “books square”. While it’s true that there was an abundance of sleep-inducing editions of Che’s ’Bolivian Diary’ and Fidel Castro’s almost dissenting ’History Will Absolve Me’, in this same space you could also find – if you knew how to ask and could make it clear that you weren’t a State Security agent – a rare print copy of the demonised ’Out of the Game’ by Heberto Padilla, or that agonised mea culpa which Eliseo Alberto Diego titled ’Report Against Myself’.

You just needed to know where to look. Chroniclers say that no one left the square without what they were looking for. If it was love, there was always a wide choice to hand: a girl, a girl and a boy, a girl and a girl or a boy and a boy. Tourists were dazzled and surrendered themselves to this place. They gave in, loosened their wallet and put reason to sleep. More than a few would wake the next day without wallet, documents or even shoes. But now all of that sounds almost like just a past and happy piece of history. Where there was life, only dampness and emptiness remain.

Where there was life, only dampness and emptiness remain / 14ymedio

Contributing to the square’s racy image was the proximity of El Templete – a foundational site of the city – from which name derived a joke, given the colloquial use of the verb “templar” as synonymous with having sex. What serious city could have as the epicentre of its birth a synonym for a whorehouse? Only Havana, before they turned it into a militarized centre that disowned its nights of revelry, partying and carnival. From those enforced chastity belts that were imposed by the Cuban regime, this current sense of desolation has arrived.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Galiano Pine Tree, a Symbol of the Christmas that Awaits the Cubans

The tree doesn’t even have any pine needles left, and its emaciated trunk is underpinned and is all patched up

It bears little resemblance to the tree full of lights which was intended to cheer up the capital’s citizens during the 2022 Christmas period. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 14 October 2024 – The pine tree installed for Christmas 2022 on Calle Galiano in central Havana remains in its place. It bears little resemblance, however, to the tree full of lights which was intended to cheer up the capital’s citizens during that Christmas period.

Never very bushy even when it was a young tree, it didn’t even live for very long either. Tree months after being installed, the pine, the first public Christmas decoration that Cubans had seen in six decades, already had branches that were turning brown due to its being a perennial variety. Now it doesn’t even have any needles left at all, and its emaciated trunk is underpinned and all patched up.

The tree formed part – they said at the time – of an “encompassing initiative” of the Avenida Italia project in which the European country intended to show its gratitude for the presence of Cuban doctors in a number of their cities during the pandemic. continue reading

“Look at it, you can barely see it at all, it’s as skinny as we are”, commented an elderly lady sarcastically

It wasn’t, then, a Christmas symbol after all, but a very socialist “Tree of Friendship”, as it was rechristened in the Cuban press.

Just like in the lyrics of the Spanish song La Puerta de Alcalá, which was popular in Cuba, the tree sees the time pass, but, unlike the Victor Manuel and Ana Belén version, it does so all for the worse.

“Look at it, you can barely see it at all, it’s as skinny as we are”, an elderly lady commented with sarcasm on Monday as she sat in the Fe del Valle park. “I don’t know why they don’t remove it. I look at it and I think about the Christmas that awaits us all. The earth here is poisoned”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Much Despised Split Pea Has Become a Prized and Expensive Legume in Cuba

A pound of split peas cost 100 pesos a year ago and today it costs 320

A lunch served up to primary school children in Cuba, with watered down split peas, rice and sweet potato / Yusnaby / X

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 15 September 2024 – It formed part of a much rejected menu in the 1970’s and 80’s. Along with rice and egg, the split pea was one of the vilified “three musketeers” that were so often served up in the canteens of schools and work places. There were Cubans who swore never to eat them again, and yet today they long for a plate of their thick yellow broth; but now they’re difficult to afford.

“At school they gave us split peas every day, watery, unseasoned, and with nothing else added. I got to hate them so much I couldn’t even look at them”, remembers Lisandro, 47, who spent three terms at one of those pre-university establishments in the countryside where one went to be trained as a “New Man” – a place from which he came out, he says, “with only giardiasis, twenty pounds less in weight and a conjunctivitis that nothing could rid me of”.

Of those times he particularly remembers the split peas which were served up in a metal tray, “gungy at the bottom because they never washed them properly”. The dinner ladies gave us basically nothing – not a potato nor a scrap of meat, and one’s heart sank”. Most of the time whenever they served them they stayed on the plate – very few people ate them”.

There were Cubans who swore never to eat them again, and yet today they long for a plate of them

However, this week Lisandro asked his sister who lives in Sancti Spíritus to bring him a few pounds of split peas because “they’re cheaper over there” and his two children want to eat a nice stew made from these little peas, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, which have tripled in price in less than a year in Cuban markets. continue reading

Where a pound of split peas cost 100 pesos at the La Plaza Boulevard market in Sancti Spíritus in August 2023, today you have to pay 320 pesos for the same quantity. “Even so, they’re cheaper than in Havana, where last week the price rose to 380 pesos”, the habanero tells 14ymedio.

Price per pound of split peas since August 2023 / 14ymedio

An imported product, which is barely grown in Cuba, the split pea was for decades associated with the poorest of dinner tables, including those in prisons and military quarters. But its increase in price, along with the decrease in production of other foodstuffs such as black and red beans, has revalued its image in Cuban kitchens. The arrival of better presented varieties has also helped to provide the old ’musketeer’ with a new royal cloak.

The split pea has also, for almost half a century, provided a way of stretching out the scarce commodity of coffee. After toasting and milling, the peas join the mixture which ends up in the coffee pots of Cuban homes. The widespread use of this blend has reached such a point on the island that there are now people who can’t enjoy a good cup of coffee if it doesn’t have the corresponding portion of ground peas in the mix.

The split pea was for decades associated with the poorest of dinner tables, including those in prisons and military quarters

“We have green, yellow, split and shelled peas in half or one kilogram jars”, the attentive employee of a mipyme (independent) shop in central Havana tells us. On the shelves, sacks bearing the recognisable logo of American brand Goya contain peas which are cleaned, and without the skin which many people say causes them digestive problems.

“They’re broken down and made into a San Germán puré as soon as they’re softened, and they taste really good”, says the woman to a customer who’s yet undecided whether to put her hand in her pocket and take out the 500 pesos needed to buy the half kilo packet. “These aren’t like the old ones, these are real quality”, says the seller.

Once taken home, the little peas end up in a pressure cooker with other ingredients to hand – which could be basic onions and garlic, some meat and eddoe herbs, all of which finally end up on the kids’ – and the older family members’ – plates. And while they taste this thick broth, a certain nostalgia will be triggered in some of them.

“I never thought that this would bring back so many memories of my younger days”, says Lisandro. “My mates and I used to make catapaults to fire split peas with, and in the school canteen the game was to fire them at the girls, and at the teachers when they weren’t looking”.

“In those days I reared pigeons and the split peas we got from the store all went to them as no one in our house wanted to eat them – it was enough that we had to eat them in school and our parents in the works canteen”, he recalls. Now, in that old “All for one and one for all” style of pact, the egg, the rice and their eternal companion the split pea have climbed up the class ladder: the three inseparables have now joined the royal table, close to those very exclusive dishes – the chickpea or the pork dish.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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If Books Are a Reflection of its Cultural Health, Cienfuegos is a Graveyard

The only things that are left in the bookshop are shelves containing repeated copies of the same book to fill up the empty space / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 13 October 2024 – Every day, numerous people come into the Dionisio San Román bookshop in Calle 54, Ciénfuegos, just at the top of the main avenue. Anyone witnessing this flow of people would think that in the city there was not only a thirst for reading material but also a lot of interesting books to acquire. In reality, these people are only going there in search of a snack in the shop’s cafeteria. If the cultural health of a city and its citizens is measured by its bookshops, then Ciénfuegos has much to be worried about.

The floor above the shop, initially planned as a conference/meeting room, has ended up sharing rented space with the independent cafeteria. Depending on the style of coffee you purchase there they can cost between 70 and 200 pesos. They’re nothing special but they still attract more attention from passers by than the “sparse and limited variety of books on offer” at the Dionisio San Román bookshop – says Jesús, to 14ymedio.

The man from Ciénfuegos has “a literary curiosity” that can very seldom be satisfied in the local state run bookshop. “Most of their books are about politics, Marxism, economics or similar themes. They also have locally written poetry, but anyone looking for quality fiction or texts which explore areas beyond the provincial will have to look elsewhere”, he explains. Even so, Jesús visits Dionisio San Román at least once a month on the off chance that some “little gem” might somehow appear. continue reading

Depending on the style of coffee you purchase there they can cost between 70 and 200 pesos. / 14ymedio

“When there is no paper you can’t publish, so logically there are no books to sell. The result: employees on minimum wage sitting around waiting the whole day for home time to arrive”, he says. According to Jesús the state bookshop never had a “golden age”, but at least, a few years ago, there were still some quality books around, and authors who were interested in publishing with Ciénfuegos publishers Mecenas and Reina del Mar.

The shop itself can’t escape the general crisis either. Inside the building the workers have to live with power cuts and suffocating heat, not being being able to switch on the air conditioning because of “company policy”. What often happens, explains Jesús, is that they have to go outside into the doorway with a table and a few sample books, to escape from the high temperatures.

Any attempts at promotion don’t guarantee sales either. With the poor level of enthusiasm shown by the sales staff, “you don’t feel the desire to buy anything”, Jesús adds. The Cienfuegero has a theory about the workers’ weariness: “because it’s an entity subsidised by the Cuban state, everyone earns the same, even when they don’t sell so much as a postcard”.

Any attempts at promotion don’t guarantee sales either. / 14ymedio

“I remember when they used to have clubs and literary get-togethers, or they put on conferences. Now the only thing left in the bookshop is metal shelving with the same repeated book copies to fill up the empty space. I don’t think they have even fifty titles on display and the majority haven’t changed since the last Book Fair. And as for the prices, they’re too high, given the low quality of the books and the low buying power of customers. In the Calle San Carlos bookshop any old book can cost up to a thousand pesos”, he says.

In that shop, administrated also by the Provincial Centre for Books and Literature in Ciénfuegos, they sell used books. However, here there is a repeat, on a smaller scale, of the same problems of the other shop. “A few days ago I was surprised to see a long queue in front of that bookshop, but then I realised they were actually queuing for the nearby Cadeca (currency exchange)”. Although some university students and local writers go into the shop, it’s usually the case that whoever goes in there comes out empty-handed.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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