Josefina’s beans

Josefina Miranda, a 67-year-old housewife, has worked her whole life like an animal. Her moments of happiness can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

She is a fat, soft, black woman with a weary gait, who lives in the marginalized, mostly black neighborhood called Diezmero, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, northeast of the heart of Havana. She could not be more poor; she lives day-to-day.

She is always improvising. She has four children, three girls and a boy, but the Old Woman Miranda is the one with the last word in the concrete, aluminum-roofed hut where she has lived for 40 years.

Under the same roof live three distinct generations. The house has three narrow rooms with little ventilation. At the entrance, behind the door, there is a clay bowl full of necklaces and other smaller bowls with left-over food and cigarette butts.

“It’s an offering to Elegguá, to see if our lives will change. That is my struggle, day after day, cook to earn a buck and help my children and grandchildren who are working or studying in school. Later I watch TV, but by 10 o’clock at night, I am asleep on the sofa.”

She tells this story while rice is cooking in a big pot. She earns a small pension of 193 pesos (8 convertible pesos), which quickly disappear buying garlic, onions, green pepper, tomatoes and meat. Two of her children are in jail.

“The girl, because she was an accomplice to an armed robbery, is in Manto Negro, the women’s prison, outside of Havana. The boy, who is 34 years old and is the youngest of my four sons, is in the prison in Boniato, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, for killing cows.”

Josefa keeps talking without stopping her cooking. Now, in a pressure cooker, she prepares some beans that smell so delicious they make your mouth water.

“And that, even though I never have a ham bone, bacon, chorizo or blood sausage to make them the way they should be made.”

Miranda’s family life is boring and devoid of fun. The two daughters who live with her earn low salaries. When they get home from work, along with their mother, they prepare 12 or 13 servings of food that they sell in the neighborhood for 25 pesos. The only thing their husbands know how to do is to drink foul rum, play dominoes and fight.

“Here in my house, we love each other, a few are lazy, the women in this country bear the hardest burden in this miserable country. Look, on top of having to find food and cook to earn a few little pesos, we have to wash, iron and take care of children, grandchildren and also our husbands. They should dedicate a monument to us.”

The government of the Castros hasn’t thought about that. Cuban laws rarely favor women, no matter their age or status. When they divorce, the law calls for monthly payments to parents who are typically between 50 and 60 pesos (2 or 3 Cuban convertible pesos).

“That amount is a joke. That money is just enough to pay the cafeteria in elementary school,” says Esther, Josefa’s daughter, wryly.

Also family violence is increasing. Cuban society has touched bottom not only by its endless economic crisis, but by the social and moral devaluation as well. Cuba is a country where the majority of families are divided by the migratory exodus, the lack of stable marriages, the high number of divorces and domestic violence against women.

As a result, the misery and material shortages make many households small living hells. At the slightest setback, a storm will break. Whether a relative takes the bread that belongs to us from the quota or eats one of the 10 eggs assigned each month per person by the rationing booklet.

But so it goes. If anyone has suffered more intensely from poverty and disillusion for the lack of a clear future, it’s the Cuban women. In particular, if they are retirees and single mothers. Like Josefa Miranda, the housewife who lives in the humble neighborhood of San Miguel del Padrón.
Life for her is an infinite vicious circle: Take the grandchildren to school, cook and try to get a handful of pesos to survive in the hard conditions of Cuban socialism.

Despite few moments of happiness, Josefa Miranda is attentive and hospitable to visitors. If you spend time in “Diezmero”, be sure to try her red beans. Without bacon, chorizo, or blood sausage. But they are finger-licking good.