Behind the flurry of news stories about the emerging food scene in Havana including celebrity sightings in restaurants and visiting American chefs, average Cubans continue to go about the complicated and time consuming work of putting food on the table every day.
What difference does the state make in fulfilling the right to adequate food? What is the relative significance of the state, the market, and civil society organizations for the urban poor in their everyday experience of putting food on the table? These questions emerged during my years in the not-for-profit sector in Canada, working on food insecurity and poverty. I also spent two extended periods living in Havana in 2004 and 2012. Observing how poor people feed themselves in such diverse economies as Canada and Cuba, I was struck by the similarities as well as the differences. When I decided to return to school for a PhD in 2013, questions about the relative roles of the state, the market and civil society in addressing food insecurity in First and Third World contexts – Canada and Cuba – came with me.
I have spent two years interviewing people who face food insecurity in urban neighbourhoods in both Canada and Cuba. The people I speak to in Canada are, typically, living on social assistance or earning minimum wage. Many are single parents. In Cuba, due to low wages, high food prices relative to income, and unpredictable food supplies in the market, most citizens are food insecure regardless of job, marital status or education level. There is a joke that many readers will know. I first heard it in 2004 – Q: “What are the three successes of the revolution? A: Healthcare, education, and culture. Q: What are the three failures of the revolution? A: Breakfast, lunch and dinner”. The Cubans I talk with are frustrated and annoyed by the complicated, expensive, and time-consuming work of feeding their families. Cuba’s excellent health statistics are legendary. Yet credit for this success is laid at the feet of the Cuban health care system, not the food system, despite clear evidence that health indicators such as healthy birth weight and child mortality are closely correlated to food security. The Cubans I’ve interviewed are reluctant to credit the role that Cuban government food policy and programs has played for their enviable national health status. Writing in 1994, in their The Greening of the Revolution, Rossett and Benjamin called the Cuban food system the “Achilles’ heel of the revolution” and that remains true today. How is it that Cuba has failed to develop a functional food system that inspires pride among Cubans or acclaim on the international stage?
I’ve been doing fieldwork in Havana intermittently since February 2015. My research is based on semi-structured interviews, but I also rely on a strategy that anthropologists call “deep hanging out,” with people who live with food insecurity. I talk with friends, and friends-of-friends, and I spend time in different neighbourhoods mapping out the circuits of food procurement – from bodegas to bakeries to agricultural markets to butchers to urban gardens to dollar stores. I skirt along the edges of la izquierda – the crucial grey/black market that provides Cubans with access to a wide array of foods and other goods they can’t otherwise obtain (and provides me with most of my eggs). My contacts help to paint a picture – many of them literally drawing me maps – of the day-to-day work involved in procuring food in different Havana neighbourhoods. It is complicated and unpredictable work, involving multiple trips and long line-ups. Not surprisingly, this workload falls disproportionately on the shoulders of Cuban women.
To the extent that outsiders consider how Cubans get access to food, much attention is paid to the rations system, characterized by the libreta de abastacimeinto – the small booklet used by each Cuban household to access their entitlement to their subsidized food rations. Universal food rationing was introduced in Cuba in 1962, and was intended to ensure universal access to basic foodstuffs. Few, if any, other countries offer similar entitlements. Not surprisingly, the food rations system is expensive for the state to operate. It has been slowing eroding for years, offering fewer and fewer items, and there have been at least two highly publicized occasions in which the government has announced plans to dismantle it. Despite widespread dissatisfaction about the rations system, however, there has been strong political and popular resistance to eliminating it, or to implementing means testing for eligibility. And so it remains an important and universal, though insufficient and unpredictable, source of food for Cubans.
But the rations system is only one part of the food procurement puzzle in Cuba. It exists within an ever-shifting food system that includes other food entitlement programs such as workplace dining rooms, school and daycare meal programs, and neighbourhood meal preparation and distribution facilities for the elderly and indigent. There is an official parallel market selling the same food items available on the rations system, but at market value – “por la libre”. Bakeries, butchers, and various models of farmers markets are all located within relatively easy walking distance for most people in Havana. The “dollar stores” or “la shopping” sell imported food and other goods for much higher prices.
Increasingly, state-licensed cuentapropistas – small private businesses – are an important part of the food landscape. The ranks of mobile street vendors and stationary kiosks (selling prepared foods and household items as well as fruits and vegetables) have grown exponentially since the mid 1990’s when the Cuban government began to loosen restrictions on private enterprise. Economic reforms implemented in 2011 have further increased the number of private food outlets. Many new restaurants are aimed at the tourist market and Havana’s new middle class, though most are out of reach for the average Cuban worker. One Havana research participant termed the clientele “politicos y pastores” – politicians and pastors. Some of these establishments feature a staggering array of menu items unattainable and inconceivable to the average Cuban home cook.
. . .the moral economy of most Cubans differentiates between the flexibility afforded by re-selling and trading the rations to which one is entitled, and the procurement/theft and reselling of prohibited goods . . . “
While cuentapropismo may provide an income, sometimes substantial, for a handful of Cubans, its effect on the Cuban food system as a whole is not yet well understood. In my interviews I heard plenty of complaints about the effect of the rapid emergence of restaurants on food availability in the markets. As one person put it, “You line up to buy your eggs, maybe 30, and the person ahead of you buys 1000 for their paladar, and then there are none.” The only wholesale produce supplier in Havana is located on the outskirts of town, a long and costly trek, and so most small restaurants and kiosks purchase their supplies through the same neighbourhood markets that everyone else uses. People complain about scarcity, diminished quality of available produce, and price increases. They blame this on competition from restaurateurs and kiosk owners who make arrangements with market vendors to purchase large quantities of the best quality products, leaving little left for regular consumers.
Alongside state-sanctioned means of food distribution lies the ubiquitous black-market, without which most Cubans would not be able to survive. These extra-legal activities encompass everything from individuals selling unwanted portions of their rations to a neighbour – a practice that has been common ever since the rations system came into being – to people selling lobster, potatoes, or beef stolen from the tourist food supply chain. While both ends of the spectrum are technically illicit, the moral economy of most Cubans differentiates between the flexibility afforded by re-selling and trading the rations to which one is entitled, and the procurement/theft and reselling of prohibited goods such as lobster on the black market.
Weaving together these various mechanisms for food distribution are informal networks of communication and mutual assistance among family and neighbours. Several of my contacts spoke matter-of-factly about taking a portion of the food they prepare to elderly or infirm neighbours, or regularly caring for (and hence feeding) various related and un-related children. Word of mouth factors hugely into food procurement, as friends and neighbours alert each other about which food items are available where, when, and at what price. “There is always someone to advise you, some neighbour who will tell you every time when the chicken is here, or if the eggs are delayed this month”.
What normalized relations between the USA and Cuba will actually mean for food prices and availability in the long run remains to be seen. I began my field research in Havana a couple of months after the December 17, 2014 announcement, and there was still a buzz in the air. But already the jokes were flying: when something was not available in the market the vendor would explain “Obama hasn’t sent it yet,” and everyone would crack up. Many of my contacts in Havana are cautiously optimistic that renewed trade relations with the USA may result in lower food prices as well as better choice and more consistent availability in the long run.
Yet, while trade with Cuba holds tremendous symbolic import for both parties, Cuba, a country of 11 million people holds very little retail purchasing power. And while state wages in some sectors are gradually increasing, the consensus among my research participants is still that their income “no alcanza” – they don’t stretch to adequately cover the cost of food. The USA already exports food to Cuba – including poultry, wheat and rice. It seems unlikely that renewed trade relations will flood the Cuban market with food that is affordable to average Cubans. One woman I spoke with in February 2015 summed up the general mood well. When I asked whether she thought that new relations with the USA would mean a change in food prices or availability, she paused and then stated that “lo veo cuando lo veo” – I’ll see it when I see it. Overall she, like many in Cuba, wants to be hopeful, but believes that real change will be a long time in coming.
The surprising turn in US/Cuban relations adds another level of inquiry to my fieldwork. I now end my interviews by asking my research participants to reflect on the difference they think the new presence of Americans – through tourism, trade and American FDI (foreign direct investment) – is likely to have on the day to day availability and affordability of food in Cuba. I still ask “what difference does the state make” for everyday food security, but I also ask about the difference rapid economic and social change may make, and what role the state could or should play in managing that change. Even if better U.S.-Cuban relations do not immediately change the availability and pricing of food for all, many Cubans have new hopes and expectations along with trepidation and some resistance to foreseeable changes in the food system. Cubans have managed the day-to-day struggle of putting food on the table through a long history of “resolver y inventar” (resolving problems and inventing solutions) negotiated through strong informal social networks. They do not see this changing any time soon. While a rapprochement with the U.S. promises to increase the imports of U.S. food into Cuba, it is unclear whether U.S. foodstuffs will benefit the average Cuban, or will only be available at high prices to tourists and the growing, but still comparatively small, number of “middle class” Cubans.
All images by Susan Belyea.