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5. What Goods Mean in Cuba
- University Press of Florida
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5 What Goods Mean in Cuba I have spoken of Cuban “means” and the words that signify such means, but it is often the phenomenological, concrete, material goods themselves that hold special significance for Cubans in the late-socialist era. Material frustrations and shortages add consumer insult to citizen injury, but unlike political problems, consumer frustrations are something that Cubans feel comfortable talking about. Goods and their value are thus a common and acceptable topic of conversation in the absence of explicitly political discourse. In this chapter I discuss what goods mean to Cuban citizen-consumers and what they tell themselves and others about goods: what constitutes luxury versus necessity ; the cultural importance of brand names, quality, and pricing; and the global flows and interpersonal exchanges that allow Cubans to have intimate knowledge of and firsthand experience with foreign products and lifestyles. Finally, I consider Cuba’s placement in global “millennial capitalism,” and the importance of goods in the development of citizen-consumers’ shared social imaginary, as well as the regime’s shift away from state socialism, which is driven by citizen-consumer desire. Personal Consumer Frustrations One month, after waiting in line at her ration station, Elena received her monthly allotment of fourteen eggs.1 Upon her return home, she cracked them open to make omelets and discovered that half smelled foul, having gone bad after improper storage. Elena decided take them back to the bodega and make her dissatisfaction known, partly for dramatic effect, but also hoping to exchange them, since she is ostensibly guaranteed a certain number per month. Not surprisingly, she found that all the eggs had already been distributed, and the woman managing the bodega said her hands were tied: there would be no more eggs until next month. Elena would just have to cope with her bad luck and more shortages. What was once a gift from the state had become a scant supplement, and now a rotten assault. She was disgusted. As Elena enjoyed soda crackers spread with butter at my house one after- 84 / Part II. Means noon, she talked about how, since no one in particular owned the hallways of her building and no one was paid to clean them, she’d taken it upon herself to do so. Interrupting herself in the middle of her story, she ruminated, “Butter is something I miss these days,” in a tone that sounded as if she were talking about an old friend. Since butter had been elevated by circumstances to a rare luxury item on her grocery list, she had not seen it on her table in many months. “Butter keeps the intestines lubricated,” she asserted, attributing her recent constipation to lack of foods like butter. She squeezed some honey onto her palm when I left to go into the kitchen, furtively licking it off before I returned . Honey is a luxury item, too, she told me glumly. “I guess this isn’t the land of milk and honey,” she joked. She commented on the mass-produced art hanging on the walls of our furnished rental apartment. She identified the schmaltzy double-heart-shaped clock with artificial flowers encased inside as a Mother’s Day special in el chopping a couple of years earlier. “A lot people have that one,” she reported. (I, too, had spotted it in an extraordinary number of homes.) “And I’ve got that one,” she said, identifying what she considered another mass-produced piece: a plastic tray with a fruit motif mounted on our dining room wall. She, herself, had been given an identical one as a gift. She shook her head in disdain. She avoids such pieces when she can. “Everyone has the same things here; it’s hard to maintain a sense of individuality or style in the way you decorate your home when there are only certain things available in el chopping,” she said, referring to what seemed to be the statepromoted and -enforced bad taste. Not only did Elena seek to prevent her privacy from being violated and her personal liberties from being threatened (see chapter 2); she also had unabating material frustrations, blending her status of unsatisfied citizen with that of unsatisfied consumer. Petra sat on our shared patio, munching on a dry cracker and taking what she told me was an antianxiety pill as she looked down to inspect the chafing on her plump inner thigh. She had returned from her nephew’s wedding inflicted with what she considered this unnecessary wound...