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Introduction Summer morning Residential neighborhood Havana, Cuba Garments dry quickly in the morning sun, and are best brought indoors by midday to avoid the daily frenzy of unpegging at the first roll of afternoon thunder. This is when women call out, announcing the arrival of rain and, as a neighborly gesture, yank down all nearby laundry from the communal clothesline. Cubans, who excel at guarding their private lives from one another, and who take care not to air their dirty laundry in public, still engage in a lot of friendly handling of other people’s clean laundry. They also spend a lot of time sharing lines—not only clotheslines , but also phone lines, ration lines, pharmacy lines, shopping lines, faltering factory production lines, and one-party lines. I am privy to certain conversations because I share a clothesline with Tatiana and Petra, who have been living two doors down from each other on the same passageway for five years, and who do trust each other—as far as Cuban neighbors ever do. Squinting and starting to sweat, I listen to them chat as clothes go up for the day, about the influence of their astrological signs on their personalities, the going rate for home manicures and pedicures, the declining quality of public school lunches, and—quite aggravating to Tatiana—the fact that the price of Nestlé Nesquik flavored milk has just gone up, yet again. Her complaint doesnotresonatewithnostalgicimagesofCubansreceivingcommunist no-brand rations in tin cups. In fact, Tatiana regards chocolate-flavored Nesquik (a Mexican import) as a household staple for her school-aged daughter, and the price hike is going to place an added strain on the family purse.“But,”she adds, lowering her voice, a Cuban citizen’s ritual indexing the moment when a political problem enters the arena,“I can’t say anything,”she hisses in frustration, “Who would I complain to?”She throws up her hands, shrugs, and then slaps her cutoff jeans. 2 / Introduction Unsatisfied Citizen-Consumers The protagonists of this book are ordinary Cuban families quietly in search of a life with basic luxuries. Their search appears unremarkable, since neither their poverty nor their desires are extreme. They do not live terribly, they are not starving, but they work hard, and they want to live better. They long for affordable, quality goods and services that they believe are available elsewhere, they are frustrated with nationalized systems offering less than ever before, and they harbor resentment over their hard and unrewarded work. However, they explicitly avoid political activism as a tool to raise their standard of living. They prefer ritualized civic participation (or civic withdrawal ), engagement in the informal economy, and undocumented migration as practical, clandestine strategies that circumvent or extend beyond the reach of state control. Despite state achievements like low infant mortality and high literacy rates, this group, whom I call “unsatisfied citizen-consumers,” wants something more, and they believe they can get it somewhere else. They often have remarkable firsthand details about specific types of goods and services they would like to access, for example Johnson’s Baby Shampoo No More Tears formula, queen-sized pantyhose, home mortgage deals, fast Internet connections , and short lines at well-stocked medical centers. The imported products increasingly available on shelves in shops in Havana remain prohibitively expensive for most Cubans, but as before, they continue to obtain awareness of consumer goods through hand-delivered gifts, visits and phone calls from family abroad, commercials broadcast on illegal satellite TV, conversations with tourists, and even videotaped footage of loved ones enjoying life in other countries. Such consumer details are politically symbolic, igniting vivid imaginings of life elsewhere and fueling subdued anger against the state. Ordinary citizens unavoidably experience stress and secrecy in trying to make ends meet in Cuba’s authoritarian bureaucratic structure,1 obtain basic luxuries under the table, and discreetly plan their escape. These desires and pressures lie at the core of their lived experience. I argue that unsatisfied citizen-consumers’ political silence, underground economic activity, and secret identity as prospective migrants mark the boundaries of a significant “shadow public.” This term plays on the common, parallel phrase “shadow economy,” as it also indicates informality and underground activity. Unlike what is generally considered “the public,” however, a shadow public is a large group with common interests and concerns, but one that is non-united and seeks invisibility as its members look to improve their lot. Throughout this book, I explore and conceptualize the unsatisfied citizen- [18.224...

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