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MARIO J. TORRES
Survival
Among the things that are currently
made for survival due to the serious situation in the island, we have the
following: |
(1) Some workers have quit their jobs and have drawn licenses to sell
homemade food paying a large cut of their earnings to the government
in taxes. This is low-quality food and very expensive, but it is the only
thing available since stores are totally empty. These private vendors seldom
rest while looking for food ingredients, and many have made a cafeteria out
of their homes, selling by their living room windows. Others have made a
restaurant out of their home living-room where they serve food at very high
prices. These home-restaurants are called PALADARES; term taken from an old
Brazilian soap-opera.
Many professionals have become private vendors and have forgotten about
their engineering, teaching, or medicine. In Havana practically every house
has become a home-cafeteria. This is one form of keeping the chain of
selling at high prices and buying expensive too as a new way of life. In
most cities, there are large open areas with kiosks where private vendors
have permits to sell food, homemade soap, and homemade ice cream, cookers,
and kitchenware at incredibly high prices. These places are called
Candongas, an Angolan word taken from similar places in Africa when the
Cuban troops were there during the civil war.
(2) Many people, among them professionals, sell different kinds of products
in the street illegally. They call out aloud their merchandise and hide
themselves from police or inspectors who would fine them if they were
caught. Products like garlic, onion, pepper, tomatoes, honey, casava bread,
homemade ice cream, homemade pizza, oranges, bananas, beans, rice, soap,
etc., can be heard in the streets.
(3) Others travel to the countryside to bring food, to sell it in the city,
or to consume it at home, and sometimes they are caught by the police at the
entrance of the city, and they are fined and lose their goods, which the
police sometimes keep for themselves.
(4) Some others work in places where they can steal from the government:
soap, toothpaste, canned meat, and clothes, and, at the risk of going to
jail, they sell them to others to survive, and the ones that got money
somewhere else by other means buy them to survive too.
(5) Another section of the population works in the so-called dollar shops or
in tourist installations, hotels, and factories with foreign investment
where they have a small share of dollars in their pay.
(6) Many others have relatives in the United States who help them
economically; this sector of the population is relatively better off because
they can afford both markets more easily.
(7) Some professionals having cars become taxi-drivers in their spare time
and give rides at high fares since there are no means of transportation or
lend their cars to other drivers who will give them a share of their
earnings.
(8) Others have become taxi-bikers and have built special bicycles, each
with a sidecar to carry two or three people with all their luggage on it
through long distances at high fares. These also have state permits and pay
taxes.
(9) Horse-and-buggy riders have also appeared taking the cities back one
hundred years. Many people go to work using this uncomfortable and slow
means of transportation.
(10) There are also dollar sellers who buy dollars from foreigners or from
people with relatives abroad at cheaper prices and sell them to other people
at more expensive rates.
(11) Many people are renting their houses to foreigners and nationals
legally and illegally, and they cook meals for them competing with hotels.
(12) Some teachers of English teach English lessons to those interested in
leaving the country or in working for tourism.
(13) More daring ones go after foreigners and propose business to them, or
women have sex with them in exchange for dollars.
(14) Finally, there are some families that rely only on their salaries, and
they have to do marvels to survive and not starve to death. Usually these
people and why not the rest too have to:
(1) Cook one meal a day.
(2) Go to school or work with a lemonade as breakfast.(3) Wear only one pair
of shoes and clothes.
(4) Brush their teeth only with water.
(5) Bathe only with water if it is available.
(6) Sell their monthly food ration more expensively in order to buy other
types of food.
(7) Spend whole nights in the dark with no electricity
(8) Have the house ceiling and walls full of black soot from firewood
or coal cooking
In Cuba there is no fuel to cook with, and there are no cookers either. The
population cooks with coal, firewood, or with homemade electric cookers that
can slowly cook a meal so that people can survive. As long as there is not a
blackout that day, it will work; otherwise, the family will have to go to
bed without eating.
Most of ceilings in Cuban houses are covered with soot due to firewood or
coal use for cooking or due to lighting devices during the long blackouts.
These blackouts occur due to the lack of energy, and they are officially
scheduled every other day when there is no crisis.
So, at least one day, the family will not watch television, or maybe they
will not eat, or maybe their refrigerator will defrost, and the food they
obtained with sacrifice will spoil.
If the family got food that day, they should not rely on the electric
cooker. They know there won't be anything to cook with unless measures were
previously taken.
In Cuba there are two expressions which are very frequently repeated. One of
them is This is not easy (meaning sorting out troubles), and the other is To
get or To manage to because everything has to be obtained with sacrifice.
In the island there is no time for fun, entertainment, or amusement.
Everything is sacrifice and struggle to survive. Workers work for nothing,
and families are full of worries thinking what they are going to eat the
next day with all hopes lost. They just see days pass and wait to see if a
miracle will happen.
MARIO J TORRES
JANUARY 2004
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