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| (c) Conexion Cubana |
Poverty
food diet was one of the phrases used to highlight the results of a study recently
published in the British
Medical Journal (BMJ), which detailed how Cubans shed an average of 5.5 Kg
in weight during five years and allegedly became healthier. Participants from
the central-southern city of Cienfuegos were sampled and monitored during a
period when they ate less meat, walked and cycled everywhere and as a result
rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes were lowered. To the West and Britain,
such achievements look like a model to be imitated.
The five years of results coincided with the economic
crisis of the early 1990s, labelled “A Special Period in Peacetime” by the
Cuban government. As the study was also commented on and celebrated in the
British and Spanish press, Cubans on the island and its diaspora turned to the social
media to vent their anger and disbelief. Many questioned the findings, but
others just could not comprehend how the difficulties of an imposed lifestyle
could be taken as a recipe for health improvement.
Some friends seized the controversial moment to post old
pictures from 1993-1994, the acutest years of the Special Period. Just looking
at those elongated faces, pale and hollow, seems enough to evoke the painful memories
of those long months. For many of my former colleagues at the University of
Havana, their photos hardly document a healthy period. “Are you ill?” was a
recurrent question many were confronted with during the weeks they were forced
to train as soldiers, as if they had been drafted into the army. University
students in Cuba had to serve in military units before graduation as part of
their preparation to defend the homeland in the event of an American invasion,
which after the collapse of East-European socialism was always “imminent”.
Based on the BMJ study, it would not be only extremely
sarcastic but also downright cruel to affirm that my colleagues had never been
healthier than in those days. Of course they experienced hunger, as the rest of
the population, but owing to a national dictum of self-determination, many
hoped for the best and buried their personal accounts of malnourishment.
Then, years later, food production was slowly recovering
and stories about the Special Period gave way to those illustrating the
increasing contrasts of post-soviet Cuba. My colleagues, like many young
educated nationals, fled the country and ended up in the most unimaginable corners
of the globe, where food was abundant and varied, and health choices did not
depend upon an overbearing nanny state. Food recollections were left for
sporadic reunions when the difficult years were remembered briefly as a
validation for solidarity or friendship.
On a hot humid afternoon in May 1994, while sipping a
drink made out of vanilla extract, my friend Martha summarised, in a prophetic
manner, the future of our memory of those days. “Can you imagine”, uttered the
dejected twenty year-old journalism student, “that we would have to call each
other to verify our anecdotes of this period, because nobody is going to
believe us!” And she was right. Not many people know that the stories
of food scarcity in Cuba are not just a consequence of how little it was
reported in the global press. It is also because we did not tell those stories.
As though there was a sort of embarrassment attached to the act of remembering
that had more to do with private attitudes rather than with the state’s
responsibility, Cubans suppressed those shameful memories.
In the summer of 1994 there were riots in El Malecon that prompted the Balseros crisis and 125, 000 famished
Cubans left the island. Even in those difficult days of hot confrontation and
macho-imbued revolutionary rhetoric, some thought that emigration would have a
positive effect in the distribution system and that those who remained would be
rewarded with increased rations.
There had not been many stories about food scarcity in
the official press, (the only one available) during the Special Period. Following
the traditional dissemination of positive images instead of those reflecting
the harsh reality, Cuban news programmes showed endless reports of food
production, record-breaking farmers who took enormous pride in being portrayed
as heroes rescuing almost extinguished food and vegetables. A popular joke at
the time suggested going shopping on the 8 o’clock news, because that was the
only place where groceries could be seen.
Cubans had not been used to seeing themselves as hungry
or poor. Those who had lived through the 1980s, a decade of relative prosperity
if compared with the previous ones, were accustomed to associate pictures of
starvation with the faraway lands of the Horn of Africa. Few compared
themselves with images seen in philanthropic video-clips such as We Are theWorld. It seemed an impossible task, especially because after exhausting the
work hours securing foodstuff, when gathered in front of the TV set, those in
the privileged neighbourhoods with electricity, refused to watch more suffering
on their screens. Cubans preferred the exuberant settings shown in the
Brazilian soap operas, where emotional conflicts appeared more important than
their daily struggle for food.
Hope came to every house in the long saga depicting the
divided social worlds of Rio de Janeiro. Nothing gave more optimism than the
social-climbing pursuits of Maria de Fatima, aiming to penetrate the upper
echelons of a highly competitive super rich Carioca clan. Even the famously
long prime time TV speeches of Fidel Castro were watched not because they would
bring relief, but in the hope that, if shorter than three hours, they would
show the corresponding episode of Vale
Todo. Then, for about 45 minutes, the day’s problems could be forgotten.
Such escapism was preferred to having to visualize how
everybody was losing weight and becoming obsessed with the recipes of the past,
which were impossible to replicate due to the lack of the main ingredients.
Aiming perhaps, at contrasting the success of foreign productions, Cuban
dramatist were called to compete with stories of the present, but national
telenovelas, such as Retablo Personal,
were never very popular during those years. TV viewers simply refused to revisit
their daily misery.
Food, or the lack thereof, seemed to occupy every corner
in people’s mind. There were the perennial jokes about the lost dishes of Cuban
cuisine, in which the national inventiveness had turned restaurants into
museums. The metaphor appeared valid since food could only be found in people’s
memory. The future was being turn into a collective plot for a horror movie.
Rumours flourished, coupled with everyone’s ability to put on a brave face. In
power circles they talked about “option zero”, supposedly the point of no
return, when the struggling distribution system would have totally collapsed
and meals would have to be prepared in giant communal pots in the streets. To
complicate the picture, unheard-of ailments spread all over the island. An
epidemic with clinical manifestations of optic and peripheral neuropathy
affected more than 50, 000 people. Doctors cited an acute nutritional
deficiency among its causes.
The authorities grew desperate. The obsolete centralised
distribution system had been conceived for better times, as if the small
Caribbean nation were an oil-rich Gulf state. With increasing fuel shortages,
big cities reduced their public transport and those depending on agricultural
imports were hit the hardest. Certainly, as the professional in the BMJ argued,
Cubans had to opt for more eco-friendly means of transportation and a fleet of
Chinese bicycles suddenly invaded the country, but Cubans lacked the ability of
their Asian counterparts to utilise their bikes on a par with a lorry.
Uncertainty and despair were the predominant moods, some
would say, but Cubans excelled at being creative. Food inventions were passed
on like family recipes. Some were tested in the safe environment of the house
kitchen, where mothers and grandmothers could validate that they were edible.
That is why we had picadillo (mincemeat)
made out of plantain peels, potato pizzas and fried eggs in hot water, instead
of with oil. No wonder the fat intake was also reduced as the BMJ refers.
The selling of food was still illegal in the early
1990s, but adventurous street vendors managed to make a living (risking going
to jail) where food was even scarcer and “scarier”. Some were caught and we
learned about their inventions through notes printed in the daily Granma. There
we read about a woman in Havana who used old rag mops as the main filling for
her croquetas. Food substitutes as
such had never entered Nitza Villapol’s imagination. By that time, the
well-known Cuban food guru and TV cook had seen her show axed after more than
thirty years on air. Her book Cooking in One
Minute was the closest to a food bible on the Caribbean island and through
its pages, especially in the reprints of the 1980s, food enthusiasts learned
how to substitute ingredients in her recipes if the main ones were not
available.
Granma, the
main organ of Cuba’s Communist Party refused to inform us about food changes
and innovations, but we could always turn to the creative country’s
intelligentsia as a further reassurance of not being disappointed. Many writers
filled the gap left by the official media in narrating the national history of
hunger. Short stories published in cultural publications that sadly not everyone
read, featured descriptions about reduced portions and long-lost desserts.
Foraging for food remained a gruelling task throughout
the early 1990s and few Cubans, for example, felt the need to leave home, get
on a bicycle and attend a theatre play or go to the cinema. Those who stoically
maintained their cultural habits were surprised to find that food scarcity had
inspired interesting pieces that could be revealingly abstract (Marianela
Boan’s Fast Food) or disturbingly
honest (Alberto Pedro’s Manteca).
Audiences were exposed to an aesthetic of food shortage, which wanted to delve
deeper and show perhaps how dehumanizing the lack of food and the increasing
loss of commensality had turned everybody into a skeletal version of
themselves. However, Cubans persisted in denying that vision and like, in other
difficult times of the island’s history, many preferred to listen to music and
dance. Timba orchestras had exploded
and the salsa-dancing frenzy enabled my fellow-compatriots to burn their meagre
reservoir of calories dancing to tunes with plain lyrics like Picadillo de Soya (soy mince), one of
the hits of NG La Banda in its heyday.
In early 1994 the Cuban government imposed several
“pro-capitalist” measures aiming to fix the country’s ailing economy. Cubans
were allowed to set up small independent venues to sell food or to convert
rooms in their houses into small restaurants. They were called paladares, in reference to the most
followed Brazilian soap during the most “special” days of the Period. The
government also legalised the possession of hard currency and gambled its
future on foreign investors and joint ventures. International tourism was
another priority and dozens of big 5-star hotels sprung up on the island’s
coastline.
Tourists were lured in with the promise of a crumbling
colonial splendour, pristine beaches and friendly hosts, but holiday brochures
mentioned little about food. The booming tourist economy attracted many Cuban
professionals who saw in the newly built hotels and bungalows another chance to
escape their dilapidated surroundings. Tales about food imports to supply the
tourist industry justified more than one career change. Then there were
chambermaids who previously had worked as teachers; porters, who had been
university professors and even doctors who seemed happier as taxi drivers.
After many years of limited provisions, their families could experience again
the joys of a full fridge and a kitchen table groaning with treats.
Hotel building rates were amazingly fast, but not
everybody could be hired to work in the tourist sector. Cuban nationals were
not allowed to rent a room or visit the areas limited to international
visitors. The island’s main touristic hotspot, Varadero beach, was often
referred as “another country” in the popular imaginary. For the rest of the
population, paladares were the
preferred place to sample forgotten dishes and snacks, since the state-owned
cafeterias could hardly compete with the private food stalls.
When the authorities realised that vendors profited from
food sales, they imposed heavy taxes and sent health inspectors to charge huge
fines if the food preparation appeared to be compromised. Food poisoning cases
were talked about, vox populi,
because newspapers and the official media only reported extreme cases. In one
of the most tragic, fourteen people died in 1999 in Manguito, Matanzas, after
eating fritters mixed with a fertilizer powder mistakenly bought as flour by
the paladar owner, who also ended up
as a casualty. Dozens of other people were treated with symptoms of food
poisoning, prompting a health scare and lots of other rumours about the
possible fatal ingredient used. It was never identified in the national press;
however, later that year Fidel Castro chaired a meeting with Cuban journalists
and briefly mentioned “off-the-record” the case and the culprit. Such news
never made it into print.
At that time visitors came in droves, staying at
“luxurious” resorts separated from the difficulties of everyday life Cubans
were still enduring. The Special Period had entered its first decade and there
were not any official acknowledgement of such a milestone. Food was still
difficult to secure for Cubans, but there was a kind of collective agreement in
that the harshest days of the crisis belonged in the past. It must have been
puzzling for tourists who ventured on a “budget” vacation to Cuba, to sample
what locales ate.
They probably had read the tourist guide to get
acquainted with social codes and customs, but after landing, the majority must
have realised that the country remained a challenge. But now they could stay
with a Cuban family in a casa particular,
breakfast included. What they ignored was that their menus had been carefully
revised to suit their tastes as some hosts could take offence if visitors
rejected “Cuban food”. Tourists may had come looking for “Caribbean”
similarities: spices, jerk chicken, callaloo, varieties of fish dishes, so it
must had been a shock to realise that none of those foodstuffs were consumed in
the larger island of the Greater Antilles.
These days some foodstuffs are easier to get on the
island, provided that one can afford them. Many Cubans do not look as emaciated
as their 1993 compatriots and perhaps they have come to realise that excessive
body fat does not correspond to a healthy lifestyle. Two decades have passed
since the authorities declared the Special Period. It seems an awful lot of
time for some, especially for the millions of Cubans who have survived it and
changed their attitudes to nutrition in the process, through an excruciating
and delayed learning curve.
