Cuba’s “Bodegas” Hang On, Along with the Population
HAVANA TIMES – The debate about how much longer we Cubans will have a ration book for basic essentials has been around for a long time. Every so often, a rumor goes around that they’re going to eliminate them right away. Then another commentary and set of facts emerges, alleging that it can’t be done. There are a lot of jokes from comics on the topic. One, in particular, made me laugh the most: “they didn’t take the ration booklet away, what they’ve taken away are the products.”
In honor of the truth, that goes beyond just a joke – it’s a felt reality. They dole out the four pounds of rice, those of brown and white sugar (if either of these arrive), the beans, the cooking oil, although the amount allotted for one person can barely be seen in the bottle, plus cigarettes, toothpaste and bath and washing soap.
That long list of products that included things like cans of condensed milk, for example, is no more. Today, and for a long time back before yesterday, all the necessities can be obtained in the informal market. Nowadays, with people traveling on buying trips to Guyana, Surinam, Russia, etc., we’ve become familiar with many products we’d never have imagined. Meanwhile, the few that we had before went on disappearing from our ration books and our lives.
What’s certain is that the bodegas [small shops dispatching rationed items at subsidized prices] with their scant services continue existing in our world. They coexist with other points of sale – the Mipymes [small and medium private businesses recently authorized by the State] and a lot of contraband and corruption. Keep in mind that nearly everything in that business world is completely illegal, yet they can be found on every corner, on every block, on all the streets.
These bodegas, that to everyone’s surprise still exist, have names that are historical references to me. However, to those who live outside our daily context, they could be viewed as pleasant or perhaps aggressive, depending on how they feel about the Cuban people’s trajectory over the past 6 decades.
For example, the street I use almost every morning for my physical exercises is called “Captain Urbino” Avenue. Without deviating from this same street, there are many bodegas lined up.The first one we run into is called “The Battle Trench;” followed by “The Warrior;” and a third “El Mambi” [guerrila fighters for Cuba’s independence from Spain], and many more. Heading into Holguin from the west side, we find “The Proletariat”. I wondered if that name would remain if there were a change of system in the country, as there surely will be, and not very far off I believe.
To me, those establishments remain a testimony to the many tools a regime had to control the population, although it also could be said it was a way to reach even the poorest, who had no other way to obtain these products, given their vulnerable economic circumstances. They served many functions, I could say, or anyone could conclude. Those who are studious and given to research will be analyzing them at some time and will clarify for us their full significance and repercussions in Cuban society.
They’ve survived, like that slogan says, right to the end. Unlike their sisters, the butcher shops, that couldn’t resist the slow devastation suffered with every passing year, especially after the collapse of the socialist bloc.
Still, this is the time when the rest of the people, the majority – everyone with the desire to leave the island like some others who have succeeded, (while more people continue succeeding at this every day) hold on to our ration booklets. They can be found in every home: on the table or the refrigerator, or wherever we won’t lose them.
And every day we go out to buy those insipid bread rolls, to greet the person running the store and the neighbors we find in the queue, and say what we almost always say when we meet, in addition to complaining about the heat: “How terrible all this is.” All sharing the conviction that anywhere in the world people live better than here, because this country is ever more unbearable.