Independence Is an Ideal and It Should Be Real Even in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – I make very little from selling my books. In a country where a harsh crisis intensifies the struggle to survive, reading—and many other experiences—fall to second, third, and fourth place, or simply disappear altogether. Here, the top priority is food. We wake up and go to bed thinking about food. We give thanks if we were able to eat, and then ask: what will we do about tomorrow?
Friends who are vendors no longer know how to tell me that I should change what I sell or add something else. It could be food! That always sells—and sells well. Coffee, pastries, nougats, bread with spreads, fritters, peanut butter… anything edible that can ease both our physical hunger and that other hunger that also demands to be fed: our spiritual hunger. They tell me to forget about selling books anymore, in any form. Because when you really think about it, in a country where food is so expensive—and sometimes simply unavailable—on top of the fact that money is worth nothing, obviously people are only going to focus on eating. The rest, as they say, is secondary.
And I’m seriously thinking about this.
Then I found a place that sells the kind of beer I sometimes drink at a cheaper price. I take into account that people still drink a lot, even though a can costs way more than it used to. And I say to myself: what if I buy some bottles of beer and sell them at the same price they go for almost everywhere else—right alongside my books? I feel a bit embarrassed at the idea of this new venture. I answer myself playfully: “To complete the literary gathering, of course!” I laugh.
I also think that selling what we like is not a great idea. I already struggle with not wanting to sell any of the books that come to me—I want to keep them all for myself. At most, I gladly sell technical books: medicine, mechanics, mathematics… and others, if I read them and don’t like them. And I do like beer just as much!
So the sacrifice will be double! I laugh at the bad business ideas I’ve had, and the ones I still want to try, even though I’m more or less certain against my will that they’ll turn out badly. One thing I’m sure of: I can’t stop. As we say in Cuba, I can’t “achantar”—give up. Like a friend once told me in passing: “The worst thing is doing nothing. You’ve got to keep trying constantly.”
And he’s right. Otherwise, I’ll spend my whole life being codependent. And that’s not what I want for myself. My mother, my aunt, even friends tell me: “That’s just how it is. In Cuba, we’ll always be codependent.” There’s no way to generate enough of an income to say to a relative visiting from abroad: “Eat and drink, it’s on the house.” That’s just not possible here. And the people whose businesses do bring in enough—and sometimes a lot—are those born with an extraordinary gift, and we all know what usually happens to those people: they end up in prison for being part of some crackdown scheme, or they leave the country.
We Cubans are tangled up on this island. And it’s not as easy to get out of the mess as many might think from abroad. Still, we must keep trying to survive, over and over again. Because I believe we must bear witness—every single day, I would add, for life itself. I also believe that being financially independent shouldn’t be some unattainable dream. That experience is priceless—and it shouldn’t be unreachable. We should make it a reality.