Cuba Has Fruits & Vegies for People with Relatives Abroad
By Natalia Lopez Moya / Jose Lassa (14ymedio)
On the roadside in Havana, private kiosks sell California garlic, Mexican watermelons, Turkish charcoal, and much more.
HAVANA TIMES – “Look,” “Open,” and “Welcome” read the three cloth banners fluttering in the wind at the entrance of the roadside stand near 114th Street along Havana’s central highway. The location draws attention not only for the eye-catching banners but also for a selection of goods that includes Washington apples, mamey from Artemisa, and garlic from California.
Anyone can browse, but in general, the shoppers are people with relatives abroad. Almost nobody living off a professional or worker’s salary can afford these products.
Reflecting the state of Cuban commerce—caught between a struggling domestic production and the growing flow of imported goods—these roadside kiosks sell everything from sacks of charcoal shipped from distant Turkey to soursop fruit now only grown in the backyards of Cuban farmers. For customers, it’s relatively easy to tell what’s imported and what’s local.
The size of the fruit, the quality of its presentation, and the price are the first clues. “These grapes are pure syrup and seedless,” explains a helpful vendor, pointing to bunches—selling for 1,500 pesos ($4 USD) a pound—resting on the cardboard boxes they arrived in. There’s a choice of green, purple, and nearly black grapes. Just a few days ago, they were probably being picked by a migrant worker in California’s Central Valley, and now, by the weekend, they’re already in Havana.
Buyers can barely keep up with the pace at which imported foods arrive in Cuba, either through imports by private businesses or in the suitcases of “mules,” who benefit from tariff exemptions for basic products. Bit by bit, Mexican watermelons push their Cuban counterparts off the shelves, onions from Panama take the place of local ones, and Florida lemons reign in a country where citrus cultivation is now a thing of the past.
Accustomed to seeing agricultural products sold dirty, still covered in soil from the furrows where they were grown, customers are stunned by the pristine garlic hanging from the stall’s ceiling. It’s not just the cleanliness but also the size of each clove—enough to flavor a dish that would typically require five or six local cloves. Some onlookers stop just to admire the volumes and flawless skins.
It’s not just the abundance of foreign food that dazzles shoppers, by now they’re somewhat used to stores that sell only in foreign currency packed with imported goods. What’s unusual is that a produce market—a private roadside stand with no air conditioning and no manager in a guayabera—should carry such a wide range of imported items. The transformation of a simple fruit and vegetable stand into a window display of globalization is what startles passersby.
“Before, I had to go to the 3rd and 70th supermarket if I wanted to buy eggs or apples, but now I have them right here in the neighborhood,” says a customer to this newspaper. He lives near the Cujae Technological University of Havana and is now a regular at the vividly decorated stalls. “Of course, this isn’t for every pocket, but at least they sell in national currency,” he adds.
A 1.7-kilogram (3.75 lbs) container of US brand M&M’s chocolates costs 15,000 pesos—three times a teacher’s monthly salary and about 40 dollars on the informal exchange market. A 12-kilogram (26.5 lbs) sack of Turkish charcoal goes for over 3,000 pesos in a city where more and more families are turning to this fuel for cooking, due to contant electrical outages and unstable supplies of liquefied gas. The attractive garlic bundles cost 4,000 pesos (double most monthly pensions) and a single apple goes for 300.
A sign warns that the market is monitored by surveillance cameras 24/7, another unusual trait for this type of market, which falls somewhere between a traditional produce stand and a high-end shop with security guards. The meat section is full of surprises too: frozen turkey breasts from Turkey Valley Farms sit alongside cold cuts and chicken giblets, also from the United States.
Another diverse section is devoted to sweets, where the US company Hershey’s—once a player in Cuba’s sugar industry—shares shelf space with the Italian brand Ferrero Rocher. Just a few inches away, the selection expands to include yogurt, butter, mayonnaise, panettone, whiskey, and concentrated lemon juice. But on no label or packaging will you find those four letters that spell the name: Cuba.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.