Police Close La Cuevita Market, Vendors Reopen It
In the mecca of popular commerce in Havana, most everything can be found, including the buying and selling of dollars.
HAVANA TIMES – “Water!” was heard with unusual frequency this Wednesday in La Cuevita, among a crowd of self-employed workers, clandestine vendors, and desperate customers. It wasn’t a call announcing drinks or a storm warning, but the code word that all Cubans know means the Police are near.
The authorities, who usually look the other way at the irregularities in these spaces, decided this time to shut down the place down for a month. The official reason: “to carry out repairs,” according to what some neighbors told this newspaper.
La Cuevita is the mecca of popular commerce in San Miguel del Padron, Havana. There you can find everything—from food, hygiene products, clothing, and appliances to toys, medicines, and cash currency exchange. The goods arrive through diverse channels: “mules,” middlemen, or theft from state supply chains, generating income both for licensed self-employed workers and for those who operate without permits.
That is why, despite the closure order, few were willing to leave. Vendors relocated to nearby streets and in the doorways of neighboring houses. “We have to eat,” said an unlicensed vendor as she hastily gathered her goods at the approach of the uniformed officers, only to set up her stall again minutes later in the same spot.
The history of La Cuevita goes back to the Special Period crisis of the 1990s and was reinforced by recent economic reforms. It emerged as a response to chronic shortages and the need to obtain goods in hard currency, becoming a crucial supply point for Havana residents and buyers from other provinces.
Stalls crowded in front of houses, food sales were set up right next to stinking trash heaps, open sacks of rice mixed with mud, and a chorus of shouts from anxious vendors.
The closure coincides with a National Exercise for the Prevention and Confrontation of Crime, which includes patrols, “preventive” meetings with so-called “potential offenders,” and social control actions. In addition to the Police, students, workers, and Communist Party members participate. Previous exercises have not restored order to the streets, but they have fattened the State’s coffers with the money from fines and confiscations.
“There aren’t enough police to drive out so many people,” said a vendor of socks and underwear who ran to hide when he heard the alert signal. Minutes later, seeing the officer ride away on their motorcycle, he returned to his stall and added: “This is how the people survive, they can’t shut it down.”
Some call these informal markets that exist throughout the Island “candonga,” a term that came from Angola with the Cubans who went to war there in the 1970s and 80s. But today’s battle is another: to put food on the table, shoes on the children’s feet, and scrape together the money to survive a month—something no state salary guarantees.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.