Alcohol in Our Veins

Text and Photos by Caridad

HAVANA TIMES, April 17 – They say it can be hereditary. If your father or mother suffers the persistent inclination toward alcohol, it’s highly likely that you too will follow down their path. In my family, almost all the men like to drink, sometimes too much and for too long. All of them love the Revolution, but they just can’t stop drinking-and they’re not the exceptions.

Judging from what I’ve seen with my very own eyes, in Cuba there are many families like mine, and a whole lot more of them have several members who are bigger fans of alcohol than my relatives.

In provincial towns and villages, it’s a tradition to spend the weekend cuddled up next to a bottle of rum. In the capital, the youngest to oldest find alcohol the perfect escape from stress, or the tool to break the day-to-day routine of life.

You can buy it in any snack bar. In many that might offer a sandwich or something for lunch, they’re sure to have cigars and rum, of one or more varieties.

Easier to buy than milk

The cornerstone of countless cultural activities is the sale of spirits, which drives the neurons mad and hamstrings a person from walking.

It’s cheaper than milk and much easier to find, if it’s been aged less than seven years. To get it, you don’t have to speak in whispers, unlike the milk that’s sold on the “black market” (verses that sold in hard currency in stores).

People drink in the street, on their front porches, at the beach, when shopping, at cultural events, alongside kids, in the morning, in the heat or cold, to have a good time, to cry, to fight, to make love, or to break up.

It’s there; why not take a shot?

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