Articulating Cuban Complaints

(blog by Stan)

 The spoken word in Cuba is not easy to understand. Sentences spill out at high velocity, with the ends of many words missing, and conversations are filled with idiomatic expressions that make no literal sense. On this last month-long trip, though, there were some words and phrases that left no room for misunderstanding. Over and over again, I heard a couple of phrases in particular, always spoken slowly and articulated with precision and emphasis: NO HAY NA-DA. i.e., There is nothing. And LA COSA ESTÁ MA-LA. i.e., Things are bad. Navigating the day-to-day economy is devastating. In the stores where most Cubans have access (where they can pay with the Cuban peso), there is next to nothing on most of the shelves. But there are other stores, the MLC stores, where the shelves are stocked, but most Cubans don't have access to them. MLC stands for moneda libremente convertible. i.e., currency that is accepted around the world. To shop in these stores, you need a debit card, which can be loaded with any kind of world currency by a friend or family member living outside of Cuba. 

While the M in MLC officially stands for moneda, I heard another M-word used to describe these stores, another word spoken slowly and articulated with emphasis and precision: MIERDA. TIENDAS DE MIERDA. i.e., (pardon my French), shit, shit stores. While Cubans have a lot to complain about these days— scarcities of food and medicine, high inflation (bread, for example, costs 5 to 10 times more than it did last year), electricity blackouts—I suspect that nothing has affected the Cuban society quite like the proliferation of MLC stores. For six decades, Cubans have lived under the basic ideal that everybody is in the same boat. While there has always been something of a privileged class (the military sector being among the most privileged), this inequality was for the most part hidden, out of sight. So, for example, when Cuba suffered the economic depression of the Special Period in the 90s, most everyone shared in the suffering, in the scarcity, in the food anxiety. Now, though, the Mierda Stores have brought the division between haves and have-nots squarely into the public eye. In every neighborhood, you have the presence of these card-only stores, and everyone can easily observe who is standing in line to get in and access some of the basic goods no one else can get—chicken, cheese, shampoo, etc. To make matters worse, there are re-vendedores, re-sellers, who go into the MLC stores, buy up products, and then re-sell them on the black market at outlandish prices. 

I have some friends who refuse to go the bank and apply for the MLC debit card, even though they have family and friends abroad who could load the cards with dollars or euros. They just can't stomach being seen going in or coming out of the stores, or carrying a bagful of goods past friends and neighbors who don't have access. Other friends do participate, but talk about the shame they feel about it. No matter where the people I know stand on politics (and they are across the board), it's clear to me that the stated values of equality and solidarity has woven its way deeply into all of their cultural DNA. So they complain. It doesn't matter if they understand the logic of the government's action (in an ever-tightening embargo that has tentacles around the world, preventing the flow of money into Cuba, this debit card system is the only way right now for currency to get into their system). No matter; it's still a pile of mierda.

It occurs to me that Cuba is now living through an Ezekiel 4 historical moment. In this bizarre prophetic book, chapter four describes one of the more bizarre scenes. The prophet is instructed to engage in some outlandish street theater to illustrate the suffering of his nation: he is to lay on his side on public display for all to see for 390 days, eating nothing but bread that he is told to cook on a pile of human dung. Ezekiel complains about this last bit, and God relents, telling the prophet he can cook the bread on piles of cow manure instead. Mierda. La cosa está ma-la.