Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Eating Medals / Miriam Celaya

Eating Medals / Miriam Celaya
Miriam Celaya, Translator: Norma Whiting

On Tuesday, November 1st, the Granma newspaper announced on its front
page something that may constitute the ultimate Cuban surrealism. "The
Cuban economy will grow 2.9% this year". Page 2 displayed the same
triumphant tone in two other petty articles whose headlines bear happy
and misleading portents: "FIHAV 2011*. Growing Spanish Interest in
Commercial Interchange with Cuba," and" Investments in Construction
Material Industry Guarantee Sector Growth." All very funny, really.
Granma has become the funniest publication in this country, only in most
cases it's black humor.

However, though just in the two blocks encompassed by Árbol Seco,
between Estrella and Sitios (Centro Habana) every day there are between
four and five carts with about the same products –- onions, green beans,
bananas and plantains, garlic, peppers, avocados, papaya, tomato and
beans — produce prices are not only excessively high, they are higher
than last year's prices.

Just yesterday I stopped in to do some shopping at the market on the
corner of Jesús Peregrino and Santiago, also in Centro Habana. Eleven
tiny tomatoes, a bunch of plantains and three small taro cost me 30
pesos. Next to me, an old man in his seventies watched the price board
with an incredulous and concerned look in his face. He smiled at me
bitterly. Nothing doing, honey, we came in second in the Pan-American
Games, so now we will eat medals. And he left, talking to himself, with
an empty shopping bag.

And while the official party mouthpiece wallows in such economic
recovery inexplicably born out of fiction in a country where for so long
nothing is produced, ordinary people feel their pockets increasingly
depressed. In recent months, for example, my neighborhood has filled
with produce carts. The proliferation of "wagon pushers" is such that,
according to one of them, "no more licenses for this activity are being
issued because the ones they had planned on have been exhausted." You'd
think that agricultural production would have increased under the reform
momentum of our General-President. Produce stands and agro-markets,
meanwhile, seem to compete only in terms of prices, a "contest" among
sellers that seems determined to show who is able to set the highest
price for his products; markets where, in addition, the quality of
what's offered leaves much to be desired.

*Havana International Fair 2011

Translated by Norma Whiting

November 4 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=12522

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