CUBAN CHRONICLES

Plastic Bags Alive and Well in Havana

by Walter Lippmann
February 13, 2019

You remember those plastic bags that we used to get for free when we bought things in supermarkets and so forth in the United States? They are now considered to be ecologically unsound and harmful to the environment so in most big cities and markets these bags are banned and you have to pay $0.10 to get a paper bag.

Here in Cuba, these bags are easily available. This year, for the first time ever, I’ve noticed inflation has even hit the little plastic bag market. For as long as I can remember they were being sold for one peso a piece and then some places two for one peso. But now, they all go for 2 pesos each.

Originally posted on Facebook February 13, 2019

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 13, 2019

These are packages of butter. Having been in Cuba for two months, I have not found a single pad of butter in any of the stores where I have visited. Then, one day, all of a sudden, a young woman showed up at the 19th and B agro market with a box in which she was selling these packages of butter.

They are obviously stolen from wherever they were stored or manufactured. They were being sold for $1 a half pound, a little bit more than half the price you would pay in a store, if you could find it in a store, which most of the time, you can’t.

The sale of such stolen commodities is very widespread, and in more or less any such market, people will approach you quite openly asking if you want to buy potatoes, eggs, lobster, shrimp, and, occasionally, beef.

Friendly foreign visitors, like myself, like to use it the euphemism “informal sector” to refer to this phenomenon. Cubans, on the other hand simply refer to this as the black market (la bolsa negra).

Of course, there are no licenses, for selling stolen goods.

Originally posted to facebook February 13 at 12:20 AM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

Garlic: Peeled, packaged and ready

by Walter Lippmann

You don’t like the time trouble and smell of peeling the garlic? No problem. Here they are in small wrapped packages. No need to ask the price this plastic-wrapped 10 peso note tells you. Also good for keeping the vampires away.

Originally posted to facebook February 13 at 12:31 AM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2019

Though you can buy cigarette lighters nearly everywhere, it is cheaper to refill the old ones rather than buy new ones all the time. This is one of the scores of jobs which are specifically licensed, here in Cuba, as part of the growing world of self-employment.

Originally posted to facebook February 12 at 11:51 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2019

In these last days of my current 2-month visit, I engage in a mad dash of running around to stores to buy books and gifts for friends and family. Yesterday I went to one of the very best Cuban bookstore is in which everything is new and for sale in moneda nacional, the prices there are a ridiculous low for a person from United States. The stack of books you’re looking at in this picture, cost me slightly over $5.00 CUC for the entire stack.

Literally 135 Cuban pesos moneda nacional. The large format book at the bottom of which I bought to contain mental exercise to help people to maintain their mental agility as they age the three light blue covered books is a relationship manual, there is a book of Puerto Rican short stories, a book on the history of psychoanalysis in Cuba, and finally, the pleasure syndrome a history of pleasure in human sexuality.

A book of essays by the British author Oscar Wilde.

I suppose it if you read this book, and if you understand this book, and if you follow its instructions, and if you find yourself in a situation where this particular practice is called for, you should be able to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

Although each and every book in the shop has a barcode, when you go to pay for them, the clerk manually writes down the title, and the price, for inventory purposes. They have no cash registers, and of course they take no credit cards, even Cuban debit cards. The only places that accept those a debit cards from Cuban banks, are large shopping places such as ones that sell domestic products, stoves, washing machines, and such.

Originally posted to facebook February 12 at 10:56 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

Best Copyshop in Havana

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2019

This is a workstation at what is probably the best copyshop I have ever found in Cuba, it is called InkPression and it is located on Jay Street between 25 and 27 and if you look right below the flat panel screen, you will see a tray with 10 USB slots. When I went in there yesterday for of those slots were filled with connection cables for external hard drives. looking carefully underneath the monitor, you will see four external hard drives all plugged into this computer.

People walk into this place which has a big catalog of bootleg movies videos TV series and so forth which you can have copied on your external hard drive for $0.25 a piece. I’m usually at this workstation because I have the shop print the portraits which I have taken, and many of which you have seen on my Facebook page. I have a habit whenever, whenever possible, of having prints made of the portraits I take of various people and I really had a lot of fun, handing these individuals their own pictures. It’s my impression that very few of them have pictures like this of their own, and so I derive a lot of pleasure as well as the recipients do. You already know how much I enjoy doing portraits.

Originally posted to facebook February 12 at 10:50 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2019

This is the ETECSA office at 17th and S streets in Vedado. This is the main place where I do the great bulk of my written online activity. There are 20 computers in this office of which 17 or so are usually in working, functional condition. Going online here costs only one CUC per hour. It is nicely air-conditioned and it is a quiet place most of the time. There used to be long lines for people getting into this place but in this past year, with the beginning of home base to internet through your cell phones, there are almost never a line to get into the office. The only line they have are to get into buy more internet or cell phone cards. The man with the baseball hat, looking at the camera, is, of course, yours truly. The security guard kindly agreed to my request to take my picture, showing me working. Never a day goes by when I’m not in this office.

Originally posted to facebook February 12 at 10:56 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2019

Small private stand outside of a big hotel at a very busy intersection, 17th Street and A in the Vedado area. She is selling various kinds of crackers, bars of guava paste, turron de mani, a deadly sweet confection made of ground peanuts and sugar. and other sugar-laden goodies (or baddies!).

Originally posted to facebook February 12 at 10:40 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann
February 12, 2029

Yours truly, just coming back from one of my last dash. As you know, I like bright colored garments. Lili, my landlady, took this photograph. I really do not like having my picture taken and you can tell that by the fact that my smile here is a little bit forced. In my left hand is a little shopping bag filled with goodies from the store CLANDESTINA, a shop which was celebrating its 4th anniversary today.

They specialize in garments, shopping bags, and other items made of 2nd or 3rd generation recycled Cloth of various kinds. Interestingly, if you look on their website, they have received help, from the local Google operation here in Cuba as well as from the Norwegian Embassy. Their prices are someone out of League of ordinary Cubans, but for foreigners with disposable in incomes oh, they’re not too much and they are charming and attractive.

And so I spent a total of $63 for which I obtained a couple of shopping bags a couple of t-shirts an apron for my next door neighbor in Los Angeles, and for printed guides to the city produced by the shop. They also do a considerable online business and I will give you their web address.

Originally posted on Facebook February 12 at 10:32 PM

CUBAN CHRONICLES

by Walter Lippmann 
February 10, 2019

These are some pictures I took yesterday at the Havana book fair. There are captions along with each of these images giving some context.

These are two of the nice staffers at the OCEAN PRESS/OCEAN SUR booth at the Havana Book Fair where, at long last, I obtained my copy of the big Trotsky anthology you can see here, edited, introduced and contextualized by Fernando Rojas, Cuba’s Deputy Minister of Culture. I’m so grateful to have the book and to know that it’s available through Ocean, the only foreign publishing house with a regular office and distribution operation here in Cuba.
Viva Ocean Press/Ocean Sur!

Black history is a very important component of Cuban identity. These are just some of the books on this sapsect which are available here at the Book Fair.

More books on black history, identity and politics available at the Havana Book Fair.

These books are available in English at the table of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the Havana Book Fair. Not many people here read English, but for those who to, they can learn a lot about the religion of Al-Islam. I’ll try to get pictures of their Spanish offerings as well. Islam has been growing here in recent years. but that’s a topic for another day.

Large size poster at the Havana Book Fair, advocating condom use. It says, “Put your consciousness into action, protect yourself” and is produced by the VIGOR brand of condoms which are very easy to find here, and CHEAP (a couple of pesos for a pack of three).

I couldn’t get far away to get the whole thing into the picture with my phone, which is the only camera I’m using here. This is part of a small trailer known as EL CARRITO which goes to concerts and other public events like the book fair to encourage people to engage in safer sex practices. They were giving out posters, condoms and topical related litereature.

PATHFINDER (see sign up on the left), is the onlly US publisher to consistently come to the fair. They’ve been coming for I think nearly two decades, and run a very professional operation. In the past, they’ve shared their booths with others, but now they have an entire room for themselves.
Their books are too expensive for most Cubans, being sold in CUC, but on the last day, they unload their remaining stock in CUP, so they don’t havve to carry them back to the United States where they are based. I noticed, also, that their staff also spoke very good Spanish.
THE MILITANT was being offered to individuals at one regular Cuban peso (roughly four US cents), but when I said I was not Cuban, they immediately raised the price to one CUC. Notice the posters of Malcolm X as well as the book by Jack Barnes, the leader of the Socialist Workers Party which is the guiding spirit for Pathfinder Publishers.

Another perspectve on the Pathfinder booth.

The other side of the carrito.

Selfie with super-tall trans woman at the stand with the carrito. No, I didn’t get her name.

This is a manual for recommended exercises for senior citizens. It’s really important as the island’s population continues to grow, and so many younger Cubans hope tl leave the country. I should have picked up a copy, but I was already loaded down. Now I’m planning to go out to the cabana again, so if there are any left, I’ll try to get one.
TITLE: More Live to Your Years

This is a playground which is set up so children can have fun as well as going along with their families and caregivers to the book fair.

This is a great big machine which grinds the sugar ot of the cane stalks you can see in the upper right-hand sid eof the image. These stalks are five or more feet long, and it takes a crew of two to operate the machine. One to insert the stalks and another to pull out the stalks and toss them aside. Don’t know if the stalks are recycled or reused in some manner.
If someone knows, please tell us here. Thanks!

CLR James’ famous THE BLACK JACOBINS, his account of the Haitian Revolution and its leader Toussaint LÓverture, in a Cuban Spanish edition from Casa de Las Americas.Incredibly cheap at 30 regular Cuban pesos.

Originally published on facebook February 10 at 3:55 AM