LETTER FROM HAVANA THIRTY DAYS AS A CUBAN Pinching pesos and dropping pounds in Havana By Patrick Symmes In the fi rst two decades of my life was 219 pounds, the most I’d ever off nine pounds in the two months I don’t believe I ever went more weighed in my life. before my departure. Time and than nine hours without eating. In Cuba the average salary is $20 a again, as I prepared for this trip, hor- Later on I was subjected to longer month. Doctors might make $30; rified friends speculated on what bouts—in China in the 1980s, trav- many people make only $10. I decid- food I was gorging on, what special eling with insurgents in remote ar- ed to award myself the salary of a items I was rushing to consume. eas of Colombia and Nepal, crossing Cuban journalist: $15 a month, the Their operating assumption was that South America by motorcycle, deep- wages of an offi cial intellectual. I’d being deprived of some cherished ly broke—but I always returned always wanted to be an intellectual, item for thirty days was an unbear- home, feasted, ate whatever, when- and $15 was a substantial kick above able test. They were worried about ever, and put back on what weight the proles building brick walls or cut- ice cream. In my experience, no one I’d lost—and more. I’d undergone ting cane for $12, and almost twice who is hungry craves the usual trajectory of American the $8 paid to many retirees. With ice cream. life, gaining a pound a year, decade this money I would have to buy my after decade. By the time I resolved basic ration of rice, beans, potatoes, My fi rst half hour inside Cuba to go to Cuba, and live for a month cooking oil, eggs, sugar, coffee, and was spent at the metal detectors. on what a Cuban must live on, I anything else I needed. Then, as part of a new regimen, un- Patrick Symmes is the author of The Boys I knew it would be hard to give up known in my previous fi fteen years from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates food, and so I began my Cuban diet coming here, I was given an intense from Revolution to Exile. while still in New York City, shaking but amateurish interrogation. This A monthly oil ration, photograph by Patrick Symmes; A shop on Calle Industria, photograph © Lorenzo Castore/Agence VU/Aurora Photos; A standard ration board, photograph by Patrick Symmes LETTER FROM HAVANA 43 Symmes Final3 CX.indd 43 8/24/10 9:51 AM had nothing to do with me: all for- uniform pocket a couple of aluminum What has changed is the ink: there eigners on the small turboprop from coins, which she gave to me: 40 centa- is less written in the book. There are the Bahamas were separated out and vos, or about 2 U.S. cents. Out on the fewer entries, for smaller amounts, questioned at length. The Cuban highway, a few miles from here, I might than even in 1995, during the starving government was nervous about soli- fi nd a city bus. And in Havana I might time of the “Special Period.” In the tary foreign travelers because Human fi nd, must fi nd, a way to survive for a intervening years, the Cuban economy Rights Watch had recently been month. I had to shoulder my knapsack has recovered; the Cuban ration sys- through, on tourist visas, and a State and start walking, the aluminum coins tem has not. In 1999, a Cuban devel- Department contractor, also travel- clicking in my pocket. I strolled out of opment minister told me that the ing on a tourist visa, had been caught the terminal, across the parking lot, out monthly ration supplied enough food distributing USB drives and sat- the driveway, and turned down the to last just nineteen days, but pre- phones to opposition fi gures. Tourists only road, putting the outside world dicted that the amount would soon were dangerous. behind me with a steady slog. Every few climb. It has declined. Although the As in Israel, an agent in plain minutes a taxi would pull up, beeping, total amount of food available in clothes asked me detail-oriented or a private car would stop, offering to Cuba is greater, and caloric consump- questions of no importance (“What take me for half the offi cial price. I tion is up, that is no thanks to town are you going to? Where is walked on, slowly, past the old termi- the ration system. The growth has that?”), designed to provoke me, re- nals, along scrubby fi elds. Billboards occurred in privatized markets and veal some inconsistency, or show trumpeted old messages: bush terror- cooperative gardens and through mas- nervousness. He didn’t look in my ist. After forty minutes I passed over a sive imports, while state food wallet and ask why, if I was staying railroad crossing, came out to the high- production fell 13 percent last year in Cuba for a month, I had less than way, and got lucky. The bus for Havana and the ration shrank with it. It is twenty dollars. was right there. An hour later I was in commonly agreed that a monthly food The supervisor’s gaze settled on central Havana and on foot, ration now contains just twelve days the other passengers. Passed. searching for an old friend. of food. I was here to make my own “Thirty days,” I told the lady who calculation: how could anyone survive stamped my tourist visa. The first people I spoke to in the month on twelve days of food? The maximum. the city—total strangers who lived There is one ration book per family. near my friend1—brought up the ra- Goods are distributed at a series of There was a sign hanging from tion system. With no prompting neighborhood bodegas (one for dairy the airport ceiling with a drawing of from me, they pulled out their ra- and eggs; another for “protein”; an- a bus on it. But there was no bus. tion book and bitched. other for bread; the largest for dry Not now, a woman at the informa- The book—called the libreta—is goods and everything from coffee to tion desk explained. There would be the foundational document of Cuban cooking oil to cigarettes). Each store a bus—one—tonight, around 8 p.m., life. Nothing important about the ra- has a clerk who writes in the amount to take the airport workers home. tion system has changed: although it issued to the family. My friend’s neigh- That was six hours from now. is now printed in a vertical format, bors—husband, wife, and grandson— Central Havana was ten miles away. the book looks identical to the one is- had received a standard ration of sta- Since taxis cost about $25—more sued annually for decades. ples, which was, per person: than my total budget for the next 1 For their protection from the Cuban state, month—I was going to have to walk. certain persons in this article will go un- 4 pounds refi ned sugar The same woman pulled from her named. 1 pound crude sugar A daily bread ration, photograph © Alfredo Falvo/Contrasto/Redux; An agro, photograph 46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / OCTOBER 2010 by Patrick Symmes; The meat annex of an agro, photograph by Patrick Symmes Symmes Final3 CX.indd 46 8/24/10 9:51 AM 1 pound grain refrigerator. I unloaded my pockets, rehearsal in progress. A Russian rock- 1 piece fi sh stashing away the food I had bought er, backed by more than thirty musi- 3 rolls in the Bahamian airport: some bagels, cians, was working through his set in a can of fruit punch, sandwiches, preparation for some later gig. They They laughed when I asked if and—my emergency stash—a packet had been issued bottled water and tea, there was beef. of sesame sticks from the airplane. which I consumed in large amounts. “Chicken,” the wife said, but this With a fourteen-hour trip from Tea’s astringent taste—mediated by produced howls of protest. “When was New York behind me, I ate one of lots of sugar—fi nally made sense to there chicken?” her husband asked. the sandwiches and went me. This was the drink of the novice “Well, that’s true,” she said. “It has to sleep. monk, the cold and hungry. It was an been a few months.” The “protein” appetite killer. ration was delivered every fi fteen days On my second day, I gnawed on There had been catering. Only one and was ground mystery meat, mixed a sesame bagel, absentmindedly con- and a half cheese sandwiches remained, with a large amount of soy paste (if the suming the whole thing, as if there abandoned on a napkin near the string meat was pork, this was falsely called would always be another. According section; during a crescendo I stuffed picadillo; if it was chicken, it was called to a calorie-counting application on them into my pockets. I walked the pollo con suerte, or chicken and luck). my cell phone, the bagel had 440 hour back across Havana to my room, Usually there was enough for about four calories. Everything I ate for the next passing dozens of new stores, butcher hamburgers a month, but so far in Jan- month would be entered on that little shops, bars, cafeterias and cafés, pizza uary they had received only one fi sh keypad, recorded, summed up by day joints, and other prolifi c suppliers of each—usually a dried, oily mackerel.