There are many reasons to visit Cuba, but its food is not one of them. Cuba is a poor country whose current diet is limited to a few staple items, and food in today’s Cuba is markedly different from the varied Cuban cuisine available in US-based Cuban restaurants run by pre-Revolutionary refugees. The variety and richness of traditional Cuban cuisine in Cuba seem to have been sacrificed for the goals of the Revolution.
On a recent people-to-people visit to Cuba, our delegation was housed at Residencia El Costillar de Rocinante, a neglected old building used by the Cuban government for visiting journalists. We took a majority of our meals here or at various NGOs. In each dining hall, the food was cooked plainly, boiled or fried, and usually under-seasoned; we had to ask for salt. There were no menu choices. The meals mirrored the ordinary Cuban diet, consisting of rice imported from Vietnam and locally grown beans with a small piece of tough meat, stew, frozen fish, boiled squash or malanga, a bland, starchy root. Salads were composed of shredded cabbage, beets, carrots and an occasional cucumber; lettuce was primarily a garnish. The typical dessert was a piece of salty cheese on a plate of guava purée. In a country that experienced malnutrition within recent memory, the nutritional properties of malanga (high in calories and a fairly good source of riboflavin and thiamine and a modest source of iron and vitamin C) and guava (high in dietary fiber and about four times the amount of vitamin C as an orange) assured their constant presence on the table in one form or another.
We initially thought that the cooks at these NGOs were inexperienced and unimaginative and cooked only what they knew, but we later learned that what was available at the market determined what we ate. We also learned that food and other staples are still rationed (under “la libreta de Abastecimiento,” ostensibly implemented after the 1962 US embargo caused shortages) to assure equitable distribution to Cuba’s 11 million citizens, and to this day this system guides nutrition. Although this ration booklet was revised and its lists shortened over the years, each Cuban receives a monthly ration of seven pounds of rice, half a bottle of cooking oil, one sandwich-sized piece of bread per day plus small quantities of eggs, beans, chicken or fish, spaghetti, white and brown sugar and cooking gas. Children receive one liter of milk and some yogurt, and diabetics get special diet booklets. There are special rations for special occasions — cakes for birthdays, rum and beer for weddings, uniforms, pencils and notebooks for the start of the school year.
However, not all rations are always available each month, and the number of rationed items and the size of the rations have been dropping for years. Gone are potatoes, soap and toothpaste, salt (which explains why salt was sparingly used and not put on tables), cigarettes and cigars and liquid detergent, among other items.
Our Cuban tour guides said that food rations feed a family about 10 days a month. For the remainder of the month, Cubans scrounge food at local farmers’ markets, which are permitted to sell surplus food after farmers fill government-mandated production quotas or at the black market. When we checked the produce and meat available at a local farmers’ market, we confirmed that we were served only the food available; the fact that the same ingredients were available at all markets indicated that this was all that was produced. Even Cuba’s political leaders now recognize that their ration system represents an epic failure of Cuba’s collectivized agricultural sector and are slowly taking steps to abandon it. After seeing the paltry market offerings, it is hard to imagine that this tropical island was part of the Western Hemisphere, so close to the United States.
Our people-to-people delegation saw a Cuba where time stood still for 55 years. Clocks stopped for 11 million Cubans on January 1, 1959, when Fidel Castro’s Revolution came to power and eventually imposed the Soviet Economic Model, which in the mid-60s was not working well for the Soviet Union and was ill-suited to a tropical island 6,000 miles away.
To American eyes, Cuba appears rundown and depressing. When we arrived at Havana’s decrepit and dimly lit airport, we were confronted with cumbersome and lengthy entry procedures. Walking to the bus that took our delegation to our housing, we saw several 1950s Chevrolet, Buick and Oldsmobile taxis, held together by improvised repairs, waiting to take returning Cubans from visits to relatives in America with bundles of US TVs and bicycles and other goods.
Havana looks like it is sinking into the ground. Each block had a few maintained houses around our residence, but most houses were mold-ridden and crumbling. Virtually all houses are fitted with elaborate iron grates on the windows and doors and sidewalks are broken into chunks. The situation is not much better in Matanzas and Cardenas, smaller cities we visited 100 kilometers east of Havana. Only in Varadero, a resort town of a few hotels built on a sand peninsula to separate tourists from the Cuban population, were the buildings and infrastructure in good condition.
Our visit to Cuba coincided with the first official US-Cuba meeting convened to discuss reopening of diplomatic relations. Older, more ideologically- committed Cubans openly expressed anti-American sentiments, telling us how they hated the economic embargo imposed by the United States and the numerous attempts to kill Castro. But they also told us that the country faced greater suffering during the “Special Period” that began in 1989 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For 30 years, Soviet leaders sought to maintain Cuba as a thorn in America’s side, supplying petroleum and agricultural subsidies that comprised 80% of Cuban imports, and Cuba, in turn, exported 87.5% of its agricultural and industrial production to the Soviet Republics. The successor Russian government stopped the subsidies, orders from the former Soviet bloc countries ceased and Cuba’s transport, industrial and agricultural systems abruptly stopped. Food shortages became a daily problem, so Cubans were forced to go on a reduced-calorie diet, and many Cubans became malnourished. Although changes in U.S. commercial policy towards Cuba in 1999 allowed sales of U.S. food and agricultural products to private farmers, cooperatives, privately owned, small-scale restaurants and nongovernmental organizations, Cuba lacked sufficient hard currency to regularly purchase enough food to meet the needs of its population.
Cuba looked to its citizens to remedy the inadequate food production by collapsed collective farms and introduced sustainable agriculture and increasing tourism for Europeans, Canadians and South Americans. The back-to-farming movement is developing slowly. Cuba has 32.31% arable land but because of the collapse of socialist agriculture, only 3.5% is used for permanent farming. Thus, much could be done to feed Cubans with innovative farming that plants new crops, adapts new growing methods and implements new distribution systems.
We spent one morning with Norma Romero, director of an urban organic farming 
cooperative in Alamar on Havana’s outskirts, who has been adapting organic growing technology to grow various vegetables and herbs through annual growing seasons. Her small farm produces enough vegetables to feed 85,000, and supplies ingredients on special orders from recently established private restaurants. Her farm of neat vegetable beds and large greenhouses is a startling counterpoint to Cuba’s abandoned collective farms. But Romero’s farm would have to be multiplied a thousand-fold to significantly reduce Cuba’s food shortages. As we traveled outside Havana, we saw many small farms but not enough of them to meet Cuba’s food needs.
Despite decades of impoverishment, Cubans are proud of the socialist Revolution’s 55-year legacy: the reduction of illiteracy from 23% to 4% (currently the illiteracy rate is .02%) universal education and health care and free or heavily subsidized housing. We expected to find Cubans to be overwhelmed by stiffling poverty, but the Cubans we met were proud and inspiring. As the week progressed, we saw a physically beautiful and mysterious Cuba.
As we rolled around the Cuban countryside in an old school bus, we saw a Cuba of verdant rolling hills and valleys, bays and coves and vacant white sandy beaches with much potential for tourism and other economic development. Cuba’s proud history is reflected in the ancient architecture of its cities and town. Daniel de la Regatta, a 33-year-old architect, enthusiastically led us on a tour of La Havana Vieja (Old Havana), the original city built by Spaniards in the 16th century. As we meandered through winding pedestrian-only streets thronged with both foreign and domestic tourists and street artists, he pointed out beautifully restored public buildings, hotels and restaurants, all currently owned by the state but leased to small restaurants and shops. De la Regatta explained that this monumental urban renewal undertaking was started during the “Special Period” when the Cuban government recognized the need to boost tourism. To date, only 13% of Old Havana has been renovated, but work is progressing with the hope that the pace will accelerate in the coming years. There is so much worth saving.
Despite years of communist rule, Cubans preserved their unique Spanish–African culture by supporting art education, musical and dance groups, and state-owned museums and art galleries. We attended concerts by talented elementary and secondary music students and a performance by an Afro-Cuban dance group. We visited artists’ homes and private and public art galleries, reflecting the wide scope of art trends. Cubans proudly display Finca Vigia and regale stories of Ernest Hemingway’s life there. We also visited the homes of practitioners of Santeria, a mysterious local religion that is a unique fusion of Catholicism and African tribal practices. And we toured Necrópolis de Colon, Havana’s oldest cemetery filled with elaborate sculptures and tombs, with an amusing guide who readily shared gossip about dead Cuban leaders.
As we rolled on through eight days of frenetic adventures, we were constantly reminded that virtually everything we saw was the property of the Cuban state, which had total control over the economy. Private property is still discouraged and private business is generally forbidden. Even where the state deems it essential to encourage individual involvement (primarily in tourism-related industries), such businesses usually operate in premises leased from the state to the state’s management and service requirements. The Cuban government is not yet ready to loosen its control and let a free market develop.
As our delegation members groused at every meal about the nature and quality of the served food throughout our visit, we were told we would eventually have dinner at a ”paladar.” Paladares are family-run businesses, counterparts to state-run restaurants for tourists. Paladares come in all shapes and sizes, from holes-in-the-wall snack and pizza shops to fine dining facilities. Small privately owned restaurants have always existed surreptitiously in Cuba but were illegal until the “Special Period” forced economic reforms that legalized small privately owned restaurants – but with regulations about the foods offered, labor force hired and number of customers served.
On our penultimate night in Havana we were treated to an expensive dinner at Paladar Ėlite, one of the fine food paladares in Havana. We were genuinely surprised by the beautifully appointed, black and white-themed dining room with starched white linen table cloths, sparkling serving dishes and utensils provided by a friendly and civilized wait staff overseeing a remarkably varied menu produced by a five-star kitchen. We were stunned by this glorious evening that arrived unexpectedly after six prior days and nights of proletarian public feeding.
This evening’s menu was international and delicious, but to my dismay, not Cuban. I truly wanted to taste Cuban food prepared beautifully in Cuba. While I enjoyed the meal and the surroundings, I felt uncomfortable that in a capital city of a country that cannot feed itself, there also is a restaurant like this. And I could not help but wonder how many local Cubans could afford to enjoy this wonderful menu. Did the Cuban guide who ate with us feel that this lavish restaurant, many times beyond his means, was an affront to the gains of the Revolution? Was Cuba really willing to restart the clock and compromise its Revolutionary legacy for more and better food, jeans and other American goods? I wonder. Only time will tell.
Photo credits: Slava Johnson