Geopolitics and Food Sovereignty: Cuban Imaginaries

ABSTRACT

The everyday practice of food sovereignty varies across place, and efforts to democratize food systems and create more holistic and equitable forms of food production and access are highly politicized. Considering the “geo” of these practices assists with understanding how perceptions of place shape imaginaries about food sovereignty in place. Using the example of education-based food sovereignty tourism in Cuba I examine, in this paper, how outsiders from the US map geopolitical imaginaries onto Cuba in their efforts to see the “real Cuba” and authentic food sovereignty practices. I argue that the myopic character of food sovereignty tours creates a re-writing of space based on participants’ hopes and fears regarding agricultural production and consumption. Drawing on a feminist geopolitical framing, I use recent theorizations that consider geopolitical encounters via tourism to elucidate what I observed, which trended towards paternalistic geopolitical imaginaries of Cuba.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the writing group in the Department of Geography & Spatial Sciences for their initial review of this manuscript. Later drafts were much improved through generous readings by Corey Johnson and Kara Dempsey. Additional thanks to Joe Jasper for support during fieldwork and writing. I am grateful to everyone who was involved in the tours for making a space for my work during their travel and hosting. The anonymous reviews assisted with thinking through this paper differently and I’m thankful for the excellent suggestions, which assisted with making this a better paper. I also want to acknowledge the editorial team at Geopolitics for a fantastically curated set of reviews and well-organized and efficient revision process.

Notes

1. There is a peculiar accumulation by dispossession that occurs here as tour hosts cultivate a staged authenticity for consumption by outsiders while simultaneously limiting contemporary cultural practices as part of the industry. It is a commodification of authenticity that Mostafanezhad identifies from “rebels to relics”.

2. Often called the Embargo, from Kennedy to Clinton, US foreign policy has only strengthened the sanctions against Cuba and restrictions of trade with other countries, the sum of which are called a “Blockade” by the Cuban government and residents.

3. The food ration system for Cuban citizens was introduced in 1962.

4. During the period of writing the administration of the 45th president made changes to the rules about gaining access to Cuba as a US citizen, as recently as June 4, 2019, limiting the use of the people-to-people travel described in note no. 5, the visa that made this research possible (Oppmann and Vazquez 2019).

5. From the US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC): People-to-people travel (31 C.F.R. § 515.565(b)). I am travelling to Cuba for an educational exchange not involving academic study pursuant to a degree programme, that meets all the following: (a) The exchanges take place under the auspices of an organization that is a person subject to US jurisdiction and that sponsors such exchanges to promote people-to-people contact;

6. For the purposes of this paper, the names of people and organizations are not used to protect the anonymity of the participants. Additionally, the vast majority of in-country exchanges were conducted in Spanish with English translation and interpretation provided by a representative of the tour group and/or the Cuba-based contact for the travel experience. Translation from Spanish to English for the purposes of this paper is a group effort encompassing my own translations as well as those provided as part of the tour.

7. Here, I note that the trips under examination took place during the Obama administration and the last trip included in this analysis happened just before the inauguration of the 45th president. These trips were also prior to the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer.

8. The label “Conventional foods” in Table 1 is used to refer to hyper-processed foods and those products consumed as a regular part of the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for the larger project from which the data in this paper are gleaned came from the University of Delaware: Global Area Studies Program Faculty Research Award and the General University Research Program Award;University of Delaware General University Research Award.