The Working World of the Paladar: The Production of Contradictory Space during Cuba's Period of Fragmentation

Abstract

This article examines the social spaces of self-employment in Havana, Cuba, to uncover the deeply conflicting and contradictory values that comprise the dialectics of state–society relations. These spaces and the many actors who traverse them provide important insight into the complexity surrounding contemporary Cuba. Through detailed research into one form of self-employment, paladares (small in-home restaurants), this article examines how paladares have come to reflect the struggle for society and state to mediate the multitude of external and internal pressures amongst the current geopolitical climate. Using interviews conducted during several visits in 1999 and 2000, we demonstrate that paladares do not necessarily represent a capitalist transition. Rather, they embody the struggle to mediate contradictory spaces through the assertion of the self in the discourse of change.

*We would like to thank Tom Klak and Eugene McCann as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Also, we offer special thanks to Araceli Masterson for her assistance on the streets of Havana.

Key Words:

• contradictory spaces
• Cuba
• paladar

Notes

*We would like to thank Tom Klak and Eugene McCann as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Also, we offer special thanks to Araceli Masterson for her assistance on the streets of Havana.

¹For a more detailed discussion of the cutbacks during the Special Period, see Pérez-López (1995), Peters and Scarpaci (1998), and Jatar-Haussman (1999).

²Paladares that cater to Cubans and charge in pesos exist, but this research focuses only on those that receive dollars.

³See Gramsci's (1971,; 247) notion of the state as educator.

⁴The level of the tax is dependent on whether the paladar operates solely in pesos or in both pesos and U.S. dollars. According to interviews conducted for this research, the tax varied greatly among paladares. It was suggested that certain “relations” (i.e., bribes) ease this burden.