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Accepted Paper:
People as infrastructure – social networks and weathering the crisis in the informal settlements of Havana, Cuba
Oskar Lubinski
(University of Warsaw)
This paper considers how collective and individual strategies of survival and informal economic practices contribute to the development of grassroots infrastructures in the informal settlements of Havana.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers how collective and individual strategies of survival and informal economic practices contribute to the development of grassroots infrastructures in the informal settlements of Havana.
I draw upon anthropological reflections of infrastructures as assemblages that hold promises of better future, progress and freedom (Anand et al. 2018), to argue that grassroots infrastructures become spaces of resistance. The ongoing economic crisis and product scarcity lead to massive migrations towards Cuba’s capital and development of informal settlements in peripheral areas that lack access to basic infrastructures or where infrastructures are in a state of neglect. The inhabitants of these settlements adapt the little infrastructures that exist and develop new ones as a survival strategy.
Social networks play a crucial role in these efforts, as people themselves become essential for the functioning and creating these grassroots infrastructures (Simone 2004). Exchange of seedlings, water sharing and exchange of information all allow to navigate the economy of scarcity. These practices are enhanced by community projects that operate in the marginal areas of Havana and capitalise on different strategies of survival of the communities as means to strengthening community resilience. These systems have been used to alleviate the situation of the most vulnerable population in the informal settlements during the COVID-19 pandemic as the projects organised distribution of foodstuff, medicines or masks.