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Accepted Contribution:
Inventing as a diffused way of surviving. Insights from Cuba.
Claudia Marina Lanzidei
(University of Bologna)
In Cuba there is an ongoing narrative supported by national media transmitting the socialist idea of an egalitarian society.But this is not really reflecting the reality of things: there are tons of contradictions and economic inequalities.How do people react to this and build their own narrative?
Contribution long abstract:
Cuba, a socialist state since more than 60 years, has its own toxic narratives as well. People are continuously repeated - through television as well as the radio or public advertisement on the streets - the nice and distorted story of a government that cares for its people and for socialist ideals. But actually, seen their total detachment from contemporary reality, such slogans sound ridiculous to the majority of Cubans. There is another, parallel narrative that highlights the necessity, for Cubans, to luchar (fight) in order to inventar (invent) ways of sobrevivir (survive). Inventar refers both to the act of increasing one’s life conditions, often through the black market, and of being creative in the reparation and ideation of objects. In both acceptations, it stresses Cubans’ incredible capacity to find solutions to problems. In the first acceptation, it has a specific bound to morality: to steal and resell in the black market is accepted because a necessary mean to survive, but only to the extent that it allows also others to do the same. “Dejar vivir el otro” (letting the other live as well) is a moral principle, supported by a deep reciprocal comprehension of the need to survive. Analysing the context of the waste economy in Havana, characterised by informal flows of various materials and objects, I will show how, acting at the margins of governmental ruling, it represents - because of its being disobedient and densely governed by inventos of both kinds - a guerrilla narrative sui generis.