Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

This paper looks at pre-Covid Havana and tracks the gendered expectations women bear to feed their families. It provides an analysis of the ways Cuban women navigate Cuba’s troubled food ration system. By tracing where and how Cuban women obtain food the paper provides an assessment of the ecologically fraught measures taken by the Cuban state to increase food access alongside strategies of survival deployed by Cuban women to feed their families. Utilizing as examples what Cuban women are able to obtain from organoponicos (urban organic food gardens that serve as ecotourism destinations) as well as via the food ration system the paper provides a window into the gendered expectations and demands women face daily to feed their families. Of particular interest in the paper is the expressed disgust over the introduction of the genetically modified Claria fish, introduced by the state into the ecosystem and food ration system. In the paper, I draw on my ethnographic accounts in which Cubans, repulsed by the fish known to eat anything that comes to the water’s edge (rodents, birds, wildlife and pets). The paper trails after the Claria while accompanying Cuban women through the maze of formal and informal food distribution, food payment, and food collection to showcase the precariousness of securing access to nutritious food and how doing so has fallen on women as traditional roles have blended with ideals of revolutionary womanhood; which impose upon Cuban women the burdens of gendered reproductive labor and care work–acquiring food, cooking, and feeding.