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Cubans
go to street to augment rations
By Anita Snow, Associated
Press Writer. June 12, 2007.
HAVANA - Cubans may not have McDonald's
or Jack in the Box, but they do have pizza
in a basket.
Customers shout orders to a terrace kitchen
atop a 1930s-era two-story building and
the pizza is lowered to the street in a
rattan basket.
Pizza Celina is among the more inventive
places that Cubans go for street food to
augment government food rations. Elsewhere
in Havana, self-employed street vendors
hawk peanuts, popcorn and a snack known
as "chicharrones de macarones"
- macaroni pork rinds - made by boiling
pasta, drying it the sun, then frying it.
Near the University of Havana, students
line up at lunchtime outside a building
with peeling pink paint to shout orders
for pizza with tomato sauce and cheese for
8 pesos, which is about 38 cents. A little
bit more buys a ham or sausage topping.
Minutes later, a basket on a rope drops
for payment. Money collected, the basket
comes down again, bearing hot pizzas, grease
soaking through butcher paper wrapping.
There is no soda, or napkins.
The basket-on-a-rope delivery method is
popular among those who share and sell goods
in apartment buildings without working elevators.
"We come here because it's good, it's
fast and it's cheap," said Laura, a
20-year-old history student. Like many Cubans,
she wouldn't give a last name, uncomfortable
talking with a foreign reporter about an
issue as political as food.
She said she often eats for less money
at the university cafeteria, but the food
there isn't as good as at the privately
run Pizza Celina.
"This is a bit expensive for us but
we come when we can," she said. A recent
increase in the monthly government stipend
for students, from 20 to 50 pesos (about
$1 to $2.50), means she can now afford to
visit the pizzeria once a month.
Laura lives on the other side of Havana,
and it's impractical to go home to eat.
There are few nearby places to buy cheap
food, save for a nearly empty state-run
vegetarian restaurant. "I've never
gone in there," Laura says.
The only thing close to a fast-food chain
in Cuba is the state-run Rapidito or the
food counter at Cupet gas stations, which
both sell hot dogs and fried chicken most
Cubans cannot afford because they are priced
in the "convertible pesos" used
by foreigners.
Government workers are paid in regular
pesos, which trade at about 24 to the convertible
peso or 21 to the U.S. dollar. A Rapidito
hot dog at 1 convertible peso costs more
than a day's pay for a Cuban earning a typical
monthly salary of 350 pesos ($16.60).
Under the communist country's 45-year-old
universal ration system, Cubans get a heavily
subsidized monthly food basket of beans,
rice, potatoes, eggs, a little meat and
other goods. That, along with other subsidized
meals such as workplace lunches, provides
about two-thirds of the 3,300 calories the
government estimates Cubans eat daily.
Cubans use their salaries and any other
income to buy the rest of their food at
farmers markets and overpriced supermarkets
or through black market purchases and trades.
If they have enough money, or no way to
get home for lunch, Havana residents go
to the street for low-priced snacks. That
often means bustling Obispo Street, the
capital's largest concentration of stands
and vendors selling food for pesos.
Elderly men walk down the cobblestone street
hawking 1-peso (5-cent) paper cones of raw
peanuts, clutched like floral bouquets.
A teenage boy at a weathered wooden cart
asks 2 pesos for "granizados,"
small plastic cups of ice drizzled with
strawberry-flavored syrup. Another vendor
sells homemade popcorn in plastic bags for
3 pesos.
Many street vendors are licensed, and the
government runs storefront stands selling
pizzas, hot dogs and pork burgers for 10
pesos. And government stands offer a cold
glass of "guarapo," or sugar cane
juice, for 1 peso.
Similar foods are sold at Obispo's "tencen"
- poorly stocked government shops that evolved
from American-style five-and-ten stores
of the 1950s and whose nickname is an adaptation
of "10 cents."
The "tencen" are among the few
places Cubans can buy food and other items
in the national currency they earn. The
shops also have lunch counters serving fried
chicken or pork steak and a bakery offering
sugary cookies.
Then there is the "frozzen,"
a 1-peso cone filled with a smooth, cold
vanilla mixture with a synthetic taste -
a snack sold at the "tencen" and
government storefront windows.
Just a block away, a convertible peso store
sells imported frozen treats made from dairy
products most Cubans cannot afford. There,
the Nestle's Crunch chocolate ice cream
bar is 1.10 convertible pesos - about 26
regular pesos, or $1.20.
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