New stars over Cuba’s kitchens

“They took away my señor and replaced him with a little guy,” said a 47-year-old cook who lives in Reparto Zamora district in Havana. Welcoming a visitor to her kitchen, she pointed to the slim, white Chinese-made Haier that had taken the place of the bulky, pink Frigidaire that had been in her family for 24 years.

She called herself Moraima Hernández, but said she was concealing her real name — the only way she felt able to speak without fear of retaliation. She declined to say why she felt Castro was casting a shadow over something as banal as household appliances.

Instead, she simply opened the Haier to reveal its meager contents: bottles of tap water, a few eggs, mustard, half an avocado and some “textured picadillo”, soy protein mixed with a bit of ground beef. Her old refrigerator was so big, she said nostalgically, that two legs of pork could fit inside.

The Chinese model makes less noise than the Frigidaire. And like many other refrigerators in Cuba, it already has an affectionate, if mocking, nickname: “Llovizna,” or “Drippy,” because of the moisture that accumulates on its shelves.

Cubans do not have to switch to Chinese refrigerators, but there are strong incentives to comply. When the exchange programme is offered to a town or neighborhood, it is presented as the apple of Fidel’s eye, and as an opportunity to show one’s patriotism while lowering one’s electricity bill.

But unlike education and health care in Cuba, refrigerators are not free. A concern for Cubans is the cost of the new Chinese models: about $200, a small fortune in a country where the average monthly wage is about $15. Ten-year payment plans have been made available.

But officials have already acknowledged problems in collecting installments.

Of course, debt and interest remain elastic concepts in Cuba, which is not a member of the IMF or any other multilateral lending organisation. Today, its top trading partners are Venezuela, which provides Cuba with cheap oil, and China, which buys raw materials like nickel from Cuba while selling it items like refrigerators.

Inspired by the ingenuity it took to keep American refrigerators working so long, a group of Cuban artists last year transformed 52 of them into art. They put on a show called “Instruction Manual” that was a big hit in Cuba.

In the show, artists Alejandro and Esteban Leyva pinned medals on an old GE refrigerator, painted it olive drab and named it “General Eléctrico.” Another artist, Alexis Leyva, installed oars on his refrigerator, drawing on the politically loaded symbol of the homemade boats Cubans use to leave the island illegally. Others were made into cars, skyscrapers, a Trojan horse and a jail cell.