New stars over Cuba146;s kitchens

Anyone who thinks the cold war ended years ago clearly has not spent time in Cuban kitchens. Before he disappeared from public life...

Anyone who thinks the cold war ended years ago clearly has not spent time in Cuban kitchens. Before he disappeared from public life, Fidel Castro enlisted the prowess of Chinese industry last year to get rid of some of the most resilient totems of American imperialism: Frigidaire, Kelvinator and Westinghouse refrigerators from the 1950s. The government acquired more than 300,000 new Chinese replacements as the centerpiece of a project to improve energy efficiency in a cash-starved country and eliminate 8220;dragons which devour our electricity8221;.

But the vanquishing of these refrigerators along with some Soviet models imported in the 1970s has caused some wistfulness and angst here. In their decades of isolation from the American economy and from global prosperity, Cubans have been taught to take pride in the way they have kept grandiose old mechanical marvels running 8212; ancient Cadillacs and Russian-built Ladas included.

8220;They took away my sentilde;or and replaced him with a little guy,8221; 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 Hernaacute;ndez, but said she was concealing her real name 8212; 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 8220;textured picadillo8221;, 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: 8220;Llovizna,8221; or 8220;Drippy,8221; 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 Fidel8217;s eye, and as an opportunity to show one8217;s patriotism while lowering one8217;s electricity bill.

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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 8220;Instruction Manual8221; 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 8220;General Eleacute;ctrico.8221; 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.