Innovating the Cuban Kitchen

Despite state attempts to eliminate class in socialist Cuba, in practice my interlocutors categorized themselves and others as lower class (gente humilde), middle class (gente normal), and upper class (gente con possibilidades). On the basis of more than 10 years of household-based ethnographic research in Santiago de Cuba, I draw on photographs and ethnographic data to argue that kitchens are important sites where Cubans locate forms of distinction that mark class. I argue that these class categories can be mobilized as a part of socialist distinction. The spaces and tools of the kitchen facilitate forms of distinction linked to contemporary socialist practices of inventar (to invent), solucionar (to solve), and resolver (to resolve). I argue that Santiagueros draw on resources within their kitchen to engage in practices of innovation in the kitchen in order to “get by” under the difficulties of the socialist distribution system. Across class, Santiagueros indicated that ingenuity (lower class), efficiency (middle class), and commensality (upper class) were specific forms of distinction and points of pride enacted in the kitchen.