Woolworth’s with a red beret

By Aurelio Pedroso

Maybe because the word Woolworth’s is hard for Hispanics to pronounce, or perhaps for reasons of marketing, the fact is that the great American chain of stores, which could be find in all of Cuba’s provincial capitals prior to 1959, was known as – and is still called – the “ten-cent store” on such-and-such a street.

“I found it at the ‘ten-cent’ on Obispo Street,” or Galiano Street, or “you can find it at the ‘ten-cent’ at 23rd and Twelfth” were popular expressions that are still frequently heard among the few of us who had the historic opportunity to know the original stores. Very few call them by their true name – variety stores.

I applaud the effort by the authorities to revive the busy corner of 23rd and Twelfth in the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado. It’s a pity that such an initiative is launched amid a nasty local and international crisis, but, as the saying goes, better late than never.

That corner holds many reminiscences for several generations of Cubans.

There, a few yards from the street marker that denotes the intersection of 23rd Avenue and Twelfth Street, Fidel Castro on April 1961 declared “the socialist nature” of the Cuban revolution. For the record, a plaque has been placed there, showing men raising their rifles.

A lot of history – a lot – has passed through that corner.

Diagonally across, at the Cinecittá pizzeria, during that political-economic disaster of the early 1990s (analgesically dubbed “the special period”), a desperate and clever manager removed the two middle tines from all forks, so they could still be used to spear a pizza slice or roll spaghetti but could not be stolen by patrons.

For many years, the arcade of the old building at 23rd and Twelfth served as “residence” for the bizarre Caballero de París, the Gentleman from Paris. No gentleman like him has appeared since in the city, much less on that corner. The Gentleman’s “bedchambers” are now an Arts Center. Whenever the poor man was lucid – if ever – he would hand a handwritten personal message to anyone who approached him: “Fidel, peace and religion.”

Less than a minute’s walk away is the Cuban Cinemathèque, a true monument and fountain of knowledge and pleasure, where people always (and hopefully forever) can see the best movies of all times.

Luncheon at the “ten-cent store,” a stroll across the street to see a movie (“Vertigo” in Cinemascope, for example), and, late at night, a stop for pizza at Cinecittá. Then, with any luck, find a bus for the ride home. That was a day’s outing for many.

The revival of the zone is a reality. There, you find bakeries, candy stores, the Baseball Cafeteria, a cultural center sponsored by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) called The Strawberry and Chocolate, flower shops, fast-food places, and even a hard-currency cafeteria across the street from the Colón Cemetery. Sitting there, you can buy a shot of the ultrastrong rum Paticruzao and, while watching the funeral cortèges that enter the cemetery, you can philosophize about life, death, and the living dead everyone knows.

Even elderly people on a budget, many of them without a family to look after them or without enough money to buy à la carte in a restaurant, can find on Twelfth Street, just 80 yards from 23rd, a government-funded lunchroom where one Cuban peso buys a decent luncheon or dinner.

Here’s the menu advertised the day I wrote these notes. Prices in cents of a Cuban peso. For breakfast: Bread (5 cents) and a fruit shake (20). For lunch: White rice (20), red-bean stew (20), a sausage scramble (30), boiled tuber (10), cabbage salad (10), papaya in syrup (25). For dinner: Rice and squids (40), boiled tuber (10), cabbage salad (10), papaya in syrup (25).

The Woolworth´s at 23rd and Twelfth

About to open its doors, renovated and prettified, we have our own peculiar Woolworth’s at 23rd and Twelfth. The revolutionary frenzy of 1959, when parking meters were beheaded and the neon signs of American stores and businesses were smashed, did not affect the emblematic Yanqui store. For the past half-a-century, the name of the chain has remained on the floor at the entrance to the building, in red marble with yellow borders. Well, at that time, stores were built to last.

Through a crack in the door, I asked a woman who mopped the floor when the store would open. Mechanically, she stopped mopping, looked both ways and, acting like a sinner at a confessional, told me she didn’t know. She then resumed her task with a shaking of hips that would have seemed out of place in a big store in New York or Paris.

Another employee, who asked for anonymity, said that some organizational details still remained, that the merchandise is the same as you find in other establishments, and that prices in Cuban pesos would be equivalent to the prices in convertible pesos. One convertible peso (CUC) is the equivalent of 24 Cuban pesos (CUP).

The display windows have been stocked. A black fellow close to 60 calculates that the prices in national currency are in proportion to the ones charged in convertible pesos. He is polite and waits to swallow a bite of bread and pork (5 Cuban pesos) before saying: “It’s a disgrace.”

Visible to passers-by are cans of papaya, grated coconut, mango marmalade, tomato soup, cabbage-and-peppers salad, powdered milk, tomato paste and spices, among other products. Everything produced in Cuba.

On a side street you find a place for those who like to tipple, who in Cuba are in the majority. There you find local rums, some of them unknown by this writer: Cajio, Hundred Fires, Bariay, along with the more popular ones, Decano and Palma. The charismatic Havana Club is missing, but Friar Bartholomew stands in its place. (Whose idea was it to name a rum after a monk, anyway?)

Something must be brewing. I am told that, in small and not-so-small cities in the country, goods are sold mostly in Cuban pesos and that the mid- and long-range objective is to strengthen the market in national currency so the price of goods can come down.

If that’s so, the guy munching bread and pork is wrong, and you will see that, at the end, it will all have to do with that plaque on the corner that announces and confirms socialism.

Aurelio Pedroso, a Cuban journalist, is a member of the Progreso Weekly team.