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Story September 3, 2015

Yana Paskova Takes Over @NewYorkerPhoto's Instagram

Country:

Cuba

Author:

Yana Paskova
Grantee

Children wearing the uniform of Communist youth are prepared to salute “Votó!” (“He voted!”), as a woman places her ballot in Cuba’s Elecciones Parciales (Partial Elections). The vote was to elect delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power, the country’s unicameral parliament, on April 19, in Havana. The delegates function as district representatives for a two-and-a-half-year term. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

English

Cuban communism is in flux. Citizens own businesses and property; some are even allowed to protest...

Yana Paskova
Grantee

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Students wearing pañoletas, or scarves, as part of the uniform of the José Martí Pioneer Organization for children operated by the communist party, ride a school bus on the way home in Mariel. Elementary school students wear blue or red scarves, depending on their age, and switch to yellow and white uniforms in adolescence. I too was once a girl with a red scarf, my mind far too young for politics, simply eager to belong. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A young student wearing the uniform of communist youth rests in front of an office for the CDR (Comité de Defensa de la Revolución, or Committee for the Defense of the Revolution,) which is a network of neighborhood watch organizations reporting on any 'counter-revolutionary' or anti-communist activity, in Havana, Cuba. Photo by: Yana Paskova

A student clad in the uniform of communist youth practices a salute given to voters as they place their ballots in Cuba's Elecciones Parciales (Partial Elections) to elect delegates from the country's single party to its unicameral parliament in Havana. Members of the José Martí Pioneer Organization for children operated by the communist party—that is quite similar to a communist youth organization in which I had to partake as a young Bulgarian student—are often sent to people's homes as a means to motivate citizens to vote. Voting is not mandatory, but heavily frowned upon if not exercised. Elementary schoolchildren wear pañoletas, or scarves, as part of the organization's uniform—blue or red in color depending on their age, and switch to yellow and white uniforms in adolescence. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A student in the uniform of communist youth salutes 'Votó!' ('S/he voted!') as a woman places her ballot in Cuba's Elecciones Parciales—Partial Elections—to elect delegates from the country's single party to its unicameral parliament. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Advertisement was unnecessary in pre-1989 Bulgaria: private enterprise was forbidden, eliminating retailer and manufacturer competition on production of a limited supply of goods that few people could afford anyway. Although entrepreneurship exists both legally and illegally on the vast government-owned landscape of Cuba, payroll taxes that increase with the rise of annual profit discourage its expansion. Propaganda fills its space. A sign for the Young Communist League (Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas) reading 'Everything for the Revolution,' stretches across a billboard next to the organization's motto 'Estudio, Trabajo, Fusil' ('Study, Work, Rifle') and the likes of revolutionaries Julio Antonio Mella, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. While the organization's membership is voluntary (and selective—based on a clean record of pro-government views) it is highly encouraged for social and professional success. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Women in Mariel practice Chen-style t'ai chi ch'uan under a fresco of Cuban revolutionary philosopher and political theorist José Martí and communist revolutionary leader Che Guevara. Images of government idols—a famously ubiquitous sight across Cuba—fill the space that an absence of advertising leaves in printed media, billboards, and edifices. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

(L-R) Participants in the 1st of May Labor Day parade march in Havana, Cuba, hold signs of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. In Cuba, the day known as Día del Trabajo is a call for people to show support to their socialist government and the Cuban Revolution. Guests worldwide are known to join. While attendance is not mandatory, absence from the march is usually noted and discouraged. I recall the communist era Labor Day marches of Bulgaria quite well: much like in the Cuba of today, groups of people huddled with their co-workers in the early morning hours, attendance to be accounted for by their boss—or face social, and often professional, retribution. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

People wait for a bus to arrive near a sign for the upcoming 1st of May Labor Day March in Havana. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A man marching during the May 1 Labor Day parade in Havana, holds onto a makeshift Chilean flag. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A participant in a different kind of march—organized by the wives and female relatives of imprisoned political dissidents—rests by a tree in Havana. The opposition group, Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), attends Mass each Sunday, then marches around the church clad in white, as a symbol of peace. Most complain of regular beatings and detainment—with one of the largest reported (75 of the group's members) in 2011 and 2012. In Catholic countries, Saint Rita is known as the patroness of impossible causes, or of heartbroken women. My grandfather spent 5 years of his youth in a labor camp for political dissidents after a neighborhood watch organization noted his lack of participation in the communist party—thus labeling him a person of conflict with the government of Bulgaria. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A woman waits her turn at a bodega in Havana, near a photo of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, with whom Cuba used to share trade and a distaste for American capitalism. Bodegas provide food rations--excluding green veggies, most meat, spices or dairy (which is restricted to all but children and pregnant women)—to Cubans via the Libreta de Abastecimiento (supplies booklet) which establishes the kind, amount and frequency of food allotted per person. Rations have been kept at stable, subsidized prices since the program's inception in 1962. Inefficient farming policies, the U.S. embargo, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s (which until then filled the U.S.-Cuba trade vacuum with subsidies) have made food otherwise forbiddingly expensive and scarce. While common today, food shortages were especially sharp then, both in Bulgaria and Cuba, as the two countries adjusted to a non-Soviet-sponsored economy. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A butcher sells his stock at a carnicería (meat shop) in the Havana Vieja neighborhood of Havana. Memories of the Special Period—war-like food austerity measures imposed after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90s and pulled its subsidies from the island's economy—keep Cubans anxious about food, as do lingering food shortages and high prices. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A woman shops for fruit and vegetables in a mercado—market where farmers can sell produce at their own pricing—in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. While food distribution centers, or bodegas, have rationed approximately 1/3 of Cubans' food requirements at stable, subsidized prices since the program's inception in 1962 to help offset the U.S.-Cuban trade embargo. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Looking into a private barber shop in the Havana Vieja neighborhood. Since privatization was first allowed within Cuba's state-owned socialist system in the mid-70s, the requirements for those allowed to be cuentapropistas (small business entrepreneurs, whose practice wasn't allowed in Bulgaria and most of Eastern Europe until the collapse of communism) have fluctuated from restrictive to less so, the latter in the Raúl Castro era of 2008 and beyond. But a clear disincentive to private business expansion remains: if payroll surpasses 5 employees or a $2,000 yearly profit, taxes increase disproportionately from 15 percent to 50 percent. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

(L-R) Maydelin Pérez Pérez, 38, sells empanadas as her three-year-old daughter, Lorena Sofia Reyez, watches in the Havana Vieja. Pérez is divorced, cannot afford daycare for her four children, and says her ex-husband contributes the equivalent to $1 of child support monthly. She earned less at her government job as a secretary than she does now, as one of Cuba's cuentapropistas. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Retiree Lucilla Sulueta Cuesta, 66, gets her nails done by Liu Sanchez, 24 (not seen), who works as a manicurist cuentaproprista in the Havana Vieja neighborhood. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Tourists walk by graffiti of the American cartoon character Wile E. Coyote and his speech bubble 'Nuestro Futuro (Our Future)' running past a cactus shaped to read 'One Up King Size,' in the Havana Vieja neighborhood. It is said to reflect the fear that a further thawing of U.S.-Cuban relations will permanently alter the cultural and economic make-up of the island. In the cartoons, Coyote repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempts to catch a fast-running ground bird, The Road Runner, his plans for capture always backfiring. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Art during the Communist years in Eastern Europe was highly sanitized. Artists who chose not to show a utopian view of the country were censored and punished. Artists in state-run Cuba as well have felt pressure to sanitize political issues and any difficulties the Cuban people may face, or omit them altogether. While the more open era of Raúl Castro has blurred the line, artists who cross it altogether risk losing the support of government-controlled galleries that display their works. Here, Artist Arístides Hernández discusses his painting, which depicts possible bidirectional paranoia resulting from the future melding of Cuban and American culture—the former represented by the Lilliputians, and the latter, by Gulliver—in his artist studio in Havana. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A room full of dancers mingle to the sounds of DJ Mike Polarni following a concert at Fabrica de Arte, in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. Fabrica de Arte, which opened in 2014 with the backing of the Ministry of Culture, is an industrial factory turned performance space where established and unknown musicians, painters, photographers, and playwrights alike show their work. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Much talk has been made of the thawing relationship between Cuba—still very much in the hands of its socialist leaders—and the U.S. A bus transports its passengers to Mariel, a port city whose tranquil appearance belies its important place in both the history and future of Cuban-American interaction. Here is where the Russian navy unloaded its nuclear warheads in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, as well as the site of the famous Mariel Boatlift of 1980, when 125,000 Miami-bound emigres fled the island during a 6-month lift on travel restrictions to the U.S. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

An everyday scene in the city park of the port city of Mariel, a town whose tranquil appearance belies its important place in both the history and future of Cuban-American interaction. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Jose Alonzo, sporting a USA tattoo, waters the plants in front of his house in the port city of Mariel. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

A girl takes orders in a late-night pizza joint, playing mostly American music from the 1980s and 1990s, in the port city of Mariel. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

(L-R) Michael Denis Fonteto, his mother, Raizel Fonte Muñoz, grandmother Aida Muñoz, and brother, Yasiel Valdivia, spend time together in a village close to the port city of Mariel. Yasiel and Michael's uncle was among those who fled toward Florida in the Mariel Boatlift exodus of 1980. The two say he has not since regained permission to return, separating him from his sister (their mother) and his 93-year-old mother, for 35 years. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

Raymel Medina, 16, (center) relaxes with friends after an evening dip in the water in the port city of Mariel. He says he'd like to learn more about the world, but extremely limited internet access in his city, and in the country in general, makes this a challenge. Internet in Cuba is either difficult to find, or prohibitively expensive. Travel outside of the island is also forbidden to most, except to those whose jobs allows it, or have a government connection. I remember being young and curious about the world beyond the vacuum of Bulgaria's closed borders in the communist years. I hope the people of Cuba get a chance to someday discover vast new lands beyond their own. Image by Yana Paskova. Cuba, 2015.

From the elaborate May Day marches and the ubiquitous posters of Marx and Lenin to the food shortages, forced participation in "Pioneer" youth organizations and restrictions on artists and writers, photographer Yana Paskova, who grew up in communist Bulgaria, is attuned to the echoes and shadows of her own childhood in today's Cuba. Her images from Cuba appeared on The New Yorker's Instagram feed.