The last blog entry about seafood in Hong Kong put me in a strange mood. Am I really an islander? I am not the only Cuban who ever wondered this, right? Perhaps I should rephrase the question because growing up on a piece of land surrounded by an ocean DOES make me an islander by default. The question should be: Do I really live and behave like an islander?
I have never been sailing or fishing and I cannot count being more than five times on a catamaran. The only ferry I have ever been on in Havana is the one that goes to Regla municipality. I haven’t tried scuba diving or surfing. But that is alright. Let’s say I am the most boring person and never tried any of these activities, normal for islanders, because I decided to just look at the beach from the shore.
Now, when people ask me if we eat a lot of fresh Caribbean seafood in Cuba and I say I wish that was the case I guess I start to look silly. “Don’t they have seafood markets?” “Do people fish in Cuba?” “Can you own a boat?”. Please, somebody help me. I can only talk about my own personal experience.
It is not easy to buy fish in Cuba, you cannot find it at every market and when you do it is really expensive. I have some pictures I took this past July in Havana, at a store that I thought had a wide selection for a Cuban shop but the price of the fish was prohibitive.
My apologies for the quality of the pictures. I have listed the prices below. These are all in CUC currency so think of the prices as in American/Canadian dollars. The average salary in Cuba is about 25.00 CUC per month. Yes, 25.00 like in $25 dollars.
Bandeja de Pulpo: $32.30 CUC (Octopus tray)
Albacora 1Kg $4.30 CUC (Albacore)
Filete de Fogonero 1Kg $15.60 CUC (Pollock or Coalfish fillet )
Langosta entera 1kg $22.00 CUC (Full Lobster)
Filete de Halibut 1kg $29.30 CUC (Halibut fillet)
I have always heard that a lot of our sea products get exported by Caribex so there is a fish industry at the moment. The national consumption, though, is very low. No tourist has ever complained to me that there is no fish at hotels so I guess that part is covered.
Sometimes, the government fish shop (PescaderÃa in Cuban pesos) sells products like tuna, but again, the quantity is too low to say that there is enough fish for everyone.
Most of the times when I bought seafood in Havana (shrimp, lobster and fish) I did so on the black market (from random people without a license to sell). Since I’ve always lived in a building in the centre of Havana I was never exposed to the illegal door-to-door selling that other neighbourhoods get. For a while, we had a “contact” who would sell us a kilo of shrimp for five dollars. The same person also used to sell gouda cheese.
Cubans who live in Jaimanitas, Santa Fe, Cojimar (farther from the city and by the coast) might have a different opinion. I know some friends from Guanabo Beach who catch manjuas in the summer.
There was always a fishing culture in Cuba, the same culture that captivated Ernest Hemingway, but very little tradition is left from those times, specially for someone like me, born in the 1980’s. I wish I had stories about popular Cuban seafood dishes or boat adventures with friends but it is probably easier to find something like this in Miami.
