14ymedio, Havana, Natalia López Moya, 16 March 2024 — “They told us to remove the photos,” explains the employee of a bodega (ration store) in Nuevo Vedado, Havana, before the question of a customer surprised by the disappearance of the images of Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl and Ernesto Guevara who, until recently, alternated on the wall with the blackboard that announces the ever-shorter list of available products. “They called from the Ministry of Internal Trade and advised us that we could not have any martyrs or leaders,” he says.
The practice of placing images of leaders of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), guerrillas and people who fell in combat during the revolutionary battles, was very common in the ration stores. “You went with your libreta (ration book) to buy something, and instead of beans you found a poster with a smiling Camilo Cienfuegos or propaganda from a PCC Congress,” says Liuber, a resident of San Lázaro Street in Central Havana. He was surprised a week ago when he arrived at his bodega and found “nothing; those faces were no longer on the shelves.”
“You went with your ration book to buy something and instead of beans you found a poster with a smiling Camilo Cienfuegos”
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