Wastecraft and its multifaceted learning in Cuba

Abstract

In Cuba, scarcity is an ever-present reality due to more than six decades of socialist regime and consequent economic embargo. One of the coping strategies for people facing such adversity has been to develop great abilities to repair and reuse objects and materials. In a certain way, Cubans are like Lévi-Straussian bricoleurs, or, better said, they are engineers who had to adjust their project because the universe of tools at their disposition was closed, leading them to make do with the less they are provided with. Indeed, they create objects by repairing and reusing parts and materials, and by doing so, they refer to specific concepts like inventing, innovating, adapting, and recycling. Many of the practices, apart from being a way of earning a living, directly depend on the recovery of discarded elements and are therefore part of a complex economy that involves waste, which, once recovered, becomes a resource again. This article focuses on how social actors regulate and negotiate access to remunerative knowledges related to waste, what I call wastecrafts. Drawing on anthropological literature about gift giving and sharing, I reflect on how the transmission of practices related to waste takes place in Havana. My argument is that practices of reciprocity, sharing, and, in some cases, stealing the art coexist and are all to understand within the emic ideas of inventar, luchar, and sobrevivir.