Nick Miroff, Jun 5, 2010, 03.41pm IST
They are blown up and used as decorations for parties, filled up with
booze and sneaked inside clubs and also used to keep money dry while
swimming. The condom serves many purposes in Castro's Cuba
On this island of shortages and scarcities, the latex condom has uses
that stretch far beyond the bedroom. At baseball games, rock concerts
and other entertainment events, Cubans blow them up and bat them around
the crowd like beach balls. When parents can't afford birthday party
balloons or can't find them, they unfurl a few "Vigor" brand
prophylactics and start puffing. The latex is so strong and supple that
kids can even draw faces on them.
Likewise, a casual visitor to the city should not be alarmed at the
sight of ruptured sheaths littering Havana's streets in the summertime.
They're more likely to be the leftovers of a water balloon fight among
neighbourhood kids than a responsible encounter between adults.
The Cuban government sells the Chinesemade rubbers three-for-a-penny at
pharmacies and snack bars, cheap enough for anyone to afford. The island
has shortages of just about everything else though, thanks to five
decades of US sanctions and a ruinous state-run economy. It should come
as no surprise, then, that enterprising Cubans have found all sorts of
recreational and industrial applications for their condoms that have
nothing to do with birth control.
There are some whose livelihoods depend on the lubricated durability of
the versatile little devices. "It's amazing how strong they are," said
Michel Perez, a young fisherman along Havana's Malecon sea wall. Perez
has fashioned six inflated condoms into a large hexahedral shape that he
held in the breeze over the water, like a kite. A strand of fishing line
with a baited hook was tied to the core of this contraceptive bouquet,
and as soon as it hit the surface, the current began pulling the white,
rubbery apparatus out to sea.
"We use them a lot this time of year, during the snapper run," Perez
explained, letting out his line from a homemade wooden spool. With a
good breeze, the floating condoms can carry the hook hundreds of meters
out into deeper waters, far beyond casting distance. Not that Perez has
a fishing rod anyway. "When the fish takes the hook, the line pulls
free," he explained, "and you start reeling in."
Cuba's communist government is so paranoid about illegal departures to
the US that it strictly controls who can own or use boats, and Cubans
who fashion crude watercraft out of wood and Styrofoam face steep fines,
or worse. A good-sized red snapper may sell for $10 to $20 on the black
market. In a country where the average wage is less than $20 a month,
it's no wonder contraceptive sales surge during fishing season.
Cuba's government-run stores and pharmacies don't ration condoms. The
island has the lowest HIV rate in the hemisphere, according to the World
Health Organisation, and one reason is the ubiquitous availability of
inexpensive prophylactics . Cuba's public health programs promote safe
sex and condom usage and their heavily subsidised price indicates the
government is committed to making sure condoms are available, even if
their end use may not be epidemiological.
Some, for example, are emptied in the bathrooms of Cuba's most popular
state-run nightclubs . Budget-minded Cuban men fill them with rum and
sneak them past the bouncers in their underwear. "If you only have $7
and the club has a $5 entry fee, you don't have any money left over for
drinks," said Felo, a 24-yearold Havana resident. "So once you're
inside, you buy a can of cola for $1. You drink half, then go to the
bathroom, open the condom, and pour the rum into the can. It works great
as long as the condom doesn't break."
Other uses are still more obscure. Cuba's pigeon coop hobbyists like to
clip the condoms into flexible rings they can use to tie messages to the
legs of their messenger birds. Makers of homemade Cuban moonshine —
another lucrative black-market business here — use them as gauges on
their distillery jugs. They know the fermentation process is complete
once the condom swells to a certain size. Other Havana residents said
they're useful for keeping their money dry when they go swimming at the
beach.
"Do you know what the first condoms were made of?" Jose Luis Diaz
quizzed his fishing buddies in Havana. In the fading light, their floats
looked like glowing little zeppelins, coasting along the surface of the
darkening waters. "Pig intestines," Diaz said.
Javier, a fisherman in flip-flops , opened a few fresh packets of Love
Guard-brand condoms and baited a new line. "It's a matter of necessity
," he said flatly, admitting he'd rather use condoms out here than in
the bedroom. "We're Cuban, so we have to come up with things that
nobody's ever thought of."
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