Introduction BODIES IN STATES OF CRISIS

Abstract

Tracing the deep, furrowed lines that branched out from slightly under her nose and created a crease on either side of her mouth, María Luisa laughed apprehensively. The permanent frown of etched lines temporarily transformed. ‘‘They appeared right at the height of the período especial,’’ she remarked. These were not mere signs of age or the vain complaints of a woman of a certain age who no longer looked the way she used to, she commented. Instead, ‘‘these cicatrices [scars]’’ were the embodied proof of living through the worst years of Cuba’s economic crisis of the early 1990s. ShuΔing through her bag, she quickly produced her carné de identidad (state identification card). ‘‘This is what I looked like at the beginning of the crisis,’’ she proudly exclaimed. The card was issued in 1988. She was thirty-five then. The face that stared back from the crumbled blue carné had little resemblance to the frail figure that sat before me. Looking around suspiciously, she continued in a barely audible tone: ‘‘El Barba’’—she rubbed her chin to indicate the beard of El Comandante, Fidel Castro—‘‘doesn’t like people to tell things the way they are. But I can’t lie. People here are going through a terrible crisis.’’ The crisis had changed everything, she lamented: ‘‘My body is still su√ering from the e√ects of the período especial. Since then, things have never been the same.’’ Using her body as a diagnostic map, María Luisa walked me through her many ailments: a case of optic neuropathy in 1993, which resulted in a prolonged period of temporary blindness. She found out circuitously from a friend who had access to the international media that foreign presses were reporting severe nutritional deficiencies as the cause.∞ Only later did her doctor intimate that this was, indeed, the cause. Shortly thereafter she