The Parallel Market: The Expansion of Consumerism in Cuba and Its Ramifications, 1975–80

Following Cuba’s entry into COMECON in 1972, new trade arrangements and Soviet subsidies allowed for an expansion of the bare bones options available to consumers, which had been stripped to necessities in the late 1960s as the state’s economic apparatus pushed for the much-hyped 10 Million Ton sugar harvest. The expansion of consumerism included the introduction of a new parallel market system in the late 1970s. The stores and farmers markets that formed this parallel market began offering goods and foodstuffs at market-oriented prices, and co-existed with stores selling basic goods and foods through rationing and highly subsidized prices that placed them easily within the reach of all consumers. The parallel market was initially met with wide-ranging enthusiasm, but soon concerns about growing class inequality, the risk of ideological diversionism, and the fairness of pricing mechanisms began to surface among both state and citizen observers. This paper looks at state efforts to manage the parallel market system in order to maintain a “classless” society as well as consumer reactions to the new economic possibilities represented by the parallel market. It explores the impact of expanding consumerism on everyday life, gender relations, and state-citizen interactions in the late 1970s.