Los Libretas                                                                 

2010 - 2019     Open edition                   5.25 x 3.25 x 6.25 ins.

Unavailable

 A collaboration with Cuban families. Essay by Cuban ethnographer Abel Sierra. One libreta (Cuban food ration book) for each year of the revolution.     Two books were created in 2010 with 51 libretas, two books in 2014 with 55 libretas and four books in 2015 with 56 libretas, one book in 2016 with 57 libretas, one book in 2017 with 200 libretas and one book in 2017 with 58 libretas, three books were bound in 2018 with 59 libretas and one book in 2019 with 60 libretas.

In 2007 I was given two libretas and the challenge to create a book with them. The first question I had was, “What are these little notebooks?” I knew about the State subsidized food programs but had no idea how the system worked in daily life. Quickly reading them I discovered each libreta records one year of supplies such as bread, cooking oil, yogurt, meat, eggs, rice, beans and even tobacco for a household.

Returning in 2010 I decided the best way to present these libretas was to bind them into a book with a traditional raised cord binding without any of my usual overprinting of Cuban lithography. How was I, a foreigner, going to get any libretas in Cuba? They were not for sale in the used bookstalls in Plaza de Armas in Old Havana. I needed the help of my Cuban friends to make the dream of showing them in the States a reality. Poco y poco (little by little) I was given over one hundred libretas.

Every libreta is very personal. Some are wrapped with plastic or a second paper cover to protect them over the course of a year’s travel from the house to the store. They contain anonymous drawings in red, blue or black ink created during the weekly collection of bread and necessities. Bound together as whole, I feel that I am in a small way the trustee of each family’s story.