Labor and "el pregón" in Cuba

• In Event: Media and Infrastructure in Contemporary Cuba

Abstract

El pregón, or the street-vendor call, is a form of labor that relies on an individual’s vocal chords and respiratory system; it is also the medium through which other forms of labor – the selling of products and services – are advertised. While el pregón is not unique to Cuba, the nation’s vexed history of labor following the Cuban Revolution provides a particular case study that serves to interrogate the relationship between forms of labor and State regulation. After 1959, the State came to be the sole employer in the island; the following decades have seen a process of opening up avenues of self-employment, an aperture that has given rise to labor diversification and a resurgence of el pregón.

Pregones target those at street level and those reachable through the windows and balconies of residences; audibility is linked to an architectural configuration that fosters a particular relationship between being at home and also being co-present within a neighborhood, an always blurred boundary between the public and the private. This paper compares the quotidian act of listening from balconies in two different neighborhoods of La Habana in order to interrogate the relationship between labor and State regulation on one hand, and the relationship between listening, architecture, and commerce on the other. El pregón serves as an entry point into a broader problematic that is at once sensory and political.

Author

• Andrés J García Molina, Columbia University