In the 1920s, Andr? Breton described Cuba as the most surreal country in the world. In the 1990s, as the country emerges slowly from communism, a visitor can witness much weirder things than Breton would have seen. Take government policy on restaurants.
One of the first cautious experiments in private enterprise in Cuba is the paladar, the new private restaurant. The name derives from a venue in a Brazilian soap opera that was played on Cuban television a few years ago. The oddity is that a new word should be required at all. “Restaurant,” after all, is an international word like “taxi” or “bus,” and it serves as an entirely unambiguous beacon to the bedraggled tourist in search of his next feed.
There are reasons for this. Paladares started up underground, and underground activities are more inventive with words than officialdom. Now paladares are in competition with state run restaurants. To share the same word would suggest that they are on a similar footing.
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