<i>Inventar</i>: Recent Struggles and Inventions in Housing in Two Cuban Cities

Abstract

Cuban cities are characterized by juxtapositions of Spanish colonial and U.S. capitalist heritage with the material and political culture of nearly fifty years of socialism; these cities have been transformed and retransformed by the daily practices of residents in noteworthy ways. This article will suggest that a fundamental philoso phy and practice that shapes Cuban vernacular architecture is the concept of Inventar, whereby new housing spaces and structures are quite literally invented through the improvised acquisition of goods and the expert negotiation of complex political and economic obstacles. This discussion depends research drawn from two separate field projects, undertaken by an architect (Patricio del Real) in Havana, and an anthropologist (Anna Cristina Pertierra) in San tiago de Cuba. Through the integration of our distinct research experiences it became clear that Inventar is simultaneously a technical and a social skill, enabling Cuban citizens to improvise in adverse circumstances. Housing is consciously presented by Cubans as an important space in which such skills of Inventar must be expressed in order to create not only material but also social well-being. The term Inventar is commonly used in Cuban vernacular speech to describe processes of improvising creative solutions to everyday problems. Three short case studies taken from our field research demonstrate the particular sig nificance of the notion of Inventar to housing con struction, showing how Inventar practices have been both stifled and enabled by Cuban state pol icies in the post-Soviet period. The case studies presented show the relationship between techni cal and practical actions on the ground in Cuba and the broader social and political structures that influence such actions. Therefore, engaging in the strategies of Inventar can be seen simulta neously as a set of technical practices, an engage ment in micropolitical actions, and an assertion of the social significance of particular personal qualities and community values. Our intention in examining how residents of Cuban cities develop practices and ideas to adapt their housing within the specific politico economic conditions of the post-Soviet era is to provide an example of how scholars across dis ciplines might study the relationship between material landscapes and cultural and political processes. Such a study is timely, as Kingston W. Heath recently proposed that understand ing this relationship between buildings, land scapes, and cultural processes lies at the center of contemporary vernacular architecture stud ies.1 Anthropologists are particularly well posi tioned to contribute to this discussion; many anthropologists have documented how housing is frequently a site in which political and social changes impact the material form of buildings and building interiors. Some have also proposed that housing forms can be understood as mani festations of social orders or cultural norms.2 It