Requiem for La Guarida: Strawberry, Chocolate, and the (In)famous Cuban Paladar (Part 1/5)

Photo of "Rocco," the nickname of the Diego's old faithful Frigidaire refrigerator, being laid to rest at an art show in Havana in 2006 during the revolucion energetica.  Rocco was the only "American" character in the 1994 Cuban film "Strawberry and Chocolate".

 

The famed Cuban restaurant, La Guarida, inspired by the even more famous film "Fresa y Chocolate" has closed.

While its website is still up and running as of Christmas day, it seems the famed Cuban paladar restaurant, La Guarida (The Hideout), has finally closed its doors after years of struggling against the twin forces of bureaucracy and politics. Running a private business in a socialist country must be like a fish trying to ride a bicycle...

Yesterday the blog Penultimos Dias reported the bad news:

"The emblematic Havana restaurant La Guarida closed its doors today for good. It was perhaps the last paladar that remained with a certain level of quality and attention, and doubtless the best known... La Guarida survived almost everything, but in the end the government's hachet fell and cut it to pieces, giving its owner a final chance to close it today and avoid jail and a painful bureaucratic process..."

Readers of Generacion Y will remember Yoani Sanchez's post, "La envidia de fiesta" (Feast envy), from earlier this year about the similar forced closing of another famed Havana paladar, "El Hurón Azul."  Deeply embarrased by a system that criminalizes such entrepreneurship, Sanchez wrote:

"As if it wouldn’t be much easier to authorize the sale of those creatures with antennae who live in our sea [lobsters], to congratulate Juan Carlos for his work in promoting culture, and to allow each paladar to have whatever number of chairs and employees they decide. But no, to authorize all that would set off too strong a competition with the inefficient restaurants and cultural centers of the State...

"Above all, I think about the old gentleman who looked after the cars at the entrance to the paladar, and the lady who washed the dishes, now left without work, and especially the children of Juan Carlos. Possibly they have understood, given the example of the Hurón Azul, that in order to prosper one must get off this Island."

Her post also embedded a truly fascinating and deeply disturbing Power Point presentatioin put together by state prosecuters of economic crimes against the owner.  It reads like the script of an episode of "The Twilight Zone."