Cuba's outlaw mattress makers thriving

Posted on Monday, 07.27.09
Cuba's outlaw mattress makers thriving
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
wcancio@elnuevoherald.com

After a long, exhausting day behind the wheel of his truck, Alberto
Escalona would like nothing better than to rest his weary bones and
drift off to la-la land on a comfy spring mattress.

Only in his dreams.

Escalona lives in midtown Havana. One of the many deprivations of life
in Cuba is a dire shortage of decent mattresses, which are manufactured
by one company under an exclusive agreement with the state. Escalona and
his wife and their children sleep on threadbare foam rubber padding that
hardly provides any support or comfort.

``At this rate, my children will have to be taught how to sleep on a
real mattress,'' Escalona said.

But in a textbook example of supply-meets-demand, even in the communist
world, a flourishing black market of mattress-making entrepreneurs has
sprung up to help Cubans get a good night's sleep.

Until the economic crisis of the 1990s, newly married couples and
outstanding workers were occasionally given the chance to buy Cuban-made
mattresses through state-run stores.

No longer. Today, mattresses are passed from grandparents to
grandchildren like prized heirlooms.

Enter the black market mattress makers. To get their raw material, they
have been known to steal metal springs, stuffing and cover fabric from
the official mattress factory. They also cannibalize old, discarded
mattresses or use straw as a filler.

``Theft here has been constant, ever since the company started,'' said
Luis Hernández, who works at the official mattress plant. ``The bosses
need eyes in the back of their heads, at all times.''

In a bit of over-the-top brazenness, the freelance mattress merchants
have been known to set up shop right outside the hard currency stores
where the official mattresses are sold. Other nonsanctioned mattress
makers operate more or less openly, using pushcarts or trucks to
distribute their wares.

TAKING NOTICE

The government is beginning to take notice. According to dissident
economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, the authorities have increased their
pursuit of independent craftsmen over the past year, engineering raids
on clandestine shops and fining illegal manufacturers.

In Cuba, the Mattress Giant is the communist state. It has granted the
country's sole mattress-making concession to an outfit called Dujo Copo
Flex, a joint Cuban-Spanish operation created in 2001.

The company annually produces 60,000 mattresses. Generally, they are
designated for ritzy tourist hotels that don't cater to Cubans or sold
through hard-currency stores run by the government.

There are two types of currency in Cuba: convertible pesos (each worth
about $1.24) and regular pesos, worth a fraction of that.

In a hard-currency store, a queen-size mattress made by Dujo Copo Flex
might cost 120 to 180 convertible pesos. The same mattress would cost
5,352 in ordinary pesos.

Either way, the price tag exceeds a year's salary for the average Cuban.

While the cost of a black-market mattress is far less, the quality can
be dicey.

``You run the risk of getting a new mattress with old springs and straw
filling,'' said independent journalist Odelín Alfonso.

During a visit to the town of Guanajay, west of Havana, Miami historian
and blogger Ingeborg Portales found a factory that manufactures straw
mattresses.

``It was like an image from the Middle Ages,'' said Portales, who
photographed the manufacturing process. ``It's exhausting work that
allows these people to barely survive, provided the police don't
confiscate their mattresses because they have no license to make them or
sell them.''

Portales, who has lived in South Florida since 2004, said the mattress
makers buy straw for five ordinary pesos and spread it out to dry. They
buy burlap sacks, which are placed between the straw and the spring
armature.

``The sacks are used by garbage collectors who, instead of throwing them
away, wash them in the river and sell them for one ordinary peso,'' said
Portales, who went to Cuba in June 2008.

The price of straw mattresses ranges from 600 to 800 pesos ($25 to $30).
Portales said they are very much in demand.

But not everyone is willing to find rest on a rudimentary rectangle made
of straw and a garbage man's hand-me-down burlap.

SAVINGS

Cary Ruiz, 43, who sells household appliances at the Carlos III shopping
mall in Havana, saved part of the remittances sent to her every three
months by her sister in New York in order to buy a semi-orthopedic
mattress for her mother at a state-run store.

``It's the first time in 10 years we'll be buying a mattress,'' the
woman said. ``The one we had is no longer useful. The springs broke and
we have no other option. But I prefer to choose something with quality.''

Responding to harangues at neighborhood assemblies and workplace
gatherings, the Cuban government has acknowledged it has a mattress
problem, but said it is making strides to boost production.

Dujo Copo Flex last year invested 297,000 in convertible pesos (about
$368,000) to purchase new equipment as part of a plan to produce six
million units by 2010. The production plan includes mattresses and other
bedroom items, the company's director, Lázaro Viera Valdés, told the
newspaper Granma.

However, part of the company's production has gone -- by state directive
-- to armed forces units and Operation Miracle, the ophthalmological
project that since late 2004 has brought to Cuba thousands of Latin
American patients for eye surgery.

The company says it has also exported some of the precious mattresses to
Italy -- and to Venezuela, Cuba's petroleum-producing patron.

Cuba's outlaw mattress makers thriving - 5-Minute Herald -
MiamiHerald.com (27 July 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/5min/v-fullstory/story/1158885.html