Cubans Revive Doll-Burning Tradition
Old customs which the Communist regime once frowned on are making a reappearance.
Cubans Revive Doll-Burning Tradition
Old customs which the Communist regime once frowned on are making a reappearance.
On New Year’s Eve, life-sized dolls dressed in old clothes appeared on the streets and squares in Cuba, and were set on fire as the clock struck 12.
In parts of Latin America, the burning of handmade dolls known as “monigotes” represents the end of one year and the start of a new one. Onlookers jeer at the burning effigies.
“This is the third year I’ve made a monigote,” said Julio, a pensioner in La Juanita neighbourhood in Cienfuegos. “The whole block has fun and takes part in making my dolls.”
He believes his creations are contributing to “rescuing a tradition that was being lost”.
In Cuba, the New Year monigote custom came close to dying out in the early years after the 1959 revolution.
“The tradition was widespread until 1959. After Fidel Castro came to power… the burning of dolls was branded as a bourgeois fraud,” independent journalist Clemente Álvarez Díaz recalls. More recently, he says, “Folklore has made a comeback.”
Álvarez Díaz links the rebirth of nearly-forgotten customs to the erosion of government controls and communist ideology, which he dates to the 1990s.
The dolls often have signs hung round their necks – some humorous, others regretting the passing of another year.
Occasionally the messages contain barbed comments about the regime. One monigote in La Juanita, for example, bore the initials “PNR” – a reference to Cuba’s National Revolutionary Police.
In the Palmira municipality, part of Cienfuegos province, another doll had a ration book sticking out of his shirt pocket. The books are used to distribute state-subsidised food and other items. Rations have been scaled down for years.
Alejandro Tur Valladares is an independent journalist in Cuba.
