In 2016, Historian of the City of Baracoa, Dr. Alejandro Hartmann, took me on a whirlwind tour of chocolate farmers and “manufacturers” of artisanal chocolates in the mountains near the city. Although no-one could be more impressed than I with the exquisite taste of homegrown, hand-toasted, hand-molded chocolate for which the region was known (long before Columbus!), I was equally astonished by the handicrafts of a friend of Hartman who wanted to sell me a few of the rag dolls she made for local kids and the newly emergent tourist market in the area. But it was the purses that Señora Duaba made that most impressed. In one case, she used recycled twine and the pulloff tops of soda cans to weave a functional and stylish purse for one of her granddaughters. In the other, she cleaned, dried, and cut strips from used toothpaste tubes to make a fancier purse with absolutely no other materials. Lacking a button to finish the closure, she crafted one by stacking folded pieces of a used toothpaste tube and sewing it with thread. “Aquí se inventa con lo que nunca se ha inventado [Here, we invent with things that have never been invented before],” her husband laughed!
