El 'paii' de coco y de guaya

Florence, MA: Red Trillium Press, 2025. One of six copies. No binding. Very fine. Oblong quarto. Two fold-out maps drawn from the 1978 Atlas de Cuba have here been overprinted with the cries of street vendors, to which are added image of Cuban plant life drawn, based on their given styles, from scientific nature texts and from children's books. Daiber based the project on his observations made during a return to Cuba in February 2024. He writes, "In 2020, the peso stood at 24 to the dollar. When we arrived, the black-market rate was 300. By the time we left, it was 330. For those with access to foreign currency, life is hard. For everyone else, life verges on the unbearable." The thinness of the images and the difficulty of sussing out every picture and phrase on all sides of the maps reflects the thinness of making a livelihood in post-COVID Cuba, in which the stifling of the tourist industry and the decimation of the peso have led to a dismantling of street vending. Maps held loose with explanatory booklet in chemise covered with red cloth and with illustration printed at interior. Very fine.