WAGES OF SOCIALISM: The only place in the world where you can’t get a Cuban sandwich: Cuba!

UPDATE: Brian Erst emails:

It ruins the narrative, but I don’t think it means much to not find Cuban sandwiches in Cuba – because they aren’t Cuban.

I lived in Florida (the Tampa-St. Pete area) for a time and grew to love Cuban sandwiches. The thing you soon learn (other than salami is part of the sandwich in Tampa and verboten in Miami) is that the sandwich was invented by Cuban immigrants – it’s not something they eat on the island. Back in the late 1800s, when Florida and Cuba were pretty much just one big economic zone, Cuban workers in Ybor City (near Tampa) and Miami started making these sandwiches. They took off among that community and the native Floridians, but never really took off back home – probably because it is very similar to a different, much more popular sandwich in Cuba, the medianoche. The “midnight” sandwich has the same ingredients, but is smaller and served on soft sweet bread as a midnight snack.

As it’s not indigenous to Cuba and would be on menus primarily for American and Cuban-American tourists, you can see why it might be hard to find.

In a followup he notes that the same is true of Cuban bread:

Cuban bread is also really Cuban-American bread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_bread

I find the late 1800s to be fascinating, because the concept of a “border” was so different back then. I think it’s a major reason why immigration is thought of so differently in Texas and Florida – they never really had or wanted an effective border, so the “immigrant” communities there were well-integrated into the broader communities.

Good grief. No wonder people are always trying to get out of Cuba.