Moral Panics, Viral Subjects: Black Women's Bodies on the Line during Cuba's 2020 Pandemic Lockdowns

Abstract

While Cuba was in a COVID-19-induced lockdown, coleras, women who wait in hours-long colas (lines) to purchase scarce goods to resell, emerged in online state media as “folk devils” responsible for the acute shortages of basic goods. Using an intersection lens, we combine fieldwork in lines and content analysis of online media to examine the creation and policing of the colera threat during the summer of 2020. Coleras were framed as immoral subjects, gendered and racialized, and often depicted as a virus that threatened the nation's health. The colera moral panic attempted to obscure class, race, and gender inequalities and structures that have made certain citizens vulnerable in the aftermath of successive waves of Cuban economic reforms. Understanding this moral panic allows us to appreciate the material scarcities and indignities to which poor Black women have been subjected, and widespread concerns about the state's failure to protect society's most vulnerable.