Drink to Remember

When Cuba Libre Becomes a Site of Memory and a Symbol of Everyday Multiculturalism

Helen Ahner

University of Tübingen

Oberndorf is a small-town where Cuba Libre is prepared in a very particular way — at least this is what privy inhabitants tell. The drink serves as both a memory rite and a symbol for the multicultural past as it was brought to the spot by Spanish guest-workers in the 1960s. Yet, it is not only part of the past but influences the initiates’ present perspectives on migration and their multicultural everyday life. Examining the remembered stories around the Centro, a now closed Spanish cultural center, I focus on how un-institutionalized bottom-up memory and its practices affect everyday life and set up a multicultural reality.

For Sites of Memory workshop participants — read more (password protected)

With the support of the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, Dr. Pamela Klassen of the University of Toronto and Prof. Dr. Monique Scheer, Director of the Ludwig-Uhland-Institut of Historical and Cultural Anthropology, University of Tübingen, are directing a research project on Religion and Public Memory in Multicultural Societies. The project runs from 2015 to […]

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