Notes
Two institutional and rhetorical facts converge in its packaging to produce a narrow dating window and a rich Cold-War cultural-historical reading:
Fact 1: "Patria o Muerte, ¡Venceremos!" as a slogan. The phrase that gives this brand its name was made canonical by Fidel Castro at the March 5, 1960 funeral oration for the victims of the La Coubre ship explosion in Havana harbor. Castro's "Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!" closing of that speech became the signature ritual conclusion of his oratory and the most-reproduced political slogan of the Cuban Revolution. Any consumer packaging bearing this slogan must therefore date from after March 5, 1960.
Fact 2: Bancec was established by Law No. 793, of April 25, 1960, as the legal successor to the Banco Cubano del Comercio Exterior (Cuban Foreign Trade Bank), a trading bank established by the Cuban Government in 1954 and jointly owned by the Government and private banks. The bank was capitalized at 6,000,000 pesos ($6,000,000) and its purpose was "to contribute to, and collaborate with, the international trade policy of the Government and the application of the measures concerning foreign trade adopted by the 'Banco Nacional de Cuba,'" Cuba's central bank (Banco Nacional). Bancec acted as the Cuban Government's sole agent for foreign trade for less than ten months. On February 23, 1961, by Law No. 930, Bancec was dissolved and its capital was split between Banco Nacional and "the foreign trade enterprises or houses of the Ministry of Foreign Trade," which was established by Law No. 934 the same day. A consumer good imported "POR EL BANCEC" must therefore have been imported between approximately late spring 1960 and February 23, 1961.
The "Venceremos" blade box is therefore not just a shaving consumable. It is witness to the speed of Cuban-COMECON integration in the first revolutionary year. Within months of the canonization of the "Patria o Muerte" slogan, Czechoslovak razor-blade factories were producing custom-branded Cuban-revolutionary consumer goods in Spanish-language packaging for export to Cuba. Within months of BANCEC's establishment as Cuba's foreign-trade bank, that bank was importing Czechoslovak-made Cuban-revolutionary blades into Cuban retail.Notes
The Czechoslovak end. The specific Czechoslovak factory is not identified on the packaging. The major Czechoslovak razor-blade-producing enterprise of the period was Sandrik (with main works in Dolné Hámre, Slovakia, producing cutlery, blades, and small metal goods under socialist nationalization). Other Czechoslovak metallurgical enterprises also produced shaving blades. Identifying the specific factory would require examination of any blade-wrapper insignia or consultation with Czechoslovak industrial-design and trade-archive sources.
