Vivir En Cronicidad: Terminal Living through Cuban Cancer Vaccines

I examine in this article a movement in Cuba known as cronicidad (chronicity), to reimagine advanced cancer as a normal social experience. In Cuba, cronicidad is particularly visible through treatments called therapeutic vaccines designed to slow the growth of tumors. I explore how cronicidad becomes possible through the Cuban socialist integration of biotechnology and public health. Drawing from interviews with and observations of Cuban cancer researchers and clinicians involved with a novel lung cancer vaccine, I argue that cronicidad differs from chronicity as an area of anthropological inquiry in its emplacement of advanced cancer within routine care in Cuba's socialist biomedical system.