Juan Carlos Alom's "República de Cuba" scrutinizes the commodification of national identity amid economic precarity, capturing in stark monochrome a calloused, grime-encrusted hand proffering a modest stack of Cuban coins—emblems of state sovereignty etched with revolutionary icons—that evoke the devalued currency of aspirations deferred, where the palm's weathered topography mirrors the archipelago's eroded promises of equity and abundance. Through this intimate framing, the photograph disrupts the grandeur of republican symbolism, transforming monetary tokens into talismans of subsistence, interrogating the dialectic between ideological mintage and the corporeal toll of scarcity, as if the hand itself negotiates the fragile exchange rate of history's weight. Extending conceptually to motifs of haptic memory, the work posits the grasp as a site of quiet resistance, where tactile possession confronts systemic dispossession, compelling a reflection on the republic's fractured ledger in an era of perpetual austerity.]