Havana.- The custodian rests the back of the chair on a container located on a street in the neighborhood of La Víbora, south of Havana, and with a piece of cardboard he fanns himself to try to mitigate the heat and scare away the mosquitoes. Next to him, a bottle of frozen water wrapped in a piece of towel, half a pack of strong cigarettes and a small plastic bottle with coffee.
Music from a cheesy Turkish soap opera can be heard from a nearby building. When the lights in the apartments go off, the darkness is absolute. A swarm of mosquitoes goes on the attack. Alfredo, the 73-year-old security guard, pulls down the sleeves of his old shirt and looks at the clock.
He still has eight hours left on guard. The night before she ate spaghetti, without tomato sauce or cheese, just with a spoonful of soy hash made by a Mexican company based in the Mariel Special Zone.
The container, loaded with cases of beer, occupies half of the street. Alfredo, an engineer who retired eight years ago, receives a pension of 1,780 Cuban pesos that is barely enough to buy, through the ration book, 7 pounds of rice, 10 ounces of black beans, 5 pounds of sugar, a daily bread of 80 grams and “when Internal Trade, the ministry that manages hunger in Cuba, remembers, they sell us a pound of chicken, a packet of coffee, a liter of oil and five eggs, every other month.”
Every two days, Alfredo stands guard. He must ensure that the container is not stolen. The owner of the business, “an ex-military friend of my son, got me this ‘pincha’ (job) three months ago. He pays me 8 thousand pesos a month, a blessing. And at the end of the month, he gives me a package of pork and chicken made in the USA. The guy is quite mysterious. I don’t ask what he does or how he gets the money. Overnight he went from running a barracks to dressing up and driving a second-hand Ford brought from the United States. The ‘blockade’ (US economic embargo on the Havana regime) works for some, for others it doesn’t. At least this shark bathes and splashes the others,” Alfredo describes.
MSMEs like flowers
In the last three years, more than eleven thousand small and medium-sized private businesses have sprouted in Cuba, like flowers. Some entrepreneurs repatriated from the United States or Europe and, thanks to competitiveness, earn money in a market “that, due to the drop in food production and the fact that there is no supply of goods or services, despite high prices, 70 percent or more of the population is forced to buy in those particular stores,” says Sandy, who after 23 years living abroad decided to open a business in the land of his birth.
In his opinion, “the ideal would be for the employees who work for the State, more than three million people, to be paid better and to be able to buy basic foods such as powdered milk, chicken and eggs. MSMEs found a model that has worked. We sell in pesos, which attracts a greater number of customers than if we sold only in foreign currency, although later we have to resupply and are forced to buy dollars or euros on the street, since there is no legal exchange market. On the ‘left’, a dollar can cost 280 pesos today and 390 pesos in a month. “That affects the final price the customer pays.”
Sandy clarifies that people believe that they raise prices because they want to make money at all costs. “But anyone who has a business prefers stable prices and that the greatest number of users can buy from them. What an entrepreneur earns depends on the amount he invests and the diversification of his businesses. In the first year and until the middle of the second, he earned 5,000 to 6,000 dollars a month. A ‘million’ in Cuba, not much in a first world country. When the government authorized MSMEs, a month after the protests of July 11, 2021, it was forced by circumstances. GAESA’s businesses had fallen due to the pandemic and the intensification of the embargo adopted under the Donald Trump administration. Tourism and remittances were at a low point. MSMEs were a lifeline,” he explains and adds:
True owners
“Some camouflage themselves with front men, but everyone knows that the real owners of the MSMEs are relatives of Raúl Castro and other big guns. Juan Guillermo, son of the late Juan Almeida, manages the beer business. It is said that for a good part of the beer that enters the country they pay bribes. And so it happens in other areas and with other characters. I estimate that 30 percent of all entrepreneurs have the approval of the government. But I consider that that 30 percent controls the most profitable businesses, has access to the MLC market, financing sources and other privileges. “It is an unfair competition, from lion to monkey.”
A former CIMEX official agrees with Sandy that MSMEs have been a resource for earning dollars “in a government sector that is like crazy making cash for when the final hour arrives. At that moment you will see how relatives and front men of important officials will appear who have become owners of very lucrative businesses. GAESA was never interested in investing millions of dollars in agriculture or food production in the country. MSMEs are a profitable business and in the long term they pay for themselves with the export of the surplus. But the rulers have a short-term mentality. They want to make money fast. If you invest 20 million dollars in producing avocados, which will then be sold in pesos, it will take several years to recover that investment. It is better to buy boxes of chicken and boneless pork in Miami and then, out of hunger and need, sell them on the island at profits ranging from 50 to 100 percent. What the olive green elite is interested in is filling their pockets.”
Squeeze pockets
In this scheme of profiting from misery, dozens of small businesses that offer food in all provinces have been inserted, involuntarily or not. “Before opening my shop I did a marketing study. The focus was to capture as potential clients those 20 or 30 percent of Cubans who receive dollars or earn large amounts of pesos. Government inefficiency has pushed other sectors that do not have sufficient purchasing power to buy from private businesses simply because they have no other options. Any business owner knows this and unconsciously takes advantage and sometimes, artificially, keeps prices high to make quick money and balance their losses with the increase in tariffs decreed by the authorities,” Sandy says.
The regime does not have a coherent strategy when it comes to promoting agricultural harvests and food production at the national level. Each year, the State allocates more than 30 percent of the budget to GAESA for the construction of hotels, 16 times more than for education, public health and agriculture. They use the population as hostage to economic and ideological nonsense. And to their relatives on the other side of the pond to pay the bills. Those who do not receive dollars, like the custodian Alfredo, manage as best they can.
