HAVANA CUBA.- When the trucks with agricultural products began to arrive at the Red Square of La Víbora, a neighborhood south of Havana, it was still early morning. The custodian, who was sheltering from the cold in a makeshift kiosk, took out a dented thermos and provided hot tea to the stevedores who were unloading bunches of bananas, bags of black beans, and strings of red onions.
At that time, around four in the morning, about twenty people with baskets and shopping carts searched among the trucks, asking if they would sell pork, cartons of eggs or fish.
“The strong jama comes later,” said the driver of an old GM truck from the province of Ciego de Ávila, 500 kilometers east of the capital, loaded with fruit bombs. At seven in the morning, under a light drizzle, the meat truck arrived. People ran behind the vehicle to be among the first in line.
“Get your meat and pork here,” shouted a vendor. “How much per pound?” asked a man. “400 pesos per pound for leg and 300 pesos for ribs.” Many looked at the plastic boxes with pieces of meat surrounded by flies and mentally counted the number of pounds they could buy.
“The government is doing us a disservice by selling a little pork with a lot of fat and bones 100 pesos cheaper than individuals,” said a woman. “They have been living on another planet for a long time. They have to know that 400 pesos a pound of pork is not affordable for a worker, much less a retiree,” someone in line complained.
In any case, the meat lasted less than thirty minutes at the so-called Agricultural Products and Services Fair organized by the municipal authorities of the communist party throughout the country, in commemoration of the ’65th anniversary of the triumph of the revolution’.
Around eleven in the morning, there were only bunches of donkey bananas at 90 pesos and strings of onions at 700. “These fairs are a scam that the government makes to justify that they sold a little food to the population. Those with money get the best deals. Retirees and state workers are left with the stubble, because few have enough money to buy a pig’s head and prepare a broth,” confesses an old man.
On any neighborhood corner, in a queue at an ATM or in a collective taxi, the topics most talked about in Cuba are daily hardship, high food prices and the general shortage of medicines. Although in the last week the most talked about was the macroeconomic plan announced by the olive green regime in the National Assembly of People’s Power, from December 18 to 22 at the Convention Palace, west of Havana.
On the street they call it ‘economic package’ and the most ironic people call it ‘libretazo’. If you ask Rosario, an employee in a pharmacy, her opinion on the new measures, honoring her name, she will respond with a string of criticisms of the government’s management:
“Not even by punishing them with life imprisonment do these culirotos (officials) pay for the damage they have done to the people. How long do we Cubans have to put up with their incompetence? First they screwed us with the Ordering Task and now, when we are starving, that new monstrosity is going to end up burying us alive.”
A private taxi driver, while dribbling over the potholes on Monte Street, argues that “these new measures will be worse than the Ordering Task, because then they raised salaries for all workers, and at least during the first two months, when the dollar was 40 pesos, those who worked for the State verified, at a certain point, that their salary had a certain value. Then inflation ended the mirage. And even those who had money saved in the bank saw how their savings were devalued until they became pocket change.”
“But this ‘package’ is as if a category five cyclone passed through the island. He is going to finish off the farm and the mangoes. When the price of fuel rises, the prices of transportation, food and services will skyrocket. People will be even poorer. The dollar will be quoted at 300 pesos or more. Whoever is saved from the new experiment will be crazy,” says the Havana taxi driver.
Otoniel, a former inmate, states that he feels totally disoriented. “When I went to prison fifteen years ago, there was no internet in Cuba. With 30 pesos you could have lunch at any cafe in the neighborhood. Now the panorama is amazing. A bottle of rum costs more than a thousand pesos, a pound of rice 200 pesos and a pound of white sugar 300. With this madness, violent robberies and crimes will increase. The streets will become a jungle. Hungry people will do the trick: in prison, no matter how bad it is, they give you two meals a day and you are guaranteed a bunk.”
Gustavo, an economist, assumes “that the government will have carried out a feasibility study and State Security will have given it information on what could happen in hypothetical scenarios where discontent exceeds the prevailing fear, since it is very likely that social outbreaks could occur. The authorities do not engage in self-criticism at all. They justify the disaster and mismanagement of basic services with the US blockade. But Cubans are already tired of pretexts and want solutions.”
According to Gustavo, if the new package of measures is approved, “the panorama will be Dantesque, worse than that of the Ordering Task, since it is preceded by five years of economic decline, broad citizen discontent and productive sectors have fallen between fifty and ninety percent. cent, the case of pork. After the Ordinance, in two years, salaries lost between 70 and 130 percent of their purchasing power. Poverty, according to various statistics, affects 72% of the population, including professionals who work for the State.”
The Havana economist predicts that extreme poverty may exceed 30 percent. “In the last four years, 5 percent of the population has emigrated; more than 60 percent of Cubans eat only one meal a day and more than 200,000 people receive social assistance. When the price of electricity and fuel rises By domino effect, food prices will rise and the cost of living will become even more expensive. The salary increase announced for teachers and public health personnel will not compensate for the new wave of price increases. And for the rest of the “State workers’ salaries will continue to be devalued. The dollar will be life insurance like gold or owning a work of art. Hyperinflation will derail the country.”
Anselmo, 84 years old, a street musician in Old Havana, points out that “I have never experienced so much hunger and so many needs as I do right now. Not even in the Special Period. Almost no one was able to celebrate Christmas and very few will be able to celebrate the arrival of 2024, because they have not been able to buy a single piece of chicken. What we are experiencing is surreal. A death in slow motion.”
If the vast majority of Cubans agree on something, it is that the current government generates more crises than solutions.
