Cuban official calls to reduce food imports
Cuban official calls to reduce food importsUpdated: 2012-01-10 10:45(Xinhua)
HAVANA – Cuba should reduce its increasing food imports, Vice President Esteban Lazo was quoted as saying by official daily Granma on Monday.
Lazo made the remarks during his visit to the La Yaraguana farm, one of the major agricultural centers in the country's eastern province of Holguin.
Lazo said Cuba should develop its potentials to produce crops and import only those foods the island can not produce.
The Caribbean island country spends about $2 billion every year on food imports to meet domestic demand.
Cuban President Raul Castro has constantly said that food supply concerns national security and the country can not continue to afford that amount of money every year after having suffered a serious economic crisis for two decades.
Castro has adopted a series of policies to develop the country's agriculture such as giving state-controlled idle land to private producers, granting loans to producers and removing bureaucratic obstacles for farmers to sell their products.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2012-01/10/content_14414142.htm
Repression still the rule, but Cuba sees year of change
Posted on Saturday, 12.31.11CUBA
Repression still the rule, but Cuba sees year of change
Now you can get a loan, buy a house and — maybe soon — travel abroad more easily. But the Castro government has no desire to ease its authoritarian ways.By Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Joe Garcia, a former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, likes to joke about the chat he might have today with the late Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the powerfully anti-Castro exile lobby.
Garcia says he would tell Mas Canosa that Cuba's rulers have abandoned their dream of an egalitarian utopia, and that even Fidel Castro had confessed that his model of sub-tropical communism "does not work."
He would add that Raúl Castro is now allowing Cubans to start more small businesses, recognizing their right to sell homes and vehicles and even embracing foreign investments in those icons of capitalism — golf resorts.
"Jorge would immediately say, 'It's over. We won!'" said the smiling Garcia, a South Florida Democrat who keeps tabs on developments in Cuba and has made two unsuccessful bids for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Castro critics would disagree strongly and portray the changes as nothing more than lipstick on the rotting corpse of a Soviet-styled economy. Raúl Castro himself timidly calls the changes not "reforms" but "updates" and has vowed to keep central planning as the backbone of the island's economy and prevent any accumulation of private wealth.
Yet the changes clearly reflect an ambitious effort to address the structural flaws of Cuba's communist system, abandon its culture of paternalism and attack its parasitic bureaucracy — without risking the government's power to repress dissent.
In a nutshell, Castro's goal is to slash a bloated state sector that controls an estimated 80 percent of the economy, and to allow more space for small-scale enterprises that can produce more efficiently, pay taxes to the government and often can count on financial support from relatives or friends abroad.
It's not been easy. Pushback from entrenched ideologues and bureaucrats appears to have undercut some of the changes, and cuts in the ration cards that provide basic food items at highly subsidized prices have pummeled Cuba's neediest.
A Catholic church in Havana reported a hefty increase in the number of people at its free lunches in recent months. And the government reportedly stopped disability and other aid payments to about 3,000 people in the city of Santa Clara this year.
But many reforms are under way, and the pace of change increased after a congress of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba in April gave a broad endorsement to Castro's 300-plus proposals for change.
SLOWLY UNDOING NATIONALIZATION
Perhaps the most important reform for the average Cuban was the decision in 2010 to permit an expansion of private economic activity in a country that nationalized every single business in 1968, down to push carts that sold hamburgers.
Today, 357,000 people have licenses for "self-employment" — in tightly controlled categories such as party clowns and street vendors of music CDs — and most have incomes well above the official average salary of $20 a month.
For the first time this year, private entrepreneurs were allowed to hire employees — previously "the exploitation of man by man" — rent some state-owned storefronts and even list their services in the island's phone book, which once rejected them as too "consumerist."
Many state-owned businesses, such as locksmiths, carpentry shops and repair centers for electrical appliances such as rice cookers, will be turned into private businesses, according to an official announcement a month ago.
The government also postponed some taxes and fees and reduced others when it became clear they would drown the new businesses, and promised bank loans to the enterprises and to hire some of them to work in areas like construction.
But the initial rush to obtain self-employment licenses appeared to be slowing down, and official figures indicate that nearly 20 percent of those who recently received licenses in Havana surrendered them later, apparently because they could not make a profit.
Cubans complain that the permitted activities are too limited, that there are no legal wholesalers for the raw materials they require — lumber for carpenters, for instance, — and that some taxes and fees remain unfair. Those who rent rooms to tourists pay the same fees regardless of their occupancy.
0BTAINING LOANS TO FIX UP A HOME
Changes in the government's banking monopoly, which has never offered credit cards, never mind a toaster, also mean that Cubans can now obtain loans to build or renovate homes and pay for materials as well as labor.
Private farmers can open previously unavailable bank accounts to handle their money, and loans can rise above the old limits — and go even higher if the borrower has a co-signer or collateral.
Some of the new entrepreneurs are eager to apply for those loans but less eager to put their money in government banks, amid fears that the government could seize their accounts in case of a financial crisis.
PUTTING FALLOW LAND TO BETTER USE
Castro also stepped up his attack on Cuba's second most vexing problem: the myriad failures in agriculture that forced the island to import $1.5 billion in food last year — estimated at 60 to 80 percent of its total consumption.
As of November, 3.4 million acres of fallow state lands had been leased to 170,000 private farmers. Farmers also were permitted to sell directly to consumers and tourist centers, which pay better prices and therefore help to increase production.
Another change coming soon will increase the limits on the leases from 33 to 165 acres and from 10 to 25 years, and will allow relatives and in some cases laborers to inherit the leases, according to news media reports.
The upcoming change also for the first time would allow the farmers to build homes on the leased land, and promises the government will reimburse the farmers for any improvements should they lose their leases, added the reports.
Yet nearly two million acres still remain fallow and farmers must do most of their business through Acopio, the notoriously inefficient state agency in charge of buying their products and getting them to market — but which regularly allows them to rot on the way to market and fails to pay the producers.
Communist Party officials in some provinces are alleged to be grabbing the best leased acres for themselves and getting all the supplies they need, like seeds and fertilizers, while other farmers get only part of their needs.
HOMES FOR SALE — AND ALSO CARS
Also generating a buzz has been Castro's easing of the restrictions on the sale of homes and vehicles — at times hailed as an unprecedented recognition of private property rights, at times dismissed as merely legalizing what had been going on illegally for years.
The permission to buy and sell homes immediately turned the properties into potential cash and erased the unwieldy requirements for the previously allowed permutas — swaps of homes of roughly equal size or value.
More than 4,000 "for sale" signs had gone up as of late December and the government lifted most restrictions on the sale of construction materials to private buyers, cut prices and made a deal with Brazil's version of Home Depot to import supplies.
The government reported last week that since the change went into effect it had registered 360 homes sales and nearly 1,600 "donations" — most likely efforts to legalize previous sales that did not fulfill all government requirements.
Cuba faces a critical housing shortage, officially put at 600,000 units in a country of 11.2 million people. Many properties have been subdivided many times over the decades to accommodate more families, making for a messy trail of ownership rights.
The government also announced that it registered 3,310 sales of vehicles and 994 "donations" in just the first month of the new regulations allowing the sale of all used cars and trucks.
Previously, only pre-1959 vehicles could be bought and sold without restrictions. Today, all used vehicles can be sold. But new vehicles are sold only to Cubans who are approved by the government and earned their money working for the benefit of the country — like doctors who work in Venezuela.
THE SAME INEFFICIENT CENTRAL PLANNING
Less clear is the impact of Castro's campaign to reduce the direct controls that the government exercises over the economy, and to give the managers of state-run enterprises more autonomy to run their business more efficiently.
The Ministry of Sugar, for example, which ran Cuba's once-premier industry as it plunged into disaster over the past decade — the 2006 harvest was the worst since 1905 — was turned into a state enterprise. So was the island's postal service.
But the new "enterprises" apparently will still depend on the same central government planning system that proved inefficient in the past — in the case of the sugar harvest, failing to ensure the timely delivery of supplies like fuel and spare parts.
Government officials have raised the possibility of allowing foreign investments in the sugar sector, and already have approved foreign financing for half-a-dozen golf resorts to be built on state lands leased out for 99 years.
NEXT UP? MAYBE UNFETTERED TRAVEL
Castro also has said that he's working on the one reform unquestionably and most urgently desired by Cubans — the right to travel abroad without an exit permit that is expensive and must be approved by State Security agents.
Most Cubans also want to ease the restrictions on the return of relatives and friends living abroad, and an abolition of the "definitive exit" category, which punishes those who leave the island to settle permanently in another country.
Castro told Cuban lawmakers on Dec. 23 that he understood the calls for reforms of the migration policy, but said that changes will have to come slowly because of the continued hostility of the U.S. government. Any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. territory is allowed to remain and receives U.S. residency.
CLOSING CLINICS, CUTTING SPENDING
Raúl Castro's reforms have come at a price.
As he slashed government subsidies, he had to cut spending on some of the sectors the revolution still holds out as its iconic "victories" — health, education and welfare — greatly damaged since the end of the Soviet Union's massive subsidies in 1991.
Several neighborhood clinics are being closed in favor of more regional facilities, universities are cutting enrollment in some study areas and a dozen or so food items once sold through the ration cards are now available only at much higher prices.
What's more, some of the reforms announced by Castro, now in his sixth year in power after succeeding ailing brother Fidel, were postponed or dropped amid reports of stiff opposition from within the ruling hierarchy.
A plan to lay off 500,000 state employees — a whopping 10 percent of the public payroll — between October of 2010 and April 1 of 2011 was postponed without a new deadline. And a scheme to tie wages to a worker's individual productivity, announced with much fanfare in 2008, has not been mentioned for nearly two years.
Meanwhile, the basic outline of Cuba's political system has not changed: one-party rule, tight controls on of the mass media and varying levels of repression for those who actively oppose the government.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS STILL HARD TO SAY
To Castro's critics, all the changes amount to worthless cosmetic surgery, a confession of failure in 53 years of what the Castros call "building socialism." After all, they say, private enterprise existed and houses could be bought and sold under the Batista dictatorship, before the Castros' 1959 revolution.
To supporters, they are part of a slow but sure-footed campaign to eliminate a number of senseless economic constraints, move toward a more productive brand of socialism and keep the Cuban Communist Party in power.
The only certainties are that Cuba is in the midst of complex changes — which may or may not lead to a more productive brand of socialism — and that the Castro government has no intention of easing its authoritarian and coercive political system.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/21/v-fullstory/2568650/repression-still-the-rule-but.html
Cuba makes more reforms to retail sector
Cuba makes more reforms to retail sectorReutersBy Marc Frank | Reuters – Mon, Dec 26, 2011
HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba will open up more of the country's retail services to the private sector next year, allowing Cubans to operate various services such as appliance and watch repair, and locksmith and carpentry shops, official media reported on Monday.
The measures are the latest by President Raul Castro in his attempt to reinvigorate Cuba's struggling Soviet-style economy by reducing the role of the state and encouraging more private initiative.
A resolution published in the official gazette on Monday said the new reforms would take effect on January 1.
Earlier this year, the Cuban government turned over some 1,500 state barbershops and beauty parlors to employees.
Former state employees now pay a monthly fee for the shop, purchase supplies, pay taxes and charge what the market will bear.
Shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, all businesses in Cuba were taken over by the state. But since the former leader handed power to his brother in 2008, the policy has been openly criticized as a mistake.
Ordinary Cubans have long complained about dismal state services, including small retail services, which they say have deteriorated because of a theft of resources and a shortage of sufficient supplies from the government.
Cuba has been moving over the last year to liberalize regulations over private economic activity. Since then, tens of thousands of Cubans have taken out licenses "to work for themselves," a euphemism used by the government to describe operating mom-and-pop businesses.
Cuba plans to have 35 percent to 40 percent of the labor force working in the "non-state" sector by 2016, compared with 15 percent at the close of 2010.
Raul Castro, faced with stagnating production and mounting foreign debt, has made clear the economy must be overhauled if the socialist system he and his ailing brother Fidel installed is to survive.
Moving most retail services to the "non-state" sector is one of more than 300 reforms approved by the ruling Communist Party earlier this year to "update" the economy.
The measures aim to introduce market forces in the agriculture and retail services sectors, cut subsidies and lift restrictions on individual activity that once prohibited the sale and purchase of homes and cars.
On Monday, the Communist Party daily Granma said the moving of thousands of state retail services to a leasing arrangement would be done gradually throughout 2012.
Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told a year-end session of the National Assembly last week the number of state jobs would be reduced by 170,000 next year, with 240,000 new jobs likely to be added to the "non-state" sector.
Thousands of state taxi drivers are expected to move to leasing arrangements next year. Some state food services are also expected to be allowed to form cooperatives.
(Editing by Kevin Gray and Eric Beech)
Venezuela puts Cuba in charge of medical purchases
Venezuela puts Cuba in charge of medical purchases
Venezuela agreed to put Cuba in charge of medical purchases for an expansion of the South American country's pharmaceutical industry, Telesur reported.
One of 12 health-related agreements signed during a meeting of the bilateral commission in Havana puts the Cuban government in charge of purchases for the construction of pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in the South American country, Venezuelan Health Minister Eugenia Sader said.
The bilateral commission agreed Dec. 19 on 47 joint projects worth $1.6 billion, including in energy and agriculture. Neither government released any details.
As part of an effort to substitute medical imports, Venezuela's Servicio Autónomo de Elaboraciones Farmaceúticas (Sefar) announced last year it was planning to build a joint venture plant with Cuba for various basic drugs, and a joint venture plant with Portugal for antibiotics. According to the Sefar Website, the state institution is planning to produce Atenolol, Vitamin C, Ethambutol, Ibuprofene, Loratadine and other drugs.
Sader was in Europe in early December to coordinate purchases for the project. The health ministry plans to begin some production as early as May 2012, she said.
This is not the first time Cuba is in charge of medical purchases for Venezuela. Among others, Venezuela relied on Cuban expertise for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of purchases for the Barrio Adentro medical program and the Misión Milagro eye surgery program.
http://www.cubastandard.com/2011/12/20/venezuela-puts-cuba-in-charge-of-medical-purchases/
Cuba buys Vietnam rice
Cuba buys Vietnam riceSaturday, 17 December 2011 19:28
HANOI: Deferred payments of up to one-and-a-half years have been key to keeping Cuba among Vietnam's largest rice buyers in recent years, a Vietnamese state-run newspaper reported on Saturday.
Vietnam allows Cuba to pay for its rice imports from between 360 days and 540 days late, making the Southeast Asian nation Cuba's top rice supplier, officials were cited by the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper as saying at a government meeting on Friday.
The cash-strapped Cuban government has embarked on a programme to cut import costs by increasing food production and it hopes to slash imports of the staples rice, beans and powdered milk by 50 percent by 2013.
But the island imported 404,000 tonnes of Vietnamese rice between January and October this year, up 16 percent from a year ago, while the import value jumped 44.6 percent to $215.8 million, Vietnam's Agriculture Ministry data show.
Cuba has been the third-largest buyer of Vietnamese rice after Indonesia and the Philippines this year. In 2010, it bought 472,300 tonnes of Vietnamese rice, up 5 percent from the previous year, according to Vietnamese customs data.
The world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand plans to ship between 6.5 million tonnes and 7 million tonnes of the grain in 2012, below a record shipment of 7.2 million tonnes expected this year.
Fidel Castro’s Experiments / Iván García
Fidel Castro's Experiments / Iván GarcíaIván García, Translator: Regina Anavy
It causes chills to know that the historic leader of the Cuban revolution did research on different crops to improve nutrition for the Cuban people.
I don't want to be a harbinger of ill omen. But reviewing Castro's "experiments" in 52 years of olive-green government, he didn't come up with any that were successful.
Let's review the record. Let's leave aside his social, military or political essays, which are being published in a collection. Let's forget that insanity of designing in vitro a communist society having the village of San Julián, Pinar del Río, as the test case.
Let's avoid his militant manias of directing, from a distance of 10,000 kilometers, the theater of operations of the civil war in Angola. From a mansion in Nuevo Vedado, sitting in a black leather easy chair, pointer in hand, facing a massive full-scale model full of toy soldiers and tin cannons. And like a common grocer, ordering the distribution of candy, ice cream and chocolates to the troops.
Let's overlook his promises that in 2000 we would have an industry on the level of the U.S. Still, listen to the excited masses, gullible and faithful, cheering wildly at one of the many public plazas built for him to give his speeches. Yes, that is a personal achievement of Castro: As of today, Cuba is one of the countries on the planet with the most plazas per square kilometer for political acts.
The little father of the country also embarked us on fierce media campaigns against the foreign debt in Latin America, back in the 80′s. He said that for such a financial hardship he would send the bill to the continent.
And that from the third world we would land in the fourth. He was wrong. Right now, Latin America is growing, and Brazil and Argentina – who would have thought, comandante? – are studying the option of loaning money to rescue the faltering European economies.
It's Cuba that isn't taking off. His list of broken promises is long. One night of revolutionary partying at the Karl Marx theater, after putting a finger in his mouth, looking at the smooth ceiling and doing the math, Castro promised that every year 100,000 homes would be built.
A troop of intellectuals, engineers and judo coaches, who never in their lives had picked up a trowel, were converted by decree into construction workers in order to build their own homes. And those of others.
Let's jump over the shoddy workmanship and frightening design of those buildings. There was no question of style. It was sheer necessity. In the workplace, the Union and the Party gave the apartments to the most loyal, in meetings comparable to a brawl among lions in the African jungle.
You might think that we are very demanding with this old man of 85 years. In the end, anyone can make mistakes.
But the ex-president has put his foot in it many times. In all fields. The most painful has been in regard to food. A sleepless night, back in 1964, brought from France the agronomist André Voisin, to implement on the island his new concepts about agriculture and the crossbreeding of cattle.
Later Castro said that the"Frog" knew less than he. And he sent him back home. As always, he laid the ground rules. He ordered the construction of air-conditioned dairies in the Valley of Picadura, on the outskirts of Havana, and said we would be eating so much beef that we would suffer from gout.
And that we would have malanga, fruits, vegetables … And microjet bananas. He published cookbooks with Ecuadorian recipes, so that Cuban housewives could take out part of a banana and prepare fufú (mashed), ladybugs (banana chips) and tostones.
With the river of surplus milk, after exporting a few thousand tons, we would produce Camembert and Gruyere cheeses of such high-quality that France and Switzerland would pale with envy.
As for sugar, once our national pride, he was its gravedigger. The beginning of the end of a secular tradition was initiated by the comandante in 1969-70, with his harvest of 10 million tons and the introduction of new and "more resistant varieties of cane."
So now, in the 21st century, we occasionally import sugar from abroad. And finally to put the lid on the jar, we don't even take advantage of the many qualities of sugar cane and its derivatives. The bagasse furniture sold in hard currency is imported from Brazil.
Coffee was another one of his whims. Thousands of habaneros planted Chilean coffee along and across the capital. Together with fresh air, we would be washed with the smell of strong, sweet coffee, said the optimistic local leaders.
Yes, today the average Cuban has coffee for breakfast. But mixed with peas. The depressed state coffers can't afford the luxury of spending 40 million dollars to import a better bean.
Therefore, it applied the fiscal scissors. For the common people, of course. Officials in their offices have thermoses with coffee of superior quality. Those who can buy it in the "shoppings" (hard-currency stores) also drink good coffee.
When in 1990 that dark period began, which still floats in the air of the republic, known as the "Special Period in Time of Peace," – in fact a war without the thunder of cannons – the drawer of the bearded one's "food solutions" was opened.
Those were hard years. The Cubans were going hungry and fell into bed with optic neuritis. The old drank tea with leaves of orange or grapefruit. Which made those with low blood pressure, like my grandmother, dizzy, so they had to lie down.
Through the ration book, they began to sell food that they knew bordered on rubbish, baptized with original names. Soy hash. Meat paste. Fricandel. Root pasta. Hollow hotdogs. Cerelac. The invasion of the palate continued with soy and chocolate yogurt.
When on the night of July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro's personal secretary, Carlos Valenciaga (where are you, Charlie?), looking mournful, announced that his jefe was retiring, many thought that the experiments had come to their end.
But no. The incombustible leader reappeared with his gibberish and forecasts. He prophesied that the world would end in a world war. He couldn't wait to enter the fray. Which he liked. The issue of food.
And now he's telling us that he's seriously investigating a solution? To nourish the "sacrificed population that is suffering the rigors of the blockade as never before." Which are double. The gringo and the regime.
People have received his" research" with concern. If in 52 years his attempts weren't successful, would they be now? Let's pray that he will be a passive grandfather. That he will play with his grandchildren and take a nap. That he will write his memoirs and surf the Internet.
But please, stop the experiments. Give it up, comandante.
Translated by Regina Anavy
November 26 2011
Vietnamese farming model replicated in Cuba
Vietnamese farming model replicated in Cuba
(VOV) – Cuba plans to expand its rice cultivation to 40,000 hectares using Vietnamese farming technology, announced Roberto Cabello, a representative from Cuba's Ministry of Agriculture.
The expansion is under an agricultural cooperation programme between the two countries.
Vietnam has transferred its rice cultivation technology to Cuba since 2002 and three stages of the project have been completed so far with positive results.
The fourth stage will be deployed in the 2011-2015 period to ensure the rice supply for the country.Cuba currently imports about 60 percent of the total 1 million tonnes of rice consumed in the country annually. Vietnam supplies 400,000 tonnes to this Latin American nation each year.
http://english.vov.vn/Home/Vietnamese-farming-model-replicated-in-Cuba/201112/133065.vov
Cuba to Enlarge Farm Program to Boost Rice Output
Cuba to Enlarge Farm Program to Boost Rice Output
HAVANA – Cuba plans to enlarge to 40,000 hectares (98,765 acres) a Vietnamese-aided effort to expand production of rice, official media said Monday.
Given the positive results of the joint project, a new phase is currently being analyzed, according to an Agriculture Ministry official cited by the state news agency Prensa Latina.
Up to now the program has had "concrete results in the areas of demonstration, consultation and production," the head of the Vietnamese part of the project, Bui Van Duong, said.
Bilateral cooperation in this field was launched in 2002, first in the eastern province of Granma and then was extended to other areas on the island.
Vietnam is the chief supplier of rice to Cuba, according to government officials.
Cuba must import more than 400,000 tons of rice annually, 60 percent of the total amount consumed by inhabitants of the island, where the grain is a fundamental part of the daily diet.
Each of Cuba's 11.2 million residents consumes an average of 11 pounds of rice per month, or more than 60 kilos (130 pounds) a year per person, or roughly 600,000 tons, according to official figures. EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=449583&CategoryId=14510
On Cuba’s Farmers, Lettuce and Hotels
On Cuba's Farmers, Lettuce and HotelsDecember 1, 2011Haroldo Dilla Alfonso
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 1 — The recent authorization given to different types of cooperatives to sell products directly to the tourism industry is positive and significant for two reasons.
Firstly, this is a measure that introduces a note of rationality to the Cuban economic system – after five decades of its having been incredibly mediocre and bureaucratic.
Farming and livestock products of whatever kind has been only recognized as payable merchandise after they're recorded by bureaucracies designed for that purpose, with all the waste entailed. Even though this rigidity has weakened somewhat in the heat of the unending crisis, in essence, it continues in this vein.
I remember one case that I observed directly in the small town of Chambas (in Ciego de Avila Province) while conducting sociological research in the late 80's. There's no doubt that it would have inspired the great dramatist Eugne Ionesco, as well as his theater of the absurd.
Though in Chambas there was a port close to the Punta Alegre fishing operation, which supplied fish to a cooperative, those same fish had to be transported many miles to the provincial capital, where they then had to be registered as payables, thereby becoming "real." Subsequently they had to be transported back that same distance to Chambas.
However, since the trucks' cooling systems were poor, the freight would often return spoiled. This meant that the locals couldn't eat fish, not unless they turned to the black market. It was here that the fishermen of Punta Alegre (many of whom lived in Chambas) became responsible for shortening the path of those unfortunate denizens of the sea.
Fast forwarding to the 90's – amidst the terrible crisis that Cuban authorities euphoniously refer to as the "special period in a time of peace," I had the opportunity to learn a little about the issue of foreign investment in hotels in Varadero.At one of them I talked at length with a young Spanish manager, a Taylorist technocrat who had decided to siphon off as much surplus value possible from each of his Cuban employees in the shortest amount of time possible.
I remember that the person in charge at the front desk was a former head of the philology department of a university in the middle of the island. This was someone who not only knew English and French, but who had read Racine and could recite Walt Whitman by heart. Nonetheless, her legs were always swollen because of having to stand up all day.
Then too there was this manager of a jewelry store (also a former university professor), so refined and intelligent, capable of selling a wedding band to an 80-year-old priest. This woman would complain and carp daily about her frustration with a job that only allowed her to survive with some low level of comfort while others fell victim to poverty and deprivation.
The young Spanish manager was delighted with his situation, except with the purchasing of the hotel's fresh fruits and vegetables. He had to buy them from an intermediary who lived in nearby Cardenas, though this person was usually short on produce and could only offer wilted lettuce and overly ripened mangoes. The challenge wasn't about what this junior manager wanted, but what he could get.
With a mischievous smile, he confided in me that he found out a way to obtain many products directly from places like the Bahamas, Cancun and Florida (a fact that I hope won't be taken into account as circumstantial by US congress member Ileana Ros-Lenthinen).
The new measure allowing direct sales should have had a positive effect on reducing costs and on the formation of a chain of products and services vital for local development. This is a way to boost tourism as an engine for economic growth – and for that reason alone I think it's important and beneficial. I also believe that steps of this nature should occur in all directions, not just in relation to agriculture.
But there's a second point that I think is even more important: its systemic impact.
The Cuban system — economically and politically — has always been based on the existence of a severely centralized vertex and a fragmented and isolated base. In this centralization has resided the capacity to control and prevent critical disruptions.
As such, if we review the history of the system, we'll see that preventive banning and prohibitions have been more frequent and effective than the direct repression of dissent.
In politics this has been very clear: Each institution is a vertical structure which in turn feeds into the political center. There are no horizontal relationships or communications. Everything ultimately issues into a very small cupola of power occupied by a leader (for whom we parade in front of every May Day) surrounded by a narrow circle of subordinate collaborators (who vary according to circumstances).
For decades this leader and his inner circle were the only legitimate producers of politics and ideology. The rest of us have been nothing more than consumers.
The economy evolved in the same manner. Everything began with a bureaucratic and centralized plan, which was constantly violated by that same bureaucratic and centralized structure.
Operating exactly like the regimented political system, the market was fragmented to avoid free contact with its agents. Moreover, starting in the 90s, the economy was also marked by two different currencies. This opened the door to the promising field of currency exchange profiteering, which was actively taken advantage by officials metamorphosing into the new bourgeoisie.
All of this explained the Spanish manager's anxiety and his final decision to seek overseas vegetables, despite having excellent agricultural fields only a few miles away from his tourist ghetto. All around was land teaming with farmers ready and willing to produce, but they were hamstrung by inspectors and police officers intervening to commandeer the produce into state warehouses.
With this recent measure, another step forward has been taken in the defragmentation of markets. This is moving in the same direction as the new law that will deregulate the housing market. Therefore, this represents another serious step in that other process — which will be long and painful — of the construction of capitalism in the country.
But let me reiterate: It's a positive step. It will help boost the economy and food production, all of which is extremely important for a society which, because of mismanagement, has been reduced to poverty and an alarming degree of vulnerability.
If there ends up being more food produced in Cuba and most Cubans eat better, this is a positive. If there will be more autonomous actors — even if only in this limited area of ??the economy — this too will be positive. And if these actors engaged in production and accumulation wind up employing workers and paying them better than what the state does, then it's so much the better.
In addition, all of this creates a less rarefied atmosphere for advancing an agenda of national reconstruction, one of a democratic republic of justice and solidarity.
Yet obviously this is not what is suggested by the reforms of the general/president, whose anti-democratic pedigree no one has the right to doubt. His agenda is not that of democracy. This is because the expected autonomy will be in the market, not in politics. And it's not certain that a commercial invigoration of the economy will lead in a linear direction to a democratic opening.
There will be production, yes; and liberalization (meaning more liberalism), but not more democracy.
In fact, I would dare to argue that the production of democracy would be dysfunctional, because the opening taking place in Cuba, one aimed at achieving optimum performance, must coexist with a working class and a citizenry without rights and without the organizational infrastructure or experience to raise demands.
Borrowing from the infamous anti-Cuban metaphor posited by Granma editor Lazaro Barredo, the public is like insistent wide-mouthed nestlings, but in this case they would find themselves with their mouths closed shut.
In politics, the Cuban government will only concede what's necessary to assure that its economic model functions in its behalf. Hence we saw the agreement with the Catholic hierarchy, the release of prisoners and the recent relaxation of internal migration – all of which is ultimately a better scenario for the housing market to work, the laundering of fortunes and converting treasures into capital.
Soon we will see a few liberalizing steps with regard to emigration. These are necessary to attract "foreign savings," which represents the money of emigrants, arriving in the form of remittances or investments.
But that's it. The Cuban authorities, their intellectuals and their subservient underpaid bloggers have been very clear in that the opening of democracy and the rebellion of the island's "indignant" already took place in 1959 – way back 52 years ago.
CUBA PROMOTES AGRICULTURE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
CUBA PROMOTES AGRICULTURE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
HAVANA, Dec 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Cuban agricultural workers are allowed to sell their products directly to tourism companies beginning today as part of the reforms promoted by President Raul Castro to boost agriculture and ensure national security.
The purpose of the initiative is to "simplify links between primary producers and consumers and save transport costs," according to the official daily Granma, a newspaper of the ruling Cuban Communist Party (CCP).
The permission for farmers to offer their products directly to tourist facilities is part of the economic adjustments undertaken by the president since 2008 and approved at the Sixth Congress of CCP in April.
The programme includes several measures related to agriculture that are aimed at increasing domestic production and reducing imports.
The country imports each year 80 percent of food it consumes.
Since taking office in 2006, Raul Castro has described the country's food production as a "strategic issue of national security."
He has made efforts to reform the economy of Cuba, which was hit by the collapse of the Soviet Union, its former main market, in the 1990s.
One of the first steps of the president was to distribute the idle land to new farmers.
Official statistics showed that until last Sept, the government had delivered 1.3 million hectares of idle land, 79.2 percent of which has been put into use by about 146,000 new private producers.
Last week, the Cuban National Statistic Office reported an increase of 7.2 percent of the country's agricultural production during the first nine months of this year.
The figures also showed the output increase of private farmers by 15 percent in a year.
The president also tried to stimulate agricultural production by granting loans to farmers who needed them.
According to Vice President of the Cuban Central Bank Irma Martinez, the national bank system is ready to enlarge the possibilities of credits to individuals. — NNN-AGENCIES
24 Hours of News / Regina Coyula
24 Hours of News / Regina CoyulaRegina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
It's excellent news that we will soon have a 24-hour news channel. Positive at first sight, but for me, so disenchanted with the information policy of my country (as a consequence of the political policy), the existence of of 24 hours of uninterrupted news transmission is beyond my imagination.
We have the 2-hour morning news, one-hour midday news, the prime time of 30 minutes and a bulletin at midnight. Ah! And the Roundtable. That, not to mention the paper press and the radio stations, one of which was originally meant to be a 24 hour news station.
Despite so much supposed information, we are the most disinformed people in the world. Most of the time the transmission of "information" covers the achievements in urban agriculture, the anti-mosquito campaign, the doctors in Haiti, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the imminent collapse of capitalism and the global campaign for the release of the "five heroes."
Here in the blog I have said enough on the subject, because it's exhausting to hear that we are the most educated people in the world, and with respect to the news they treat is as if we were feeble-minded. I watch "The Best of Telesur" which is aired here a day late and hell, they offer news, on this program I find — with the delay, the point of view — that there are a ton of things that happen in the world and they don't exist in the numerous Cuban news outlets.
A work by Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera takes this on, originally published in the Catholic magazine Lay Space and then reproduced in numerous media about the theme of the press. Aside from the profession of faith that he makes to say what he says, I would subscribe to his point of view. It strikes me that although the country's leadership has called on the press to play a more active role, the press hasn't moved a single millimeter, including the directors of the organs that continue the same as always. Is it that in the press they also confirm those responsible for the mistake without renouncing or removing them?
November 18 2011
Recent Comments