In Havana, the good medical specialists always have at hand two kinds of treatment for their patients.
“If it is a person with family abroad or of high purchasing power, I propose that he go to the international pharmacy to buy the medications in foreign currency because they are of higher quality and more effective. Those who cannot, then I prescribe the treatment approved by the ministry of Public Health with medicines of low quality manufactured in Cuban laboratories or of Chinese origin,” reports Rigoberto (name changed), an allergist with more than two decades of experience.
When you visit one of the 20 international pharmacies located in the Cuban capital, you can find a wide range of medicines patented by pharmaceutical companies of the United States.
From eye drops, syrups, tablets and ointments. Their prices instill fear. Lidia, an engineer, browses the shelves meticulously in search of Voltaren eye drops, indicated by the ophthalmologist to begin a treatment of her mother who underwent cataract surgery.
“It costs a little more than 10 CUC (the minimum monthly wage in Cuba). I have to buy two bottles, 20 CUC, which is my monthly salary. Thanks to relatives living in Europe I can get it,” says Lidia.
In the same pharmacy, Yamila, a housewife, waits to pay for 15 envelopes of Inmunoferon AM3 stabilized in an inorganic matrix that doctors usually recommend for allergic patients or to raise the body’s defenses after a prolonged treatment with antibiotics.
“It is shameless of the government to sell it so high. My sister who lives overseas sends me the boxes with 90 envelopes and each one costs her 18 dollars. In the international pharmacies they sell you 15 envelopes for 8 CUC. And then they fill their mouths talking about the blockade (economic embargo) of the United States against Cuba,” says Yamila.
On the island, the “blockade” is at fault for almost everything that does not work: the dirtiness of the streets, empty warehouse shelves and cracked buildings in danger of collapse. A perfect alibi where lazinesss, low productivity and the lethal Creole bureaucracy are hidden.
A government never had such a powerful weapon for justifying its impotence. “Whether lack of soap, toilet paper or condoms, the blockade is to blame. There exists a vast catalog of jokes at the expense of the blockade. And it has become a joke,” says a newspaper vendor.
“The blockade,” says a pre-university student, “affects only people who have no access to hard currency. With hard currency everything is in the stores. From toiletries, food, computer equipment and domestic appliances.”
When you travel the stores located inside the Miramar Center complex, you will notice the wide range of products with US patents.
In a repair shop for electronic equipment, refrigeration and home appliances of the CIMEX chain, which is controlled by military firms, on San Lazaro and Carmen, in the 10th of October township 30 minutes from downtown Havana, you can see great publicity about the qualities of RCA, Hamilton Beach, Black & Decker and other brands patented in the United States and which sell like hotcakes in the hard currency stores.
Speaking of the embargo has become a cliche. People mechanically repeat the official line. I asked 7 people between ages 18 and 35 about the reasons the United States government instituted it, and they did not know how to explain it to me.
“I believe it was because Fidel promulgated socialism in Cuba.” “I don’t really know, but it is unfair, their fault that many Cuban children do not have the medicines they need.” “They should lift it immediately, so that these people (the Castros) will not continue the same old story (line),” were almost all the answers.
No one knew how to answer why then Coca-Cola and HP printers are sold and the regime acquires a bus with parts and additions Made in the USA. But the average Cuban is as tired of the embargo as of his aging rulers.
They intuit that the blockade is not at fault for the marabou weed that overruns the countryside, the scarcity of oranges or the astronomical prices of meats, fruits and vegetables in the farmers’ markets. They live with their backs turned to the furious anti-embargo lobby that is happening on the other side of the pond.
Fermin, a cobbler who works in a doorway of Calzada in 10th of October, was unaware that a delegation of the United States Chamber of Commerce visited the island and, among its objectives, is to create mechanisms for granting credit to small businessmen.
“You speak seriously or it’s a joke. I cannot believe that I am a small businessman. I doubt that if they someday award loans to individuals, we will be the beneficiaries. The favored will be the same as always, the children of ministers and retired ex-military who have businesses. We screwed will always be screwed,” vows Fermin.
What it has to do with, in this new dynamic to improve relations and relax the embargo, is that there exist multiple legal tricks and legal created by the olive green regime in order to control the emergence of a class with economic power.
In the first utterances of the Economic Guidelines approved by the last Communist Party Congress in April 2011, the government of General Raul Castro plays its cards face up, signalling that the measures are designed so that citizens involved in self-employed economic activities cannot accumulate capital.
Evidently, the “fine print” has not been read by the politicians and businessmen who in the United States are carrying out the campaign to lift the embargo.
The cobbler Fermin is clear: “Here the private worker who makes a lot of money is labelled as ’criminal.’ And what awaits him might be jail.”
Ivan Garcia
Translated by mlk.
21 June 2014
