Shrinking of Farm Products / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

The farm products we consume today in Havana, whether those offered by the self-employed itinerants — carters — or those sold by the State at the farmers markets, have a characteristic in common: they are all shrinking. So I see at different points in the city where I go.

I wonder why, if even two years ago, residents in some areas of the capital had the alternative to buy in two kinds of farmers markets, now we are forced to only one option. For example, in Vibora we residents could buy fruit at the Monoco markets — more expensive — or the one on Sevillano, where there Youth Labor Army (EJT), conscripts serving their obligatory military service who work for the State for a salary, and whose products are cheaper and supposedly smaller and of lower quality.

A few years ago they closed Monoco plaza because they said there were collateral businesses and irregularities there. They delayed — as always happens in Cuba –  around four or five years before re-opening it,with a visible reduction in the sale area and a distinctive feature that now all goods are as famished as praise of the EJT was in the past.

That is, the “fix things” to break them? There is no doubt that the people always suffer, because for more than fifty years, they’ve suffered a permanent blockade put in place by their own government.

19 November 2013