Sancti Spíritus residents have nothing good to say about the rationed coffee being sold at local stores. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 16 October 2023 — The relief among Sancti Spíritus consumers was short-lived following the news that coffee would once again be available at stores selling rationed products. After being out of it for months, government warehouses finally began distributing it recently. The product, which arrived at state-run stores in October, comes in a plastic package with no label and crudely sealed edges. With a grainy texture, an odd flavor and little aroma, it is far cry from what most people would call coffee. “It leaves a sludge in the bottom of the cup that looks like river mud,” complains Lismary, a 32-year-old Sancti Spíritus resident who is among the thousands of frustrated customers.
“When a neighbor told me about it, I ran to the store, but once I saw the color, I had a bad feeling. It was very black, like it was burnt. When I opened the package, I realized it didn’t smell like much of anything. Maybe a bit like burnt bark.” Her biggest disappointment, however, came after she had brewed her first cup. “My grandmother was dying to try a shot but, when I gave it to her, her immediate reaction was, ’It neither tastes like coffee nor smells like coffee.’”
My grandmother was dying to try a shot but, when I gave it to her, her immediate reaction was, ‘It neither tastes like coffee nor smells like coffee.’
Lismary, who lives alone with her grandmother, took a photo of the two packages she had brought home. “I posted it to a neighborhood WhatsApp group, Kilo 12, that alerts us when something is delivered to the warehouse or to our local stores.” Critical comments from her neighbors poured in over the weekend, all complaining about the new coffee and making fun of its poor quality.
The complaints were directed at the Cabaiguán Roasting Plant, which recently resumed production after having stopped work last June. “What are they adding to this coffee? Charcoal, dried logs, burnt coconut shells?” wrote Luis Ernesto, a Kilo 12 member, on the WhatsApp thread. “This is happening to us because they don’t respect us,” replied another group member. Interspersed among the posts was an ad. “I have La Llave and Bustelo coffee, real coffee, home delivery. Nothing like the no-name concoction,” wrote the seller, fishing for customers in the churning waters of discontent.
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“The seal of the container seemed to be fine, but when you got closer it was clear that they had broken it and then put on tape.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 15 September 2023 — The owners of the restaurant Las Delicias del Paseo, in Sancti Spíritus, were bitterly surprised last week while waiting for some sacks of wheat flour bought abroad. The product, which was going to be turned into bread and pizza, was stolen during the transfer, a practice that increasingly affects both private businesses and the State.
“We made the complaint but it’s a formality, because they are not going to return the money invested nor are we going to recover the merchandise,” an employee of the private restaurant, who prefers anonymity, tells 14ymedio. “The gap they have created for us is huge, because all that was bought in foreign currency, and we had already planned our menu based on the arrival of that flour.”
“The seal of the container seemed to be fine, but when you got closer it was clear that they had broken it and then put on tape [adhesive tape] so that it remained in a position that looked like it was intact. But as soon as you touched it, it broke, and it was obvious that it had been opened and that they had gotten into the container,” she says.
The theft of the bags of flour could make some of those menu items disappear in the coming days or force their owners to buy from another small business, an operation that means greater expenses
In the spacious living room of Las Delicias del Paseo, and in its external portal, the dishes most demanded by customers are pizzas, pastas and snacks. The theft of the sacks of wheat flour could make part of those menu items disappear in the coming days or force their owners to buy the product from another small business, an operation that means greater expenses. continue reading
A few days before the loss of the flour, the security seal of another container had also been violated in its transfer to Sancti Spíritus, and the thieves stole almost a hundred boxes of frozen chicken quarters that were destined for sale in state shops. Just a few hours later, the subtraction of dozens of sacks of rice destined for the sale of the rationed market was also detected.
The merchandise is lost somewhere in the Cuban geography between the port of Mariel, in Artemisa, and the Brazilian capital of São Paulo. “There is a Bermuda triangle where some of the loads disappear, especially when it comes to food,” the source explains. “We have asked for extreme security measures, but our claims fall on deaf ears.”
“The mechanism works like this: the authorities of the port of Mariel alert the owner of the business that he has merchandise to receive,” the employee tells this newspaper. “Then the individual hires the state company Transcontenedores to look for the merchandise and take it to where the customer says, but he must also notify Cubacontrol to supervise the operation.”
“When the cargo arrives, Cubacontrol is the one who verifies that everything has arrived intact at the destination. If they notice any violation of the security seal, they have to call the police,” he explains. “Then the investigators arrive; they take the fingerprints that have been left in the container, also those of the employees who are working on the transfer and unloading. A lot of deployment but few results, so far.”
A worker in the administrative area of Transcontenedores explains to this newspaper the chain of responsibilities in this type of transfer. “The first one who is arrested every time something like this happens is the driver, because he is the one who must watch over the merchandise.” The state worker considers this to be “unfair, because in the end they are the victims of the assaults they suffer on the roads and the tricks of the thieves.”
The first one they take prisoner every time something like this happens is the driver, because he is the one who must take care of the merchandise.
“To prevent these thefts, the drivers add their own locks to the containers, in addition to the security seals they already have,” clarifies the woman who prefers not to reveal her name. “Before, they also put on chains from one side to the other that better guaranteed the inviolability of the cargo, but the Police ordered them to be removed because they were dangerous for motorcyclists and drivers of other vehicles.”
“Drivers don’t want to travel on the roads at night, but sometimes they can’t do anything else. The roads have very dark areas and are in very bad condition, sometimes they have to slow down a lot and those times they are barely moving are taken advantage of by thieves,” she adds.
For this employee, “the danger of theft is not only on the roads, in the same place that they dispatch it to you you can’t lose sight of it because the same longshoremen can steal part of the merchandise. The departure from Havana is also a very complicated point of the journey because there are gangs that trawl the area, hunting these opportunities to steal.”
The woman adds that, “the driver can’t even stop to eat or urinate, because there are ninjas on the road. They are groups of three or four thieves, with a lot of agility and who know the terrain well. Sometimes they hide on the sides of the railroad crossings where the trucks have to stop.”
Theft practices also include the use of “motorcycles to approach from behind, get on top of the container when the driver stops for some need and even purposely punch the tires so that they have to stop,” he explains. “But the worst does not end there. When they arrive at the destination they still have to take care of even their shadow, because even those who must keep an eye on the merchandise can be the ones who steal it.”
It is quite likely that the dozens of sacks of wheat flour from Las Delicias del Paseo, which disappeared somewhere between Mariel and Sancti Spíritus, have ended up in the black market, where other private businesses buy the product to turn it into pizza and bread. The cycle of illegality does not stop.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The old man is one of those who can’t pay 5 pesos for someone to stand in line for him while he rests in the shade. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 17 August 2023 — They begin to arrive very early. Some carry a bottle of water, others a bench to sit on, and all drag a cart to carry the tank of propane in the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo, Sancti Spíritus. The only shade several meters around is provided by a primitive building built in the 80s. The rest is mud and sun. The line assembles itself on the mud and under the arrows of the harsh sun. Some have got a place through the Ticket application, but most line up the old-fashioned way: one behind the other until it is their turn.
The wait time for the purchase of the tanks by the family nucleus is 26 days, but it is never met. “Now it takes you up to a month and a half to have the right to a new tank,” says Evaristo, a retiree who alternates propane “with a lifelong coal supply” to be able to cook food at home. The old man is one of those who can’t pay 5 pesos for someone to stand in line for him while he rests in the shade. For that amount and 100 more, some informal entrepreneurs even offer to take the full tank to the door of your house.
“Disabled!” shouts the employee from the small cubicle where the cylinders are dispatched. Workers line up people with disabilities and customers who got the ticket through electronic gateways. “They’re supposed to bring 100 tanks every day, but what’s coming are 20 or 30 small ones,” explains a young man waiting in line. Umbrellas and long sleeves can be seen everywhere. Nobody wants his skin scorched in the August sun.
When someone gets to the counter, the line moves slowly. Some bring their stools closer to the store, others shorten the distance with the person in front of them, and there are also those who come out of the shade next to the building to show that they are still in line and keep their position. It’s a well-learned choreography with decades of “lining up until you die,” says Evaristo. continue reading
The time for the sale exceeds 15 minutes for each consumer because they must register everything on an old laptop, check that the person really gets a new quota of propane and compare the number on the tank with the one in the database. “There are more requirements than for obtaining the Communist Party card,” a woman mocks. An old woman approaches dragging her cart through the mud and claims priority for belonging to the Cuban Association of Limited Physical Motor Ability. But there are already several like her waiting.
When noon arrives, the employee’s scream is an explosion that sends the line into pieces. “That’s all for today, we’re out of tanks!” sums up the bad news. Long faces, murmurs and phrases of discomfort are heard everywhere. Tomorrow everything will be repeated from the early hours of the morning and so on, with no hope that the line to buy propane will become shorter or easier one day.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The norm will take into account whether the rice grower has met their cereal production targets. (EFE/Archive)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, August 17, 2023 — With the lack of rain, the departure of Vietnamese technicians and, now, a new state regulation that will limit the amount assigned for producers’ consumption, the rice-growing region of La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus, is living through difficult times. This norm, which has not yet gone into effect, is part of a new package of measures to prevent the cereal from ending up on the black market while the country is suffering a profound food crisis.
Actually, most farmers who grow rice in La Sierpe use state lands — leased to them under usufruct — hence must abide by any norms of the Ministry of Agriculture and other official entities. Disobeying any regulation of this kind could cost them their use of the land and the loss of what they have already invested in those lots.
“How can they know if the rice we separate for ourselves is enough or too much for our own consumption?” asked Daniel, one of the producers who will be affected by the new measure, which is being prepared to be applied in the coming months. “They say we are selling it on the black market but it’s that in my house, for example, each time there is less to put on the plate and rice is what we have left.”
Several officials from the area have visited the farmers to warn them of the new norm, although they have not talked about quantities for the moment. “They have come house to house and say the machete will come down in the coming months. They say that next year we will need to adjust to a smaller quantity,” explained Daniel to 14ymedio. continue reading
Authorities have warned that they will base their calculations on the number of people in the producer’s family and whether they have other crops such as root vegetables, fruits or vegetables that could complete the household food supply. They will also take into account whether the rice producer has met the cereal production targets and whether there have been previous complaints that they have diverted part of the harvest to the informal market. The formula for arriving at the total number of sacks each farmer can keep is not simple and raises suspicion.
Producers believe that the motivation for this reduction is “the low production and that people are very unsatisfied with the price of rice in the markets. Of course, now they want to punish the same people as always because the rope breaks where it is thinnest,” says Daniel. “What is going to happen with this is that farmers will leave, in the same way that the Vietnamese left.”
In 2022 a rice project began in La Sierpe in collaboration with Vietnam, which supplied equipment and machinery to producers in several regions of the Island, with the support of dozens of specialists and technicians. They bet mainly on the plains of Sancti Spíritus in this collaboration and there they made dikes, cleared canals and trained local specialists.
However, after a few years during which cereal production increased significantly, the yields of rice fields took a nose dive and was unable to meet the expectations of the Vietnamese, who also had to deal with the convoluted state bureaucracy and the inefficiency of Empresa Agroindustrial. The final blow to the project was the current fuel crisis.
“Here, most rice producers are new generation usufructuaries and a few are cooperative members,” an administrative employee of the company explained to us. “They are the ones who took the land when the Vietnamese left and the state wanted to increase production. They were fields that had been worked for this crop, which is hard and difficult, and also very dependent on rains and irrigation,” said the employee.
“Everyone knows that if producers do not have extra earnings selling some of the rice they declare as being for their own consumption, very few people would want to work in these fields because it is a lot of effort every day for the low price the state pays for each sack,” said the woman.
After the departure of the Vietnamese, the area’s productivity has gone off a cliff. If in 2015 they managed to produce up to five tons of cereal per hectare, in 2023 they barely get three. In the agricultural markets of Sancti Spíritus this week one pound of rice sells for 160 pesos and the product leaves a lot to be desired among clients due to the high proportion of split grains.
Now, with the announcement of the upcoming measure many are thinking, “pack up everything and leave the crops half way,” said Daniel. Either way, he has let his close family and friends know to purchase and store rice. “It could reach 200 pesos or more per pound before the end of the year,” he predicts.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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The vehicle does not have solar panels but a generic charger and a and a mess of cables whose design is a source of jokes for the locals. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spiritus, 21 June 2023 — Almost three months of testing have not been enough for the electric minibus designed by the Armed Forces in Sancti Spíritus to stop being an experiment. The prototype of the vehicle, announced with great fanfare by the official press in April, is about to enter a rough terrain for its operation: the blackout season.
Those who manage to ride the eleven-seater minibus now wonder how the authorities will be able to propel the vehicle in the hottest months, with an overwhelming deficit of electricity and the multitude of passengers waiting to be picked up on the busiest route in the city: from El Chambelón to the hospitals, by way of the Central Highway.
The vehicle does not have solar panels but rather a generic charger — it incorporates energy very slowly — and a mess of cables whose design is a source of jokes for the locals. “They’re more expense than benefit,” one of the drivers complained aloud on Wednesday, while commenting on the sign that the garish yellow minibus has on its chassis: “100% electric.”
It is not known if the military will take the step to mass production. Technically, the bus continues to circulate in test mode, although it does so on a fairly well-paved and straight road. On the Central Highway – which divides Sancti Spíritus into two halves – there are also several key points for the population, such as the bus terminals, the hospital area and the space of the agricultural fair. continue reading
In April, when the local press praised the “clear coherence” of the army and its Military Industrial Company, it predicted that it would not be long before the yellow vehicles filled the streets of the province. It was, they said, a step to alleviate “the depressed state of public transport.”
They asked the authorities, of course, for “financial support” to maximize the potential of the “invention,” whose technical name is VES002. “The project is in the process of technical evaluation in order to know how it functions and the operating parameters that allow defects and problems to be corrected in advance,” said Escambray.
It was planned that, if everything went well, the military would start the production, taking advantage of the import of “five electrical supports,” starting points for the assembly. Once the “small fleet” was built, the Armed Forces planned to delegate the operation of the vehicles to an allied private enterprise. As of now, the business continues without much success.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The death of the horse forced all the passengers to leave the traditional vehicle, which had the name “Abyss of Passion” painted on one side. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spiritus, 25 May “”The coachman was whipping him to keep him going even though the cart was loaded with passengers,” says Yosvani, a young man from Sancti Spíritus who on Thursday afternoon witnessed the death of a horse that was pulling a carriage in the Jesús María area. “He was very strong but he couldn’t take it anymore and he fell down, I even saw a tear come out of his eye when he was already on the ground.”
The lack of fuel, which has affected the island for months, is forcing Cubans to resort more to other means of transportation. “Here we have always moved in horse-drawn carriages, but now it is no longer a choice, but the only possibility,” admits an old man, who witnessed the collapse of the animal and his death. “What these animals are experiencing has no name.”
The death of the horse forced all the passengers to leave the traditional vehicle, which had the name “Abyss of Passion” painted on one side. They all walked away looking for other transportation to reach their destinations. Only the coachman, his assistant and the immobile body of the animal on the pavement remained there.
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The application “still has many flaws that have not been resolved, and the Cadeca (currency exchange) workers know this but don’t care.” (Cuba 360)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 11 May 2023 – The App ’Ticket’, launched in Cuba in December 2022 to facilitate the electronic processing of appointments in both public institutions and private businesses, increasingly displeases customers and even one of its creators, Jesús Daniel Saura Díaz.
A few days ago, the latter expressed one of the harshest criticisms, describing the tool, developed by the state-owned Xetid (Information Technology Company for Defense), as “the monster I helped create.”
The young man confesses that today he no longer feels “the same level of satisfaction and pride” that he had when he helped create the tool. In a post on social networks, he explains that the platform “was conceived as a fresh and innovative tool that contributed to society and that fulfilled the motto ’It has never been so easy’,” with the aim of allowing entry anywhere, whether it was a restaurant, a play, a paperwork office or a business. However, this became distorted.
“It was not created in order to become the new digital ration book, nor to distribute resources or sell combos of food items, much less to sell dollars or fuel, who would think that?” lashes out the computer scientist, who continues: “Many will say that it was adapting to the situation of the country, but I say that if we always adapt to the situation we’re never going to get out of the situation because we’re not going to have the tools to get us out.”
In his opinion, the app poorly serves “the Cuban living in poverty and scarcity who also never escapes politicization.”
One of the examples he gives is that Ticket “should be free for the end user and only charge providers for the service, infrastructure and maintenance,” something that does not happen today. In fact, the most requested services are sold.
This is the case with Aurelio, a young man from Sancti Spíritus, who paid 50 pesos [$2] for a three-month license to be in the “virtual store” managed by the application. This allows him to get much cheaper products, like a can of cooking oil at 50 pesos[$2], water at 12 pesos [$.50], a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of detergent at 230 pesos [$9.58], “prices from before,” in his words — unimaginable in the informal market, where inflation prevails – -and without having to spend the night in front of the state warehouses, waiting in line for them to put the supplies out on the shelves. continue reading
“For me it is quite useful and has solved certain problems and obstacles” the young man concedes. “I have many things to do; I don’t have time to be watching the virtual stores, when the supplies come out. The application has a functionality that puts you in line, and the day they give you to buy in the virtual store is your day, and you can buy without any problem.”
The average waiting time for that is more than a month. Aurelio also uses it for the purchase of a cylinder of liquefied gas — “it helps a lot, you don’t have to spend weeks and weeks in line” — and for the Cadeca (currency exchange), something that is, he says, “a good business”: “You go, you buy the euros at 120 pesos and sell them outside at 180, and you earn 5,000 or 6,000 pesos, depending on how the currency is doing.”
All in all, he also has criticism: “As an application it is poorly designed. All services are scattered, one under the other, scrambled, hundreds of services. It supposedly has a search engine but it doesn’t search anything.”
Another problem is that once Ticket gives you a turn and you enter the Waiting Room, it only notifies you with a bell icon, and only if you access the app. “If you were busy that day and didn’t look at the application, it’s easy to lose your turn because it doesn’t let you know if you don’t sign in,” he says.
Ricardo, a 76-year-old Havana retiree, believes that despite Ticket, the same corruption and “sociolismo” [’friendship-ism’*] that the tool sought to eradicate still proliferates. “I went to a notary’s office in El Vedado to do a procedure and they told me that they are only attending to customers who have logged a turn through that application. But it was obvious that there were people coming in before others, which they did by “making a payment directly to the guard,” he narrates.
And he continues his complaint: “If you can’t verify that the one who lined up since the early hours of the morning is the one who is going to enter the notary’s office, and anyone can appear saying that he got a turn on the Ticket app, how can you verify that it is true? The rest of the people who arrive can’t know if it’s true or a trick to get in after you pay the employees.”
Not even the Cuban News Agency (ACN), in a note that aimed to extol the virtues of the app, hid its drawbacks. “Although customers recognize the value of Ticket for the purchase of MLC [freely convertible currency], many on social networks question the transparency of the virtual process and the time it takes to get the long-awaited Ticket for a turn at the Cadeca (curency exchange).
The article highlighted that on the Island there were 40 Cadeca branches that organized turns through the application, which manage an average of 764 daily requests but also collect “non-conformities.” Specifically, there are “statements on social networks” that report “failures to access the platform or edit user data, criticize the lack of response to their concerns, and some have even complained about not having received the notice to buy and then were automatically left out of the line.”
The waiting time to carry out the operation, the note says, “varies depending on the number of people in the Waiting Room [the area where the turn is recorded] and the availability of currency to carry out the transaction.” Thus, in the Santa Clara Cadeca, which has the largest number of registered customers, the average waiting time between one exchange and another is 273 days, while in the one in San Antonio de los Baños it is 74 days.
In Tribuna de La Habana, where the note was reprinted, users’ comments were mostly negative. “I have a friend who doesn’t have a cell phone. So, who gets his turn?” asked Jorge Luis. “They must speed up sales; waiting up to four months or more is too long,” Rey Mo wrote.
For Ibis Araujo, the application “still has many flaws that have not been resolved, and the Cadeca workers know this but don’t care. I think that there should be protection for the customer, who, after several months of waiting, loses his turn due to difficulties with the application.” Vladimir González Pupo complains that “before it was free, supposedly to help, and now you have to pay to be on hold. I think it’s disrespectful.”
Days later, a report in Invasor took stock of the implementation of the tool in Ciego de Ávila and highlighted “the convoluted lines,” which don’t work. “We cannot tell the story with a tone of total satisfaction, because the reality is, if we’re talking about computerization and integration between institutions, everything still does not come out like it’s requested,” reads the provincial newspaper.
The article lists how the jumble of services managed by Ticket began to expand, for example to notarial appointments or the sale of liquefied gas at Cupet points of sale.
It also criticizes the “weak point” of payment, through EnZona, with three possible subscription plans: 12 pesos for 14 days, 20 for 28 days or 50 for three months [24 pesos = $1]. “The mere fact of having a single payment option is, clearly, a limitation that should be well evaluated in the face of future transformations,” says Invasor.
Although the official report praises Ticket’s work in ending the lines, it does not mention the application it replaced, Portero [Doorman] one of the tools of the so-called “struggle against the coleros,” [people paid by others to stand in line for them] launched in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. This app was used to record what day a customer accessed a store and, thus, if he behaved like a reseller. However, neither Portero nor Ticket have been effective so far in avoiding the diversion of merchandise [i.e. theft by employees] in various state stores.
*Translator’s note: Source Wiki: “Sociolismo” (“partner-ism”), also known as “amiguismo” (“friend-ism”), is the informal term used in Cuba to describe the reciprocal exchange of favors by individuals, usually relating to circumventing bureaucratic restrictions or obtaining hard-to-find goods.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Vietnamese technicians in Sancti Spíritus. (Granma/Archive)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 2 May 2023 — The residents of La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus, glued their eyes and ears to national television this weekend while the news of the official visit of senior Cuban officials to Vietnam was presented.
The tone disseminated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was exalted. “For Vietnam we are still willing to give even our blood,” Roberto Morales Ojeda, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party and former Minister of Public Health, said in Ho Chi Minh City.
What many residents in La Sierpe expected was a mention that would give them hope for the return of the Vietnamese technicians, who, in the middle of last year, broke their collaboration agreement with the Island to support rice production in the area and packed their bags to go home.
“With the departure of the Vietnamese we all felt a loss,” laments Diosdado, 68 years old and a resident in the vicinity of the Agroindustrial Company of Granos Sur del Jíbaro. “They arrived 20 years ago but got tired, because this was worse than plowing the sea; it was plowing in a sea of inefficiency,” says the farmer, one of the producers of the municipality who benefited from the agreement between the two countries.
The collaboration project began in 2002, and, in addition to providing equipment and machinery to Cuban producers, it kept dozens of Vietnamese specialists and technicians in Cuba. The area of La Sierpe was the main focus of this collaboration, and dikes were built, canals were cleaned and local specialists were trained.
But, over the years, the performance of the rice fields failed to meet the expectations of the Vietnamese, who also had to deal with the clumsy state bureaucracy, the lack of a stable supply of fuel and the inefficiency of the Agroindustrial Company. The final blow to the relationship occurred last year, when the hydrocarbon crisis deepened. continue reading
“The Vietnamese technicians demanded a quota of fuel to keep working, advising and connecting directly with what was happening in the fields,” Diosdado tells 14ymedio. “But the amount they needed almost never arrived, and then they were told that they had to supply it themselves, buy it abroad and bring it to the Island.”
In the end, “the Vietnamese did not renew the contract, as they had in previous years, and the technicians left,” an employee of the administrative area of the Agroindustrial Company tells this newspaper. “The Communist Party bosses gathered us at the beginning of this year to tell us that the Vietnamese were leaving, and they warned us not to say anything about it.”
The company’s national employees were faced with a problem. “They had to be sent to look for farmers in the area who wanted to request part of the rice cultivation area in usufruct, in order to save the current campaign, but they could not be told why the Vietnamese were no longer there,” explains the state worker.
“But it hasn’t stopped there. Now we are in the middle of a dispute with Vietnam because, since the agreement was not renewed, they want to take back a lot of the equipment they had brought,” he says. “Without those machines, we will have to go back in time to harvest the rice.”
In the nearby Mapos Basic Unit of Cooperative Production (UBPC), which was also part of the project, some affiliated producers feel the departure of the Vietnamese is the prelude to the collapse of the sector in the province. “What had been achieved was the result of their insistence and industriousness,” acknowledges a local farmer, who prefers anonymity. “They were very persistent people, who got up in the morning and immediately went to the fields. They followed every step of the rice crop.”
“It was possible to improve performance a lot after they arrived,” admits the farmer. “Now there are almost no more than three tons of grain per hectare, but when the project with the Vietnamese was at its best, back in 2015, up to five tons per hectare were extracted. It seemed that we were never going to lack rice in the province, and it’s hard to believe the situation we’re in now.”
In the Sancti Spíritus agricultural markets this week one pound of the grain was sold at 160 pesos [$7]. “And it’s not even good rice; it has a high percentage of broken grains, and customers buy it because there’s nothing else, but it’s a product that looks more like animal feed than something to put on a table at home,” he says.
In the port of Nuevitas, Camagüey, another employee of the commercial department confirms that “the Vietnamese took out a good part of the rice that was harvested in La Sierpe to export it. It was part of the agreement: they kept a percentage of the harvest and sold it on the international market.” According to this source, the non-payments on the Cuban side were due to tons of the product that were left for national consumption, but the expense was never repaid to Vietnam.
In December of last year, when the Vietnamese had already left, the official press alluded to the debacle that the sector was experiencing and predicted that for the cold season it was intended to plant only about 7,500 hectares of the up to 13,000 that they had reached with the Vietnamese collaboration. They added that La Sierpe had been “hit” by a “contraction of resources that endangers a scenario of optimal development in Cuba for the cultivation of rice.”
“Of the 7,500 hectares provided for in the cold-planting plan until February, around 2,600 hectares are protected, but for the rest there are no inputs. The producers are going to risk planting the area by alternative, biological means,” Edemir Hernández Meneses, technical productive director of the Agroindustrial Company, acknowledged at the time.
Reality seems to have further sunk the poor forecasts. “We didn’t get the seeds on time, and there is no fuel to irrigate or to transport the workers, not to mention the fertilizers. There were farmers who risked planting without knowing if they were going to be able to get what was necessary to achieve the harvest, but most said no, rice cannot be grown this way,” says Diosdado.
“Today’s visit to the Coop Mary market and the Smart N Green Joint Stock Company shows us how much more we can do in Cuba,” Morales Ojeda, writing from from Vietnam. posted enthusiastically on his Twitter account on Monday. Thousands of kilometers from there, in the plains of Sancti Spíritus, rice farmers also know what to do, but they don’t have the resources to achieve it.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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“Actually there are nine ATMs and they are not located in all the towns but in the center of Sancti Spíritus.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 17 April 2023 — The assertion of the financial authorities of Sancti Spíritus, through the official press this Monday, that there is no shortage of cash in the banking offices comes up against, once again, the testimonies at street level, which deny that this is the case .
“I am going to be categorical in this, none of the Banco Popular de Ahorro entities has ever stopped paying salaries due to lack of money. It may be that somewhere they are supposed to pay on the 7th and have done so on the 8th, but they have been paid,” María Efigenia Caballero, director of the province’s Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA) told the Escambray newspaper, referring to the rumor on the streets that state workers will not be able to collect their salaries due to lack of cash at ATMs.
Ladys Mora García, a bank employee, confirmed that there have been delays in some payments and her response gives clues to the real problem. The Cuban peso is worth less and less and more money is needed, so it is necessary to place more and more cash in ATMs. “In our banks there is money, but the salary amounts are very high, you have to organize the issue of withdrawals. Before we had a discipline, 72 hours in advance the banks had the possible breakdown of the cash they needed. That’s what there is to handle it,” she added.
The same explanation flies over the entire article, which numbers the BPA ATMs in Sancti Spíritus at 11, many of them old and overexploited, but operating – they maintain – normally. This, however, according to a man from Sancti Spiritus who lives on the northern outskirts of the city and who spoke to 14ymedio, “is simply a lie”: “Actually there are nine and they are not located in all the towns but in the center. For example, I have to travel around six kilometers to get to an ATM, and it’s not always working.” continue reading
María Efigenia Caballero, deputy director of the bank in Sancti Spíritus, told Escambray that “the BPA standard is that ATMs are available 85% of the time 365 days a year and 24 hours a day” and that “the rest is to restock them, keep them on line.” Lydia, a neighbor from the center of the city, denies it: “Between the blackouts and maintenance, most of the time they are not working.”
This newspaper confirmed that, this weekend, money could not be withdrawn from ATMs in the city due to lack of cash availability. The workers of the branches affirmed in the official press this Monday that the problem occurs precisely at those times, when there is no one available to load the bills.
“Exchanging the drawer takes time and during that time they are kept out of service. And they ran out of money because people made a lot of withdrawals, like last weekend, which coincided with a holiday and with the days when salaries are paid,” the official explains.
The deputy director accepts that high denomination bills are sometimes missing, but affirms that they have never run out of money. “The withdrawal levels that are produced today due to inflation are very high for the denominations that the ATMs deliver and that causes us to have to replenish many times. This is not so complicated during working hours, but when it occurs on weekends the colleagues have to come from their homes,” she defends herself.
Another young man explains that the arguments that it is the weekend does not make much sense: “Many times you go and the ATMs do not work because there is no power, other times the lines are immense or someone’s card got stuck. The other day I took out a thousand pesos and the machine gave them to me in bills of 10. Imagine the bulk of the money and the time it takes to complete the operation.”
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A state establishment in Sancti Spíritus that sells in pesos and belongs to the Caribbean Store Chain. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 15 April 2023 — “Between 11 in the morning and one in the afternoon you have to disconnect the central electricity and have zero consumption.” This is the information that state companies in the province of Sancti Spíritus are receiving. The measure, implemented a few days ago, aims to drastically reduce energy expenditure in search of a desperate palliative to the fuel deficit that Cuba is experiencing.
“Now the guidance, unlike other times when we were asked to turn off some lights and air conditioners, is that we must shut down the central power to avoid consumption between those hours,” explains an employee of a branch of the Cimex Corporation, managed by the Cuban military, which deals with part of the retail trade in the province.
“In our office, from 11 in the morning until one in the afternoon, the central electricity must be cut off, which complicates all our work that involves computers, printing invoices and other tasks that need electrical equipment,” laments the worker.
In a nearby office of the state telecommunications monopoly, Etecsa, the panorama is repeated. “When last year we were told that we had to turn off the lights and air conditioners, people looked for solutions,” says a young employee who prefers anonymity. “In order not to have to suffer from the heat, the workers brought their own fans.” continue reading
Instead of saving electricity in the two regulatory hours of blackout, in many of these premises consumption remained unchanged. “We went from using two air conditioners to having eight or nine fans connected. What was saved on the one hand was spent on the other,” acknowledges the man, who works in the area of attention to the population.
“We closed and did not accept more customers at that time, but we had to stay inside the office, which was hellish because of the heat, especially in the summer,” he says. “Apparently they realized that a lot of electricity was not being saved, and now the administrator will be in charge of turning off the central power. No one will be able to connect their fan or charge their cell phone.”
The measure joins others that have been taken in the province and throughout Cuba due to the fuel crisis that the Island is going through. “We have a very diminished fleet of merchandise delivery trucks; we have had to change the hours of supplying the stores, and now there are two hours a day when we will not be able to do anything,” says the employee, summarizing the situation in the provincial subsidiary of Cimex.
Sancti Spíritus, a territory that connects the flow of vehicles arriving from the west to the east of the Island and vice versa, has experienced a notable decrease in traffic. “Now you spend hours to get from the city of Sancti Spíritus to Trinidad because the drivers don’t have fuel,” says Mirna, age 59, whose family is divided between the provincial capital and the beautiful Valle de los Ingenios.
“Sometimes I go for days without seeing my daughter, as if we lived in different provinces. If you look at a map, her house is right there. With no cars or trucks, we are incommunicado within the province itself,” she adds.
Mirna does not seem very worried about the repercussions that the new energy-saving measure will have on the lives of workers in the state sector. “They don’t do much anyway,” she concludes. “Here it’s been a long time since you could do paperwork or budgets during those hours, so it’s more of the same.”
Next Monday, Mirna’s husband, who has an administrative position in a municipal office, will have to “turn off the electricity” at work. “He can’t do anything else. It’s what they’ve told him and what he has to do, but he already told me that during that time he’s not going to stay inside the premises, which is an oven. He says he’s going to sit in the park.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Among the city’s most prosperous private businesses is La Cuevita, which takes its name from a big open-air market in Havana.
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus 3 April 2023 — “There have always been people with money here,” says a vendor of household utensils in Cabaiguán, a town in Cuba’s Sancti Spíritus province. He is talking to a recently arrived visitor from another province, who is surprised both by the wide range of products the vendor has for sale as well as their high prices. “Everything here is imported. What the ’mules’ don’t bring in, we get from mipymes (small and medium-sized private businesses, or SMEs).”
Among the merchandise in the store, which is located in a house dating from the early 20th century, are small metal shelves for food storage, kitchen utensils, wall decorations, clocks and containers to store everything from food to tools to cosmetics. “Tell me what you’re looking for and we’ll have it in Cabaiguán,” he tells the visitor, whose only interest is finding a matchbox. “A simple one or a flashy one?” asks the merchant.
The wide selection of goods in Cabaiguán is due, in part, to the large number of area residents who have Spanish nationality. “This is the Canarians’ Cuban perch,” says Leopoldina, an 82-year-old retiree who was among those who met last February with the Canary Islands’ president, Angel Victor Torres, during his trip to Cuba. Having a Spanish passport has changed people’s lives here because it allows them to bring things over and sell them.”
Among the city’s most prosperous private businesses is La Cuevita, which takes its name from a big open-air market in Havana. The business is located in a very large house, which extends across and entire block. Each room houses a different shop, each specializing in clothes, dishes, shoes or household appliances. There are no dark or dangerous corners. The store has ample lighting, smiling employees and a wide variety of products. continue reading
“They’re well stocked. The clothing stores are all very well designed so people don’t leave without buying something. They’re cozy, well organized and easy for customers to find what they’re looking for,” says Jorge, a resident of Sancti Spiritus who is on a short visit to the town. He admits he is impressed by the wide variety of products, things he cannot find in the provincial capital. “I’ll be coming here every time I need to buy something.”
“I’ll be coming here every time I need to buy something,” claims a resident of Sancti Spiritus, who was impressed with to the wide variety of products for sale in Cabaiguán. (14ymedio)
La Pinta, named for one of Christopher Columbus’s ships, is one of La Cuevita’s main competitors. Customers enter through what was once a family’s living room. Subsequent rooms display hardware, women’s clothing, children’s toys, mobile phone accessories, imported coffee, vitamins and nutritional supplements. Most of the merchandise comes from Mexico, Panama or other neighboring countries.
“In this town we’re advanced,” boasts a resident who is selling a wide range of bathroom hardware items: sinks, hoses, drains, and sanitary fittings. “Before, people here used to live off the land but now they live off this,” he says, pointing to packages of white cement and some silicone tubes that are part of his extensive stock. “We’re the town of the three C’s: Cuban, Canarian and commercial. A list to which one snarky passerby adds, “And costly too.”
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A shipment of Cuban lemons from a private producer being prepared for export by Frutas Selectas, a state-owned company. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Mercedes Garcia, Sancti Spiritus 23 February 2023 — “To say I am irritated is an understatement. I’m as hot as a bonfire,” says Luis Mario Godinez, who with his father and brothers produce charcoal from marabou weed in Cabaiguán, a town in Sancti Spiritus province. The family has been waiting for more than four months to be paid the hard currency they are owed for their product, which was sold for export.
“We did everything we were supposed to do. We delivered a high-quality charcoal, and delivered it on time, but we still have not gotten the hard currency payment we were promised,” says Godinez. He blames Cubaexport, a state-owned company that he describes as “the bottleneck where the money is stuck.”
In June 2020 the government began allowing privately owned companies and cooperatives to export goods they produced provided they did so through state-owned companies. Just two years later small and medium-sized private companies got the go-ahead to sell technology and energy-related services directly to overseas customers.
Since then official media outlets have reported extensively on farmers who export lemons and avocados to European markets but have said little about payment delays by government intermediaries.
“For God’s sake, just pay us,” implores a producer in Santo Domingo, a town in Villa Clara, who went through a state-owned company, Frutas Selectas, to export his mangos and citrus fruits. “They’ve been telling us it will get here soon but we haven’t seen the money.” continue reading
One farmer explains, “There’s a lot of frustration because no one has explained what’s going on. Some say the Ministry of Economy and Planning has put a stop on MLC* payments but no one has come here and explained that to us directly. I’ll begin harvesting again in a few weeks but, if this doesn’t get resolved, I don’t think I’ll be exporting again.”
Frutas Selectas is the same company that, three years ago, announced with great fanfare that a Cuban farmer had exported his lemons to Spain. At the same time 14ymedio confirmed that the fruit never made it to Spanish stores.
“My customers are extremely upset,” admits an employee of Commercio, who asked to remain anonymous. His company handles shipments of honey, charcoal and fruits from privately owned farms and state-owned companies that export their products. “Over and over they deliver what they produce but they don’t get paid,” he says.
“And it’s not just happening to private producers. State companies are also not getting paid or are seeing export agencies delay paying them the hard currency they are owed,” he says. Among the companies most affected are Apicuba, which is involved in honey production; La Estancia, whose focus is juices and jams; Tenpiel, a tannery and leather producer; and Empresa Pesquera, a fishery.
“We’re the ones who have to face private producers and state-owned companies to tell them they’re not getting paid because there’s no hard currency,” says the Commercio employee. “This isn’t a new problem. These delays have been going on for more than four months.”
The situation is the same in Cienfuegos province. The Plasencia brothers supply mango to the Arimao Citrus Company, which became the province’s “premier exporter” three years ago when the Ministry of Foreign Trade adopted new rules allowing private farmers to place their products in overseas markets, provided they went through official channels
After delivering tons of mangos, to be made into pulp for export to Europe, the family says it has yet to see a single MLC. “The process is very complicated,” explains Victor, the younger Plasencia brother. “We’re waiting to be paid what they owe us so we can buy a new water pump for the farm.”
“We’ve been told the priority now is to use MLC to pay the tobacco farmers,” he says. “To make matters worse, in addition to not paying us, they now want to charge us in MLC for many of the things we need to operate. But if we never manage to get our hands on hard currency, what are we supposed to do?”
“The opinion of most farmers in this area of the state agencies is negative,” he adds. “We believe they’re unnecessary, slow and very bureaucratic. Some even call them parasites. The question everyone is asking is: Why can’t producers export directly? Why can’t we have more autonomy and control the profits we make from selling our products in Spain or Australia?”
On one thing the Plasencias are adamant: “Next time we’re going to sell our mangos in Cuba. We’ll make less money, and we’ll be paid in pesos, but at least we’ll be paid something.”
* Translator’s note: Spanish-language initials for “freely convertible currency” (moneda libremente convertible, or MLC). A digital Cuban currency pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar.
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The Uruguay sugar mill, in Jatibonico, Sancti Spíritus. (Escambray)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 15 February 2023 — Jatibonico’s colossus no longer roars as it used to. Instead of the rattling of its machinery, the Uruguay sugar mill is silent and prepares for the arrival of its new managers, a Russian company that will try to revitalize what in its day was one of the greatest Cuban sugar mills. Meanwhile, the neighbors are questioning whether the town will experience a new economic opportunity with the change of industry administration.
“This place is more dead than the cemetery,” Luis Manuel tells 14ymedio. He is one of the many employees who in the middle of last year lost his job due to the closure of the mill, because “technological obsolescence and lack of investment became, along with the shortage of cane, dangerous threats to the continuity of the industry,” according to the local press at the time.
“In that time the only thing that has happened here is that young people have gone to sea. The family that does not have a balsero [rafter] child is because they have two,” he says. “Now the Russians are preparing to repair the plant and start producing. They say that although they bring their own workers, there will always be some places for us.”
In October 2022, four months after this newspaper first recounted the closure of the Uruguay sugar mill, the news was confirmed by the official provincial newspaper Escambray. The article hinted that the hope for hundreds of workers who were unemployed was in Moscow, because a Russian entourage visited Jatibonico and expressed the intention to create a joint venture that would save the moribund mill town. continue reading
Of the 424 workers that the plant had at that time, 192 began to undertake repair work to make improvements, and 102 were inserted into another “eight labor groups with payment systems adjusted to activities that generate income for them and the company.” Those areas ranged from carpentry to painting, sheet metal work and preventing ice, all of them dependent on the plant.
Then, Eddy Gil Pérez, director of the Uruguay Agroindustrial Sugar Company, expressed enthusiasm with the possible Russian management: “We are among the nine sugar mills of the country chosen for these businesses,” he revealed. More than half a year later, this February, workers in the sector have been informed that the agreement has been finalized with Moscow, and the Uruguay mill should not be counted on for the current harvest because it is being remodeled.
“It all ended quickly,” admits Luis Manuel. “Those of us who were relocated, for example, in agriculture, ended up returning to our homes because there are not so many other crops in this area nor does the State pay what was promised.” After several months, the family of the former Uruguay mill employee survives thanks to an emigrated daughter and the sale of guava candy on the side of the road.
“The Russians are already here,” says an employee of the Zaza hotel, a nearby accommodation with an architectural style of the Soviet era and very similar to the so-called schools in the countryside. The place, which had been deteriorating for years, is now undergoing “capital repair,” says the woman. “The investment is great because this is made of wood, but you can see that the Russians come with resources and with their own people for repairs.”
“They arrived, signed the contract and are already working. They are staying here, and we are no longer accepting national customers,” says the accommodation worker belonging to the Islazul chain. “This place is not very nice but as it is set aside, it was cheap and close to the dam. People came here to spend a few days, but the word has already spread that we are not accepting Cuban guests.”
The idea is that the Zaza hotel will function as temporary accommodation for Russian technicians who will try to revitalize the Uruguay mill, operating since 1905, which has undergone endless transformations and repairs since its foundation. In recent years, stops due to breakdowns have multiplied, and the mill spent more months shut down for repair and maintenance work than grinding cane.
“This was the pride of our people and now it’s better not to mention it,” says María Elena, who worked at the beginning of the century in the administration of the mill, one of the largest sources of employment in the province historically. “We were like a family but all that was lost, and now no one tells us if with the Russians we are going to benefit from the Uruguay grinding again.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The directors of the state entity have not only significantly cut the workforce but have warned the workers who keep their jobs that now “they will have to work more.” (Facebook/Caribbean Stores)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus , 11 February 2023 — A call, the summons to a meeting or the simple phrase “the director wants to see you” make the workers of the province of Sancti Spíritus tremble these days. The state companies in the territory are taking on water and, forced to reduce their workforce due to the drop in income, the number of layoffs only grows.
In the Caribe Store Chain that manages part of the sale of food in the city of Sancti Spiritus, the employees have raised their voices to heaven. The brigades of stevedores that brought in the trucks with merchandise to unload the products in each trade have been deactivated, as confirmed by a company executive.
“Now it’s up to the store workers themselves, storekeepers and the personnel that deals with sales to the public, to unload the merchandise from the trucks, that is, to do the work that the stevedores did before,” the official details. “All this is based on Decree Law 53 of 2021,” he points out.
The regulation, approved by the Council of Ministers, creates greater flexibility in the mechanism to establish the organization of the salary system of the workers of state companies, and gives greater decision-making capacity to local managers. “In principle it sounds good, but what is happening is that they are laying off staff to adjust the numbers, instead of producing more; they are adjusting the accounts by removing people.”
When Decree Law 53 entered into force, many workers felt hopeful that the new legislation would help raise wages, but the reality has been quite different. “It leaves the hands of company directors and administrators free to readjust the workforce at will, they raise the salaries of some, but by leaving others without work,” laments this worker at the Caribe Chain Store in Sancti Spíritus.
Doubts about the application of the regulations were felt from the beginning. Last September, Guillermo Sarmiento Cabanas, director of Labor Organization, and Edith González, head of the Department of Salary Organization of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, had to answer, in the official press, the questions that were already arising about the new Decree. continue reading
The functionaries then assured that “the essence” of the change in legislation was “to transform the company, since to pay more it must obtain better results,” which they synthesized “in the formula more productivity plus efficiency plus salary.” But in reality, the directors of state entities seem to have opted for the easier way: fewer employees equals more money to distribute among those who remain.
At the Base Tiles Business Unit, belonging to the Sancti Spíritus Construction and Assembly Company, a process of eliminating jobs began at the end of last year. “They summoned us to tell us that they cannot continue paying all the salaries and we have to reduce staff,” one of the affected workers told 14ymedio. “But it won’t be easy for those who stay,” he stresses.
The directors of the state entity have not only significantly cut the workforce but have warned the workers who keep their jobs that now “they will have to work more” and take on “up to two responsibilities” in the tile manufacturing line. A measure that has been criticized by the employees who, however, do not find support in the local union.
“You spend your life paying union dues, but when you need the Union to stand up for you, then they do nothing,” laments another worker in the administrative area of this tile industry; one of the workers who was counted among the “interrupted workers,” the euphemism used by the Cuban government for the unemployed.
But not all the dismissed are a response to Decree Law 53; the lack of income and raw materials also raise the number of dismissals. In the asphalt plant in the city of Sancti Spíritus, located in the Chambelón neighborhood, this newspaper reported last January on the paralysis of the industry, equipped with old machinery, the Ukrainian-made DK-117 model, which arrived on the island during the years of Soviet subsidy.
The passing of the years, the deterioration and the shortage of parts took their toll on the plant, but the final blow has been given by the lack of fuel and materials. “Since April of last year, production began to decrease because we did not have materials for the process, although it was only a few days ago, at the beginning of this year, that it was announced that it was going to stop producing,” one of the employees told 14ymedio. After the closure of the factory, that employee has been left without work.
The options for finding a job in a province hit by the economic crisis and unproductiveness are “like finding water in the desert,” the same worker now quips, and reports that he has been “searching and searching for months and nothing appears.”
For most of the unemployed, however, there is at least one thing in which they feel very secure: “I won’t return to the state sector anymore, they use you when they want and throw you away for whatever. Now I’m going to earn a living selling churros or unclogging toilets, but on my own,” says the employee.
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“Prices are through the roof and they have increased a lot since the beginning of the year,” said one customer. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 21 January 2023 — Food prices continue to increase and authorities in the city of Sancti Spíritus try to put the brakes on inflation by pressuring private business owners to lower their prices. The official call, however, has not been echoed in the sector hit hard by the high cost of raw materials and taxes.
Susana and her husband sell crackers and on Thursday were in a meeting called by the local authorities. “They told us we had to lower our prices because it is a directive of the Communist Party,” they told 14ymedio. “But we can’t, until recently we were buying wheat flour from a mipyme [a micro or small business] that sold it for 135 pesos but now we must pay more.”
“We’re between a rock and a hard place, because if we lower the price we practically won’t have any income. Everything we earn we would need to invest in purchasing ingredients for the crackers, that is, we’d work for nothing,” she says. “Between the raw materials and taxes there is no margin for a discount.”
“It is not only about the products we must pay high prices for to maintain afloat, but also that this work requires a lot of sacrifice: waking up very early to knead, shape and bake the crackers,” she stated. “Then, the time we must devote to sales, hours and hours on our feet and in contact with customers, who many times are bothered by the prices.”
“They are having these meetings with all those who are self-employed in Sancti Spíritus and the tone is not one of a suggestion nor recommendation, but of an imposition,” bemoaned Susana. “They don’t address us like people who must go through a thousand and one difficulties to keep their business open and who, in addition, offer a service: our crackers are the snacks for many children in this neighborhood take to school.”
On Friday, Vicente’s shop, which mostly sells sweets and candy, was a hotbed of activity because many who are self-employed arrived there to talk about the meeting the day before. The discontent with the requested adjustment seems to be generalized among a sector in which many believe that they are being blamed for inflation. continue reading
“They tell us we must lower prices, but when I go to the MLC [freely convertible currency] store I am forced to pay high prices for products I need to make the sweets I sell here,” claims Vicente. “There are products I cannot find anywhere else and the so-called wholesale market they were going to open for business owners has been a complete failure.”
The customers feel caught in the middle. “Prices are through the roof and they have increased a lot since the beginning of the year, but if the government continues to pressure private businesses we will end up without the few cafeterias that remain open to sell something,” acknowledged a young man who paid 120 pesos for a small pack of cookies at a private shop, near the city center. “Of course I want to pay less, but we could reach a point when even if we have the money we can’t find something like this.”
The battle to regulate the prices of the private sector has been going on for several years and at time is reinforced, languishing before the reality of inflation or adding new official mechanisms to penalize those who do not adopt the price caps imposed by the authorities.
“We need to confront those prices that continue to rise for certain activities and by certain indiscriminate people so they obtain high profits,” the Minister of Finance and Prices, Meisi Bolaños Weiss, stated in January 2020 during an episode of the Mesa Redonda (Roundtable) program on State TV.
To ensure compliance with the measure, the government shared several telephone numbers for reporting vendors who do not comply with the order and also launched an army of inspectors to visit businesses and impose fines for merchants, but none of these practices have been fruitful.
Now they add local meetings and direct pressure on each merchant which, for the moment, seem to be causing more discontent among the entrepreneurs than beneficial results for the customers’ pockets. The next step for the authorities could be much more radical, in a context in which inflation seems to be out of control.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 16 October 2023 — The relief among Sancti Spíritus consumers was short-lived following the news that coffee would once again be available at stores selling rationed products. After being out of it for months, government warehouses finally began distributing it recently. The product, which arrived at state-run stores in October, comes in a plastic package with no label and crudely sealed edges. With a grainy texture, an odd flavor and little aroma, it is far cry from what most people would call coffee. “It leaves a sludge in the bottom of the cup that looks like river mud,” complains Lismary, a 32-year-old Sancti Spíritus resident who is among the thousands of frustrated customers.
