Shrinking of Farm Products

Shrinking of Farm Products / Rosa Maria Rodriguez
Posted on November 20, 2013

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

Source: "Shrinking of Farm Products / Rosa Maria Rodriguez | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/shrinking-of-farm-products-rosa-maria-rodriguez/