Who is really blockading us?

Who is really blockading us? / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
Posted on November 17, 2014
By Jeovany Jimenez Vega

The brand name of this company selling chicken portions in Havana tells
you its origin: these products arrive here from the other side of the
iron curtain, from the enemy's shore. This "Product of USA" reminds us
that more than ten years ago the US Congress approved licences for
selling food products to the Cuban government, on a cash-only basis, but
with the result that also for years the chain stores selling in CUC
(Cuban convertible pesos, i.e. hard currency) on the island have
insisted in selling these chicken portions at up to 4.50 CUC (about $5).
If we bear in mind that historically this has been one of the cheapest
meats on the world market, we can easily see that food for the people is
not exactly treated as a special case by our government when it comes to
turning a profit.

But to this type of profit in CUC we have to add its analog in CUP
(Cuban pesos). Also years ago the state-run Food and Business Companies
joined in the party: many administrators immediately "saw the light" and
proceeded to start selling a pound of raw chicken on the black market
for 25 pesos, that's to say, the price of the prepared product, like
fried chicken, and so they keep hold of the surplus oil, and you can
guess where that ends up.

In the end, Liborio, [a cartoon character representing the typical poor
Cuban peasant] poor man, caught in the cross-fire, doesn't receive his
monthly bag of chicken, oil — and lots of the other things, speaking of
Lindoro, [incompetent Lindoro is an archetypal useless boss of an
unproductive Cuban company] – that the people in headquarters get: poor
Lindoro, who, in reality is the only loser. And the main culprit in all
this continues to be the Cuban government, because of its obstinate and
half-assed economic focuses, and also because of its unscrupulous
pricing policy — the same one which fixes the price of a USED Geely auto
at $38,000, which doesn't cost $5,000 new, or which tries to sell us a
shitty Suzuki moped for over $12,000 which cost a little more than $300.

Here everything comes down to the same thing; simply and
straightforwardly our government is always pursuing one goal: blocking
the well-being of the people by every means possible. And so, we should
ask, who is it that is really blockading us? Lets see what the "Yankee
Blockade" theorists have to say about that.

Translated by GH

9 October 2014

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