Family man and owner of a cafeteria in Camajuaní (Villa Clara), Alexis González broke out this Tuesday in a direct transmission of Facebook that reached hundreds of people. Faced with shortages, bureaucratic obstacles and harassment by inspectors, he asked the authorities for an answer: “Someone explain to me how long the impudence and lack of respect towards self-employed workers.”
During the next fifteen minutes, he questioned the treatment that the Government is giving to the self-employed, the increasingly scandalous privileges for the MSMEs and the system of fines, raids and inspections to which small establishments such as his, the Moteros café, located on the side of Independencia de Camajuaní street, are subjected.
“Before founding Moteros, I started with a little cornbread cart and even that was difficult,” he now tells 14ymedio. “The oil was very expensive, the sack of corn cost me 8,000 or 10,000 pesos, and that did not generate the profit that I needed for my family. So I proposed to my wife to create a cafeteria.”
With the sale of a small property that González had, he obtained the initial budget to buy a central space, on the highway through which vehicles pass from Santa Clara to the North Keys of Villa Clara. “I set up the cafeteria, with the aim of selling pizzas, spaghetti, and all that, lately, has been very difficult to sustain: the raw materials are missing,” he alleges.
The worst, however, is the siege by inspectors who, in González’s opinion, “don’t let anyone live.” “They ask where you got this, that… My explanation?: That working is very difficult in Cuba, because 90% of the food that one puts on the table at home is of illegal origin, imagine what you get for a coffee shop.”
To supply Moteros, González uses the MSMEs: “I made a contract with them, but that doesn’t solve it.” He details that this exchange is also persecuted by inspectors, who carefully review each step that the products take: “If I sell mayonnaise, I have to spread it on the bread. I cannot buy a knob of mayonnaise, nor one of tomato paste, nor of oil, and sell it, which I can do with a can of soda. It’s all very absurd,” he laments.
What González expects from the Government is greater flexibility, since there are many self-employed who, like him, do not have the conditions or the money to establish a MSME: “The authorities have to create a wholesale company where you can buy the products you need. A company that really works, not like what there is now, which is always empty. That way you could buy inputs and set a fair price for them, without abusing clients”.
What González expects from the Government is greater flexibility, since there are many self-employed who, like him, do not have the conditions or the money to establish a ‘mipyme’
He points out that the regime’s economic recipes have not worked well, and that the strategy –if there is one– has been to repeat a wrong method and not provide a solution to the real problems. “Cupping the prices of the products, as they have done so many times with the peasants, is of no use,” he sums up. “What you have to do is help the farmer and the producer in general.”
The self-employed, he affirms, can no longer hide their annoyance with the privileged treatment what is given at MSMEs. “They are the ones with the most facilities for importing. My business cannot be compared to a MSME. The bank does not provide me with a loan, for example. And if I did, I don’t have the possibilities or money to pay for it. A self-employed person will never be at that level.”
In Camajuaní, a municipality considered the mecca of footwear in Cuba, the advance of the MSMEs it is unstoppable. to the greats shoe manufacturers and retailerswho subject their workers to strict surveillance and are ruthless when it comes to setting prices, are joined by farmers favored by the regime and, now, gastronomic establishments.
Jona’s SURL, Calzados Yady’s, Yireh-Ebenezer, El Músico, the farmer’s “private slaughterhouse” yusdany rojas and a few other select ones: they all have in common, as this newspaper has verified, their intimate relationship with high-ranking officials of the regime –such as Alejandro Gil, Inés María Chapman or Miguel Díaz-Canel himself–, who visit them regularly.
For the others, as González affirms, there remains the fear that the “apparatus” – the Police, the inspectors or State Security – will take action on the matter and demand silence from those who decide, in their personal capacity, to protest against the suffocation of small businesses like yours.
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