From the balcony, Yudineya saw dozens of bread and cookie vendors passing by every day in her neighborhood of Los Sitios, in Havana, but for weeks they have practically disappeared. The shortage of wheat flour has hit private bakeries hard and also put state-owned bakeries in check.
For decades, “bread with something” has been the fundamental food support in Cuban homes. From the elaborate sandwich of ham and cheese to the poorest bread with oil and salt, the snacks of students and workers depend heavily on this baked product that has been disappearing in recent weeks.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do when the child starts school,” asks Yudineya, 38, whose son will start second grade in September. “What my son always takes for a snack is bread with whatever appears but now not even that,” she explains to 14ymedio .
In Nuevo Vedado, a showy private bakery that until recently offered bags of so-called “pan de bola”, in addition to harder crust flautas, baguettes and crabs, now only offers roasted peanuts and egg white meringues. “We are not taking out bread because we don’t have any flour,” justifies the employee. “Sales have fallen a lot and if we continue like this we will have to close.”
But not only the bakeries are feeling the blow of the shortage of wheat flour. The businesses that base their gastronomic offers on pizzas and sandwiches are also seeing it black. “We used to sell some bags with 10 pizza bases for 300 pesos, but now we have had to raise that same package to 500,” admits the home courier from La Paloma, a private business in Diez de Octubre.
In front of the Carlos III bakery, one of the few that still sells bread released, the elderly, physically handicapped, boys, mothers and all kinds of people begin to arrive. Neither age nor numerous ailments exempt the Cuban, who must defend his place in the queue as if he were in a besieged fortress.
An employee announces that they will soon sell a few sticks. What in Creole gastronomy used to be a long and crispy roll, in socialism assumes the dictionary definition: “small, rough and poorly carved stick”.
Invoking forces they do not have, the battered Cubans hoping to reach a stick stampede to take their place. “Total”, laments a woman, “what we get is a ‘buchito’ of sticks per person”.
The inmate riot, in a country where a protest can break out every night, has become one of the favorite topics to discuss during the blackout
Once the “rough sticks” have been purchased and packaged, the crowd resumes its place in the shade. They must keep waiting: in an hour, they suppose, they will bring out a meager quantity of garlic bread.
“Things will get worse,” predicts a bakery employee. “As of September 1, no one who is not from this popular council can buy bread here. In each place, as we have been told, there should be an establishment that takes care of the people in that area.”
The flour shortage occupies the rumors, the notes in the newspaper, the panic of daily hunger and the comments about the imminent school year. He scares mothers and overwhelms retirees, used to a Spartan ration of bread and sugar water.
An audio circulated on social networks, attributed to a director of Commerce, informs in whispers and whoever wants to listen that there will be no more flour. “Neither for hospitals nor for defense,” says the anonymous voice. Some bags will be offered for the norman bread and others to the prisons, whose tranquility cannot be risked.
The inmate riot, in a country where a protest can break out every night, has become one of the favorite topics to discuss during the blackout and domino games.
“ Today at my breakfast I could only eat a stale bread that I brought from Havana several days ago,” Kenny Fernández Delgado, one of the Havana priests who bothers State Security the most, wrote on his social networks.
Fernandez lashed out at “communism”, which “took my beef from before I was born”, “milk at 7 years old” and now even “‘liberated’ bread has been imprisoned”. “Take everything away from me and that’s it,” settled the priest, “as they did to Jesus Christ on Good Friday, because that way I’ll know that Easter Sunday is closer.”
The Government, as usual, used the newspaper Granma to “rewrite” the alarming reality of the Island. “There are no effects on the production and distribution of bread from the Standardized Family Basket and the Cuban Bread Chain,” secured the middleciting a note from the Ministry of Internal Trade.
He admitted, however, the “difficulties in importing wheat”, attributed to the blocking, the “financial limitations” of Cuba and the “international logistics crisis”. The report concluded by “reassuring” vulnerable sectors of the population, apparently spared from shortages.
The Government, as usual, used the newspaper ‘Granma’ to “rewrite” the alarming reality of the Island. “There are no effects on production”
Meanwhile, official reporter Lázaro Manuel Alonso tried to reconcile official fiction with reality: “Gentlemen, stop with the interpretations,” he demanded in Facebooksupporting version of Granma.
However, as he had to admit in the same publication, “there have been difficulties with the preparation of bread due to the lack of electricity, which has nothing to do with the supply of raw materials for production.” Regardless of the contradictions within his own message, he intended to settle as “false” the rumor of scarcity that “some users have shared on social networks.”
The “white powder crisis,” as some Cubans have begun to call it, keeps private growers on edge. Candy stores have substantially reduced their offer, while the prices of any empanada, jam or cake, no matter how squalid, are increasing.
Not only the flour, but also the eggs, sugar, oil and other ingredients of the family confectionery are being removed from the symbolic Cuban table. Gone are the meats, the fruits, and now, finally, the bread basket.
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