Havana Cuba. — On the last day of November, the Havana authorities announced that as of December 1, “a new system of released items” would begin to be implemented. The objective announced by the Castroite bureaucrats is “for each family nucleus to receive the items in a more equitable and organized manner.”
The decision affects five of the most coveted products and whose sale causes the largest queues: chicken, mincemeat, sausage, oil and detergent. The quotas are determined by groups of users: one for between one and eight consumers; two for between nine and 16; and so on. With this, the communists show their peculiar sense of equity. Or will it be one more ruse to reduce what they will distribute to their starving subjects! I confess that I lean towards the latter version.
The “new system” comprises several measures. The first of these is to “remove LCC groups”. These little-known acronyms stand for “fight against choleros”. When the corresponding announcement was made, some mistaken thought that what they were going to deactivate were the freely convertible currency (MLC) stores. But the mistake was cleared up quickly. These currency trades are highly unpopular, but they add so much to the regime that it is unreasonable to expect it to do without them.
The same thing has happened with this matter of the LCC groups as with other communist initiatives. An example of this is the creation of the Social Workers Program, a highly publicized act of the founder of the reigning dynasty. According to speeches made in 2000 by the “Top Leader”, youngsters appointed to supervise business operations in garages and other similar centers would put a stop to acts of corruption that took place in them.
It didn’t take long for it to become clear that the brand new supervisors, with everything and their bombastic title, became other more corrupt, who participated in a rampant way in all the scams carried out in those businesses. This is a well-known scenario throughout the disastrous “Process” that will soon be 64 years old in Cuba.
It is the same thing that happened with the LCC groups: they emerged as a fence against the choleros, whom the interested and lying propaganda of the regime tried to present as the main culprits of the prevailing shortage, but it did not take long before it became clear that the remedy was worse than the disease.
After a little more than two years, Castroism eliminated these groups, and tried to control the existing problems by resorting, according to the state press, to “a person who enjoys prestige and authority in the community, to exercise control of the quantity of products that the establishment receives daily” in question. Here we must ask ourselves: Will these prestigious people (or, at least, some of them) be the next members of the corrupt network!
The “new system of liberated lines” contemplates a series of other bureaucratic measures, such as “updating the linkage of the nuclei for each establishment”, the elaboration of a uniform card for users who do not have the happy “book” (which is of rationing, but which the communists insist on calling “supply”) and the elaboration of a “ticket” full of figures.
By chance, the beginning of the implementation of the new system coincides in time with an alarming event that occurred in Cruces, Cienfuegos province. In the small town, a citizen known as “Livan the Donkey” he climbed the tower of the ETECSA telephone monopoly, even threatening to jump into the void.
The information of CyberCuba He adds that the compatriot was desperate after suffering a whopping 14 continuous hours of blackout, which caused the food he kept in his refrigerator to rot. Not surprisingly, then, their initial demand to restore power immediately turned to chants of “Down with Communism” and “Freedom,” which were chanted by many of the many locals who gathered by the tower.
This information and the implementation of the “new system” of sales would seem to be two different issues, independent of each other. But it’s not like that. These are simply two manifestations of the same reality of scarcity and famine that are inherent to the economic system that Castroism established and maintains in Cuba, despite its proven ineffectiveness.
Because you have to try to put yourself in the shoes of the unfortunate Liván. Would there be many foods that rotted due to the blackout? I doubt it; With the crazy prices that meat products have reached in Cuba, it is reasonable to think that we are talking about a couple of pounds or more. But it is that that little, which for a worker from another country represents the fruit of a few hours of work, for an ordinary Cuban is equivalent to the result of an effort and a saving of weeks.
In short: what was said. The two news items represent so many facets of the prevailing poverty in Cuba. The old and good friend was right, now deceased, who used to repeat: “There is nothing more difficult than distributing misery.”
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