The concert that Yuleidi planned to attend on Friday at the Casa de la Obra Pía, in Old Havana, was canceled due to lack of audience. When asking for explanations, they told him that the same thing happens these days with many of the cultural activities in the capital: nobody goes to any. “Everyone is in line for the pork,” he told her.
This year, buying the meat that the Government has put on sale for the end-of-year celebrations is more difficult than ever.
To the denunciations of the state in which the pieces are being sold, in some cases with a bad face and worse smell and the obligation to have to buy the complete piece for thousands of pesos, is added the slowness of the queues, when they are missing very few days for the festivities.
Silvia, Xiomara and María Eugenia, the residents of Plaza de la Revolución who told 14ymedio how they had agreed to share a piece of pork for almost 7,500 pesos, they are still waiting.
When they spoke to this newspaper, days ago, they thought that their turn would be about to arrive, because, they said, there were “about 80 people ahead.” The state sale began last Wednesday.
There are not a few testimonies on social networks that show the fights, with blows, among the crowd that is waiting, impatient and grumpy
However, as of today, and without being offered an explanation, they are after another 600 numbers. “The truth is that we don’t know if we are going to get to the counter before Friday,” laments María Eugenia.
The line for meat is also proving to be a source of violence. There are not a few testimonies on social networks that show the fights, with blows, among the crowd that is waiting, impatient and grumpy.
In other municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the residents have improvised real camps outside the butcher shops to get a piece of meat, since it has been known that it is not enough for all the households registered in the city’s rationed market. On social networks, some of them have shared photos of people wrapped in blankets or drinking rum to warm up in the cool early morning of this December.
Silvia and her friends are seriously evaluating whether to appeal to a shift vendor to advance them in line that they have been in for more than a week. For 1,000 Cuban pesos they would be able to buy this Thursday before the melody, but they must hurry to decide or the prices for a place in the queue could rise as Christmas Eve approaches.
María Eugenia has doubts about whether to make the investment to buy a shift, because her son living in Miami has promised her a piece of pork, imported from Brazil, for sale in one of the many digital markets that sells products for the Island: ” I don’t want him to spend that money, which he needs for other things, but I can’t stand this queue anymore.”
Dinners at home are also an alternative for those who have relatives who pay for them from abroad. “A case of beer, with roasted leg and garnishes for 250 dollars, placed in the house,” reads an advertisement published by a private Havana business for December 24. When inquiring about the origin of the meat, the response of one of the employees is decisive: “Imported pork, nothing to do with the one they are selling by the book.”
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