By Francisco Acevedo
HAVANA TIMES – According to the Royal Spanish Academy, “temporary” means fleeting, relating to a certain situation, that is to say, a series of possible and changing circumstances that determine a situation, unlike something that has a structural nature and has a long life.
Clearly, our dear Miguel Diaz-Canel doesn’t consult the dictionary very often, because this is the name he used to baptize the situation Cuba was experiencing in 2019, which was later repeated in 2021, 2022, and we’re on the verge of reliving it again. In fact, what we’ve rather had over these past four years, are “temporary” periods of semi-normality, because fuel shortages are cyclic, and they drag every economic and social sector in the country down with them.
We’ve been suffering blackouts for months (with electric plants being in a better condition according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, and working like “a Swiss watch”), which can be seven to eight hours long every day outside of Havana, with different areas of the capital suffering a crisis in water supply and garbage collection.
With all of the nerve in the world, the Minister of Energy boasted about managing to get rid of blackouts in the day at some point (of course, these are the ones they’re interested in because you have state-led companies working, and it’s up to Cubans to find a way to sleep however they can at night), and he said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if scheduled blackouts were a part of modern human life.
In his opinion, the following strategy has worked very well, despite failing to see the current crisis come, because blackouts didn’t increase despite a spike in demand (13% to be precise, and no company on the planet can face growth from one year to the next just like that, because demand normally only grows around 3%). This surge doesn’t make a lot of sense when Cuba has less consumers because of the mass exodus over the past few years.
Well, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, warned us this week that everything was going to get worse, especially in the next two weeks. If there was one thing he did right it was to admit that practically 100% of the basic food rations are imported, even the coffee that doesn’t taste of anything. According to his forecasts, Cuba won’t be producing any coffee until November so it needs to come from abroad, but they haven’t been able to import anything because of an “increase in international prices.” Really? He isn’t going outside to see how much things cost right under his nose, and he’s talking about the global market.
However, we hosted the Group of 77 plus China (G77+China) Summit a couple of weeks ago, where we filled delegations’ bellies with food that Cubans don’t eat. Nobody talked to them about “delays”, they ate and drank when they had to, without any setbacks.
They want to keep on convincing us that we have a lot of “potential”, and that isn’t a lie, but Jamaica, Barbados, Martinique, the Cayman Islands or Guadaloupe, have a lot less potential but they have electricity, fish, coffee, sugar, rice, and anything else that is an odyssey to find here in Cuba. Why do we want so much “potential”? Cover my basic needs first! This is their classic story of turning misfortunes into victories.
We were able to export sugar and coffee before the Revolution, and now we have to buy it abroad, but this isn’t a setback, not at all!, when the entire world is producing more because technology is paving the way, but is rather due to the US blockade, the main culprit for us becoming so poor. Yet, if there really were a blockade, how on Earth are so many tons of chicken (just to mention one product) arriving on the island from its neighbor in the North?
“We’ll minimize [these problems] with the participation of the Cuban people,” Gil said. For starters, the Cuban people must take part, it’s an obligation now and you can’t avoid it, and secondly, we know that ordinary Cuban people are the ones who will have to tighten their belts, because the electricity doesn’t go out, nor does the fridge go empty in our ministers’ homes.
“We’re all Cubans,” Gil warned Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) so they know that they will also be affected by blackouts. It isn’t enough that MSMEs can barely import anything (including those that are just a facade for the Government itself), but now anything they manage to bring in will go to waste in the next couple of weeks.
I have never seen a minister say that there are problems with fuel supply, not even from the Ukraine, which is at war. Oil companies have all the fuel that Cuba could ever need, and the same goes for flour, coffee, supplies, etc., but the thing is that if you don’t pay what you owe, nobody will want to sell to you. Behind all of this is the latest news from Mexico, that it won’t donate one more barrel of oil to the island.
Mediocrity and stupidity seem to have no end and continues to take us for fools by weakening our senses and keeping us in inertia. They ask yet again for support and trust, claiming they will continue to work “tirelessly, but without giving in a millimeter to what socialist vocation has taught them defending these achievements.” Please tell me until when?
Gil believes that he has a harder job than any of his counterparts anywhere else in the world, because he has the “commitment” to ensure the Cuban people’s basic needs, which they haven’t managed to do with 64 years of tenacity and committing one mistake to another. But if we asked this very same people, they would prefer that the leaders didn’t work so hard living in air-conditioned homes, with transport and food at their disposal, and leave them to fix their own lives, with all of their rights.
“If only we did things better,” Gil repeated, like other members of the nomenclature did before, but nobody is resigning. Six decades of failed experiments and we still can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, because like he himself says, “the Revolution is the only way out,” even if it’s collapsed on the ground.
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