Hundreds of people queued for hours at a farm market in Vedado, Havana, to buy table in a rationed manner amid a food shortage that threatens to leave thousands of Cubans at risk of food insecurity.
“Hundreds of people wake up in the fields to buy potatoes. They have already delivered 60 shifts, it is 8 in the morning. Hunger and dad. It is Sunday, the continuity of the national burden,” he said in Facebook the photographer Pedro Luis Garcia.
Its publication was accompanied by an image in which the crowd of people can be seen in front of the doors of a agricultural market located in the central neighborhood of the Plaza municipality.
“I live in front of a farm (17 and K). I see people sitting on the sidewalk, I ask what's going on and a man tells me: 'The potato has arrived and we don't know if it will be enough for everyone... The last one is that man with the cane sitting on the stairs of the building (my building). ", said the musician Dagoberto Pedraja in the same red social.
Under the title “Habemus papam”, the publication by the renowned guitarist reflected the discomfort of a society in which the feeling of “having hit rock bottom” is growing. The musician, who was returning from a concert at midnight, took a photograph of an elderly man who was on the stairs of his building waiting for the potato sale the next morning.
“I'm the last one, there are like 20 in front, my boy, and I'm coming with five,” the old man told the musician, believing that he was looking for the last person in line.
“It's 12:30, a bit cold early morning, that old man sitting on the stairs of my building and I wondering how much the 'specific weight' of 'food faith' is. Tomorrow I get up and go out to the 'battlefield'. Total... Pile of 'field schools' planting and collecting potatoes," lamented the artist.
Likewise, he referred to the excuse that the Cuban regime uses as a wild card to explain all the vicissitudes that Cubans go through. “Nah, it's the blockade's fault, but that 'lonely old man' hoping for 5 pounds of tuber breaks my heart.”
However, this Saturday the musician tried to lower the critical content of his publication, indicating that his alarm about the old man's hours of waiting was unfounded, since there were enough potatoes for sale.
"Yesterday I posted a post, alarmed because since early morning there were people queuing for 'the fries potatoes' those that they give... Today I went down at 2pm and nah... without scare or tragedy I got mine... "Gentlemen, do the 'autofocus' because there is kicking for pleasure... Damn... Look, there are people who love tragedy!" said the musician.
In January 2023, The Cuban government raised the retail price of potatoes to 11 CUP per pound for regulated sales. In this way, he indicated, it did not generate losses or require subsidies from the State.
The increase was double compared to the previous year and followed the logic, still in force, of "eliminating subsidies and gratuities" enunciated by the government of Miguel Diaz-Canel and his failure "economic and monetary order".
Considered the saving food on the table of the poor, the potato is missing in Cuba, a country where the tuber had a retail price of one peso per pound before 2021 and three years later, its price is set by the State at 11 Cuban pesos.
However, outside of state sales (always scarce), The price of potatoes sold by retailers (forklifts and others) is 200 pesos per pound, according to the medium CubaNews360. A luxury in a country whose minimum wage is 2,100 CUP and a carton of eggs - to give an example - costs 3,500 CUP.
What do you think?
COMMENTFiled in: