HARRISONBURG, United States. – Mikhail Gorbachev had faith in socialist ideas, but also enough intelligence to accept that the model created by Vladimir Lenin and continued by other leaders of the former USSR was misguided because it was entrenched in imposition.
Far from Gorbachev’s pragmatism, Fidel Castro was reluctant to recognize with concrete actions that historical truth, demonstrated by the most extensive record of crimes that humanity has ever recorded. What mattered to the “Commander” was always power, and although several years later he acknowledged to the American journalist Jeffrey Golddberg that the Cuban model no longer worked, that was the one endorsed by his brother when he replaced him in power and it is the same one that The leaders defend the so-called “continuity”, which is none other than the prolongation of the lack of freedoms and economic failure.
With the disappearance of the USSR, Cuba began the longest crisis in its history. Blackouts, sustained inflation, devaluation of the national currency, deterioration of education, health and transportation services, lack of food and medicine and an obvious decline in sporting successes and the credibility of the people in those who direct them without their consent, united to the sustained increase in poverty and repression, are some of the characteristics of this crisis, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The most forceful expression of the popular rejection of the “politics of continuity” proclaimed by the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez were the massive protests that occurred in July 2021 and those that have continued to occur in various parts of the country.
Instead of betting on a realistic position and listening to the people’s demands, the Cuban communists systematically apply their policy of state terrorism against all dissent, something that has made Cuba the second country with the highest prison rate in the world, according to a report from the World Prison Brief site.
Although for more than a decade the plans for housing construction, rice production, sugar, tobacco and coffee harvests, beef and pork production plans and those for food, fruits and vegetables have been failed annually, The “continuity” leaders continue asking the people for resistance and blaming the US embargo for the country’s economic situation, inevitable slogans in their speech.
The recent request for aid from the United Nations World Food Program – something that had not been done in 65 years – demonstrates how deep the effects of this crisis are.
The dictatorship does not allocate enough money for the needs of Cubans and that is why it can no longer guarantee even the lousy bread it sells to the people, nor milk for children up to seven years old. Added to this are delays in the distribution of products whose sale is controlled by the ration book.
Instead of deciding to “change everything that must be changed,” Cuban communists continue defending what is ineffective and betting on changes… in officials and laws.
It is the opinion of the country’s top management that Cuban farmers are not working well. Recently Manuel Marrero Cruz, prime minister of the regime, recognized the failure of a law designed to “guarantee food production, promote local, sovereign and sustainable food systems and mobilize financial, technological resources and alliances that enable the implementation of sovereign and sustainable food systems. sustainable”. The leader was referring to Law No.148 of 2022, “Law on Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security”, a very long name for very short results.
Recently the official newspaper Havana Tribune reported that last year the state agricultural companies operated at just 30% of their capacity and fulfilled only 66% of the meat delivery in 2023. “We cannot repeat the same thing, that no progress was made, it was not done… There is a people that is waiting for us,” said Luis Antonio Torres Iribar, first secretary of the PCC in Havana, who also stated that a considerable number of farmlands are underutilized and others completely inactive and that, in 2023, in Havana , more cows died than were born mainly due to hunger.
For more than 10 years, farmers have been demanding profound changes in Cuban agriculture. Freedom for the production and distribution of their products, to set prices according to the market, to import and export directly, as well as the elimination of taxes for 10 years on food producers and processors and the delivery of property titles to all agricultural producers are some of those claims.
And who has the dictatorship now put in charge of the ANAP? Well, none other than Félix Duarte Ortega, who until last Sunday was the head of the Agri-Food Department of the PCC! The individual graduated as an engineer in Agricultural Production Mechanization but has not pursued the career because he has always been a political leader. He also has a master’s degree in Economic and Political Culture, like the deceased Santiesteban Pozo, which could be summarized in this phrase: “Some studies, no results.”
We know that Félix Duarte Ortega, who is now going to lead the Cuban peasants without ever having worked in the fields, has not been sent to the ANAP to listen to them, but rather so that, from there, he can try to impose the Party’s ucases. We also know that he will reap in response the same disinterest of the producers and the continuous shortage of supplies in the markets.
There is no worse blind man than he who does not want to see.
OPINION ARTICLE
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2024-03-06 18:29:54
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