Cuba’s tobacco farmers starve while dictatorship enriches itself from cigar sales to foreigners

From our Bureau of Basic Socialist Principles with some assistance from the ghost of George Orwell, channeled by our resident psychic Yayiyuska La Poderosa

What a shocking story! Did you know that Cuban tobacco farmers don’t ever get any share of the millions of dollars raked in by Castro, Inc. from cigar sales? How could this be? These members of the proletariat deserve at least some share in the profits produced by their labor.

Aaaah…. but we’re dealing with REAL socialism here, not its textbook variety. This is socialism, pure and simple. And, according to Abraham Lincoln’s definition of slavery, Cuban socialism is nothing but slavery, plain and simple:

“It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

And… considering that the majority of the Cuban population is now black, and that it is ruled by a lily-white military junta, Lincoln observation is most apt.

Loosely translated from CubaNet

Earlier this month, we saw Miguel Díaz-Canel with his wife Lis Cuesta, both dressed in elegant clothes, smoking cigars and in front of a table where drinks were abundant. The photos were taken during the Habano Festival, one of the most important commercial events for Cuba. The following day, the official Cuban press detailed that the gala had been a success and raised a record amount at auction: 11.2 million dollars.

But the image of luxury that Díaz-Canel and Cuesta enjoy contrasts with the conditions in which Cuban peasants subsist in the fields, who are not provided with a pair of boots or the appropriate clothing to work in the sun. They are not paid fairly, nor on time.

Some 187 kilometers from the lavish gala, the producers, who continue to harvest one of the most famous cigars in the world with almost no inputs, have not yet received part of the previous campaign. Nine months have passed since they delivered their crops to the Tabacuba company, and still the percentage that they must collect in MLC has not been delivered. Every time they question the leaders of the province about non-payment, the answer is the same: “there is no money.”

“When I see the heads of the country, who don’t know what work on the land is, enjoying the Habano Festival, while the guajiros don’t get paid, I feel used,” says R, a 60-year-old producer from Pinar del Río years that he has dedicated his entire life to the cultivation of the leaf, and that he asked to protect his identity.

For the last two years, the payment to tobacco producers has been divided into two stages. First, they charge ?according to the quantity and quality of the harvest? the corresponding amount in national currency, with 8,020 pesos being the maximum price per quintal. However, clarified two producers consulted by CubaNet, it is almost impossible for the authorities to value the leaf at that price; Therefore, the average payment per quintal, at least in his experience, ranges between 6,500 and 7,800 pesos. The latter is a very good value.

Continue reading HERE in Spanish