A sumptuous New Year’s Eve buffet for foreign tourists in Cuba while Cubans went hungry

While Cubans struggled to find food to celebrate the New Year, the communist Castro dictatorship pulled all the stops to serve a sumptuous buffet at its apartheid resorts. Pork, the traditional Cuban dish enjoyed during Christmas and New Years, was nearly impossible to find on the island or selling at exorbitant prices few Cubans could afford. However, foreign tourists with hard currency staying at state-owned apartheid resorts and hotels got special treatment from the Castro regime. They enjoyed all-you-can eat buffets seemingly stacked to the ceiling with food Cubans have not seen in years. This is socialism in action.

So the next time you hear someone blame the misery, hunger, and poverty in Cuba on the U.S. embargo, ask yourself why the “embargo” doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever on foreign tourists or the elite of the Cuban communist party.

Via CiberCuba (my translation):

This was the New Year’s Eve buffet at a hotel in Gaviota

The Hotel Playa Cayo Santa María Beach Resort & Spa, located in the northern cays of Villa Clara, showcased the impressive New Year’s Eve dinner it offered to its clients on social media

Not only the traditional roasted pig observed in the images, but also a wide diversity of seafood products, such as lobster and other shellfish, stand out.

The images include exquisite salads and desserts, displaying an abundance that contrasts sharply with the scarcities experienced by the people of Cuba amidst the current economic crisis and profound food shortages.

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At the Hotel Paradisus Varadero, the same presentation was repeated, which has been widely publicized on social media.

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The opulence of these preparations, highlighting refinement and extravagance, does not reflect the realities currently experienced on the island. In recent interviews, many Cubans responded with skepticism, pain, and even laughter when asked what they would eat on the night of December 31, New Year’s Eve.

“Dinner? Ground beef if you can get it from the butcher, if you’re lucky,” said a 60-year-old woman.

“This New Year’s Eve, we won’t be able to have dinner at all because there’s nothing,” said a young man.

The interviewees stated that pork, which was always present in Cuban family meals to bid farewell to the year, will now be missing in almost every household due to its extremely high price, unaffordable for those living on a salary.

All this happens amid a widespread crisis, confirmed by the regime in Havana during its continuous meetings, where they have failed to convey any good news to the people for 2024.

For example, during the session of the Economic Affairs Commission of the National Assembly of People’s Power on November 19, the Minister of Economy and Planning of Cuba, Alejandro Gil, stated that “the planned levels for this year (2023) had not been achieved in vegetables, corn, plantains, pork, milk, and eggs.”

However, this behavior by the Cuban regime is not unusual because despite the country facing a widespread crisis, the government invested four times more in hotels and restaurants than in Public Health and Social Assistance in the first half of 2023, according to a report from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).

A chart presented by that institution revealed that the investment from January to June in health and social assistance was only 583.3 million pesos, while 2,325.3 million was allocated to hotels and restaurants.