The Castro dictatorship will blame anyone and anything for the dire food shortages in Cuba except for the real culprit: communism. The socialist centrally planned economy has been a monumental and deadly failure everywhere it has been tried, and Cuba is no exception.
The Center for a FREE Cuba explains:
How communist central planning creates shortages of flour and milk in Cuba today
Havana on March 4, 2024 confirmed it had sought help from the World Food Program to guarantee the supply of subsidized powdered milk for children. On February 24, 2024 Emerio Gonzalez Lorenzo, president of the “Grupo Empresarial de la Industria Alimentaria” (GEIA) [Food Industry Business Group] which is under the Cuban government’s “Ministerio de la Industria Alimenticia” (MINAL) [ Ministry of the Food Industry ] announced that “there is little bread in Cuba due to a lack of flour,” and that this situation would continue until the end of March 2024. Official press channels made no mention of the “25,000 tons of wheat donated by the Russian government that arrived in mid-January” which “exceeds the 20,000 tons that, authorities assured [on February 24th], are necessary to cover the rationed daily bread rolls for a month. If this is the case, the shipment of Russian wheat should have been enough to supply the stores for the remainder of this month and the next”, reported 14ymedio.
The suspension of bread from the ration book, announced by the Cuban government, is not due to U.S. sanctions as the Cuban dictatorship claims. First, Havana “requested (World Food Programme) assistance for the purchase of powdered milk in order to guarantee supply to Cuban boys and girls,” state-run media outlet CubaDebate reported on March 4, 2024, and added that, “a ship carrying 375 tons of powdered milk is set to arrive in the coming days from Brazil as a result of Cuba`s request to the World Food Programme.” Cuban officials on the same day acknowledged that the Cuban government “had also purchased 500 tons of milk from the United States, under exceptions that allow for the sale of agricultural products, as well as from Canada and Brazil.”
The US State Department in its fact sheet on the “Provision of Humanitarian Assistance to Cuba” clearly states: “While the embargo remains in place, the U.S. government prioritizes support for the Cuban people, and U.S. law and regulations include exemptions and authorizations relating to exports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to Cuba, as well as disaster response.”
Trade in mainly agricultural products with Cuba amounted to $400 million in 2023, in contrast to only $241.8 million during the last full year of the Obama Administration’s thaw with Havana in 2016. Between 2000 and January 2024 the Cuban government purchased $7,647,000,300 in U.S. goods which the vast majority of purchases in agricultural goods.
The shortage of bread is due to the fact that of the five mills to turn wheat to flour in Cuba, only the one currently operational is in Cienfuegos. There is no shortage of wheat, but of flour due to the Cuban government’s monopoly over the means of production, and its gross incompetence, and inefficiency.
This is compounded by the regime’s track record of giving priority for supplies of flour for tourists in luxury hotels, compared to the hunger of Cuban families who also suffer blackouts, piles of garbage on corners with infestations of mice, mosquitoes and cockroaches, plus sewage leaks and lack of drinking water.
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It’s not just the system; it’s also that the real priorities do not involve the welfare of ordinary Cubans but the needs and desires of the ruling elite. Also, keeping ordinary people continually occupied with basic survival is deliberate, since it makes it far less likely that they will have time or energy to overthrow the regime.