If the food shortages are bad in the main cities of communist Cuba, it is even worse in the rural areas. The stores are empty, and the Cuban people there are starving. This is socialism in action.
Via Martí Noticias (my translation):
Rural towns in Cuba left completely without supplies: ‘The population is dying of hunger’
The towns in the interior of Cuba are completely devoid of supplies, Martí Noticias was told by several locations in the country, severely affected by the lack of electricity and food.
Cuba’s Ministry of Internal Trade acknowledged on Tuesday that “difficulties with the availability of foreign currency, with which to import food, fuel, and other vital items, have impacted the delay in the distribution cycle and the assurance of the production of essential goods and services.”
Prolonged blackouts and severe food shortages have led to popular protests and the banging of pots and pans in several Cuban cities in recent days, where authorities have tried to calm the demonstrations by selling some products and restoring electricity.
Alfredo Álvarez Leyva, a resident of Sagua de Tánamo in Holguín, said that after several days of enduring blackouts of more than 20 hours, they received electricity service again on Tuesday night. “It came at 11 at night and there is no water, no food, the population is starving, this is a desert, and the government does nothing,” commented the activist.
Also from that province, in the town of Banes, resident William Tamayo denounced: “Today is March 20th and nothing has been delivered to any of the 136 warehouses in the municipality of Banes, in the province of Holguín, there is no food and there is much despair among the population, a lot of discontent.”
The dissident said that the electricity service was restored at 4 AM today.
They have also not distributed the food from the ration book in the town of San Andrés, located 19 kilometers from the provincial capital in Holguín. “Zero food, they haven’t brought anything,” warned activist Dámaso Alberto Fernández.
The Holguín resident said they were without power all day Tuesday: “They cut it off until around 9 at night.”
For others, it is even worse. In the area where the Hermanos Saíz cooperative is located, in San Juan and Martínez, Pinar del Río, they are still without electricity today, as Martha Poveda, mother of two children and also caring for her sick husband in bed, confirmed to our editorial team.
“One struggles with the children, who have to go to bed very late because there is no power, without food. Nothing comes to the house, the groceries for this month have not yet arrived at the store. It’s a dog’s life here,” said the woman in the midst of her despair.
In San Diego de los Baños, another town in Pinar del Río, the electricity service was restored this morning, said Esteban Ajete Abascal: “The whole day was gone and it came back this morning.”
“As for the food in the ration book, absolutely nothing has entered here,” emphasized the farmer.
After 16 hours of continuous blackouts, electricity returned to the city of Camagüey last night, explained Leydis Tabares. “Last night at 8 p.m., it came, they brought three pounds of rice and two of sugar, that’s all,” said the resident of the La Vigía neighborhood.
In Havana, scheduled blackouts continue, amid a marked shortage of basic products, sociologist Ángel Marcelo Rodríguez Pita explained. “The blackouts last about six hours in the capital, there are municipalities on the periphery like Arroyo Naranjo, which have even greater disruptions of up to 8 and 10 hours. And now, in this month of March, we’re seeing temperatures of up to 31 degrees Celsius, when July and August come, we’ll see, because hunger in the midst of heat is very difficult,” Rodríguez Pita warned.
The Ministry of Internal Trade admitted in a publication that on the island “there is much anguish and anxiety when that ship arrives late (or not) with the necessary product or raw material, or for certain reasons agriculture could not meet the deadline for the delivery of coffee for industrial processing, fluid milk, cigarettes …; or when our few operating mills also did not guarantee sugar for the domestic market.”