Like the law of gravity, the law of Castroism (and socialism) is a constant: No matter how bad things may be, they will always make it worse.
Cuban independent journalist Rafaela Cruz explains in Diario de Cuba:
The first law of Castroism: even when something goes very wrong, it can always get even worse
As Fidel Castro was aware that the civil society he needed to decimate, urgently, was that in the country’s cities, even after the Revolutionary Offensive of 1969, when not even the most destitute shoe shiner had a penny for wax, he continued to let hundreds of private agricultural entrepreneurs in the countryside produce with hired labor, invest, buy and sell. In short, they remained normal entrepreneurs, although surrounded by an abnormal socialism.
But, although theoretically largely private, Cuban agriculture, strangled by socialism, could not generate a land market bringing together the productive base on the most efficient projects, nor could it decide what to grow, nor could sales be made to whomever one wished at freely-established prices. And growers certainly could not develop a competitive portfolio of suppliers, or accept foreign investment, or dream of importing or exporting directly. Thus, an encyclopedic list of limitations, prohibitions and obligations constituting a blatant abuse of law empowered the State to steal the fruit of agricultural work, perhaps the most exhausting in the world… apart from carefully watching a broadcast of a Fidel Castro speech.
Private entrepreneurs in the countryside were thwarted with every kind of gate, fence and barricade possible, preventing them from feeding the country and prospering. Then, to add insult to injury, too often the State did not even pay them in a timely manner, preventing them from capitalizing and investing. Obscenely neglectd by the Government, the Agriculture Ministry has maliciously driven Cuban agriculture, after centuries of almost linear growth, into bankruptcy.
If that ministry granted 100 pesos of credit for every fruitless plan, measure, understanding, resolution, order, strategy, law and agreement it has issued, Cuba’s fields would not be overgrown with marabou today. But while the news is full of speeches and plans on how to solve hunger in Cuba, the funds that are needed continue to be diverted from the sector, because GAESA’s colonels make more off of a semi-empty hotel than a rice field… and whoever is hungry can find a buffet… or watch the Round Table.
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