Market Stands in Alamar: Another Unimportant Incident

Osmel Almaguer

Some of the closed down stands.

HAVANA TIMES — We had something of a scene in the farmers market here in Zone 6. What? You hadn’t heard? Well, it doesn’t surprise me, since most of you probably don’t live in Alamar.

It so happens that the manager of the State run market where root vegetables and other farm products are sold at subsidized prices was “let go” after his partnership with the private vendors across the street was discovered.

That’s right: he was supplying them with goods “under the table”, so they could sell these at a higher price and share the earnings with him. For this, he was dismissed, and rightly so. It is wrong to try and profit from the sale of products that the government tries to keep affordable.

What I still don’t understand is why they decided to close the stands and other kiosks run by the private vendors in the area. Why would they do this? Who made such a radical and foolish decision? Are they not going to sell these products to the public anymore?

Though the State market helps in this regard, it isn’t enough. Where are the green and root vegetables we eat going to come from? Who am I, a small farmer, going to sell my products to now?

I have some friends who were left without their stands at the market. It was their livelihood. How will they support their families now? I don’t know. They manage to get by, by I don’t even want to think what they have to do to put food on the table every day.

I don’t want to make any rash judgments, but, it’s no secret that the vendor-manager-inspector chain is more than well organized in all sectors where services are offered the population.

My question, thus, is: is the person who decided to get rid of the stands part of this chain? Were his motives to do this pure?

What can I say, folks, sometimes you just don’t know what to think and you’re left with nothing but questions, and concerned, because you simply don’t know what these bureaucratic officials will decide to shut down tomorrow.

To conclude, I would like to leave you with something of a homework question or something like that: What would you do when you discover that the wood your house is made with has rotted to the core?

osmel

Osmel Almaguer:Until recently I would to identify myself as a poet, a cultural promoter and a university student. Now that my notions on poetry have changed slightly, that I got a new job, and that I have finished my studies, I’m forced to ask myself: Am I a different person? In our introductions, we usually mention our social status instead of looking within ourselves for those characteristics that define us as unique and special. The fact that I’m scared of spiders, that I’ve never learned to dance, that I get upset over the simplest things, that culminating moments excite me, that I’m a perfectionist, composed but impulsive, childish but antiquated: these are clues that lead to who I truly am.