Rationed Products for Havana (Jan. 13-19)
HAVANA TIMES —Here is the list of the products available to Havana residents with their ration book during the week of January 13-19.
Chicken: (one pound for consumers over 14 and also for those persons under doctor’s prescription). Distribution concludes in the municipality of Playa, and begins in Cerro.
Ground Beef: (one pound for children between 0 and 13 years). Distribution concludes in Arroyo Naranjo and continues in Diez de Octubre, Cotorro, Habana Vieja and Guanabacoa.
Mortadela: (a half pound for all consumers). Distribution concludes in Boyeros, Centro Habana and La Lisa. Distribution continues in La Habana del Este, and Regla and begins in Plaza.
Eggs: (5 per consumer and for those under doctor´s prescription). Distribution ends in Diez de Octubre and beings in Boyeros and Playa.
Chicken for Fish: (11 ounces per consumer). Likewise, 6 lbs. of frozen fish with heads and tail for those with medical prescriptions. Distribution concludes in La Habana Vieja, San Miguel and continues in Centro Habana, Arroyo Naranjo and Cotorro.
Additional eggs at the “liberated” price of 1.10 pesos are available at the network of state mini-markets and butchers.
The sale of wheat flour continues at the mini-market network. Personal hygiene products are for sale at the neighborhood “bodega”, supermarkets and other selected sales points.
Non-rationed matches and plastic bags are for sale for 1.00 peso.
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Source: the Havana Provincial Marketing Enterprise
Griffin,
Do this : “Killing Hope ” website and review the 54 U.S. interventions listed and tell me how many were for the purpose of establishing democracy ?
Or go to any site you can find that lists all the interventions by the U.S and list those done to restore or establish democratic elections rather than overthrow them.
Then tell me how it is that in the case of Cuba alone, establishing free elections has suddenly, after 100 years of consistent foreign policies and actions to the exact opposite ,become of interest to the government of the USA .
The central purpose of U.S. foreign policy has been to prevent socialism i.e. DEMOCRATIC economies since the U.S. -European of the Soviet Union in 1918 and before the Soviets became a totalitarian ( non-communist, non-socialist state .
The unilateral declaration of the temporarily divided Vietnam to be two separate countries by the U.S. in 1954-56 was made to prevent the free elections scheduled by the Vietnamese-French peace agreement and in which President Eisenhower said Ho Chi Minh would get 80% of that free vote. ( Much as that same percentage of American colonialists would have voted to be independent of England)
Nope , sorry, that official U.S State Department line about establishing democracy and gaining restitution for seized properties are simply cover stories to mask naked aggression and imperialism .
You should learn from history
The economic war on the people of Cuba is simply a continuation of that log-standing policy.
I am an anarchist: a democrat and hardly a Bolshevik .
You can Google up the information on Cuba being the only Latin American country without childhood malnutrition and not have to resort to erroneously calling me a liar .
I may , on occasion be in error but I do not lie; say things are true when I know they are not nor do I have to ..
Tilapia are raised in farms all over the world and this most likely is what you got.
The fish are flash frozen, each filet is individually wrapped and it’s a mild , sweet fish and adaptable that lends itself to frying , baking or broiling .
I had baked stuffed tilapia for dinner last night that was raised in Panama and have caught tilapia at fish farms in Jamaica.
The Vietnamese are undercutting the price of U.S farm-raised tilapia much as Vietnamese, Chinese and Bangladeshi workers undercut all U.S producers in the clothing business.
It is not surprising that tilapia grown very inexpensively in Vietnam is replacing the more expensive to catch species eaten at a great many seaside restaurants around the world .
This is the fish of the future.
There is nothing in my metaphor about the US wanting to restore democracy in Cuba. The point was to make clear that when one person takes the property of another, it is absurd to expect the one who was robbed to turn around and do business with him again.
As you well know, one of the conditions for lifting the embargo is for Cuba to negotiate the reimbursement of seized assets. So if as you say, the Cuban gov’t has offered to do so too, then why don’t they get down to business?
Oh right. Because the other condition is for Cuba to hold free and fair elections, something the Castro regime will never do.
Hahaha! I once had sugar packets from Brazil for my coffee in a restaurant inside the Havana Libre Hotel. I suppose many times it is cheaper for these tourists destinations to use imported food products than it is to wade through the bureaucracy and corruption to purchase locally processed food. Sad testimony to the inefficiency of the Cuban system.
Interestingly enough, at the resort we went to, they told us that the fish we eat is from Vietnam!!!! Not local Cuban fish. Wow. Totally weird. Does anyone have any more information on this?
You wasted a lot of time posting that rubbish .
If you review 99% of all past U.S interventions in the last 100 years you will note that they all had to do with maintaining capitalism and also usually propping up a dictator .
To tell me that Cuba is somehow the exception to that long-standing policy is to be blind to historical fact.
Second , when American-owned companies in Cuba paid their taxes previous to the revolution they paid based on what the companies themselves said they were worth and cheated the Cuban people out of a ton of money for decades .
After the revolution had confiscated those properties , the Cubans offered to reimburse those owners based on what those owners claimed were the values of those properties when they paid their taxes. .
That seems fair enough to me.
To bad your Christ head was a megalomaniac.
I wont bothger
??????????????
Do please come back and post when you’re sober.
Well then, all things being equal those workers are still not eating meat!
“…the few rich” Ha! You armchair Bolsheviks are all the same.
The reason we Cubans go nuts listening to you armchair Bolsheviks compare Cuba to third world nations as part of your straw man is that Cuba once had a large and prosperous middle class. One wonders where Cuba would be right now but for the failed revolution and the time warp it has been placed in since the 60’s. That is the real reason those who fled Cuba hate the so called “revolution”. Cuba at the time was a prosperous nation. Even Fidel Castro has acknowledged that the revolution was born with a silver spoon in it’s mouth (horses rear end actually) and that while there was poverty, there was no economic crisis and no hunger in Cuba before the Revolution
f you know anything about Cubans and our history you will know that the revolution was fought for political reasons (Cubans love politics); to restore the 1940 constitution. To bad your Christ head was a megalomaniac.
I wont bothger
Having lived in Cuba as a child I can tell you that we went without food and many times ate only once per day. My parents spent an inordinate amount of times hunting for basic necessities. As aunts and uncles held their place in line, they would jump from location to location looking and scrounging for the right products…if they could find them. Fortunately I left Cuba as a child long before the “special period”.
Your lies, like all the arm chair Bolsheviks on this site, are a personal INSULT to me and my family. These comments are VERY PERSONAL as I lived them.
Consider this scenario: suppose I have a business and I am looking for an investor to help me expand. You invest money in my business and together we operate profitably for a few years. At some point, we have an argument about who is taking the fair share. I say you are taking more profits than you deserve. So one day, I change the locks and the company bank account and kick you out of the business with no compensation. You get mad at me and throw rocks through my windows.
I find a new investor, a major competitor of yours, who invests lots of cash, buys my products and send my staff on training courses. It works out great for a while, then one day my new partner goes bankrupt and my business is in big trouble.
So now I demand you lend me money and buy my products. No, I still won’t reimburse you for the property I took from you when I kicked you out of the business years before. I won’t even promise not to do it again. But I demand you help me out today.
Would you do it? Would you buy my products, even if they are low quality and you can get what you need elsewhere? Would you lend me money, even though you know I have reneged on loans from other lenders and I’m a bad credit risk?
No you wouldn’t. Nobody in their right mind would fall for such an obvious trick. You would tell me to get stuffed.
And that is why the US continues to refuse to buy from Cuba or lend her money.
Given the lack of credibility in self-reported statistics regarding Cuban society, I am not impressed by your unproven claim. However, anecdotally, I have personally witnessed far fewer children in Cuba begging in the streets than I have seen elsewhere in the third world. I also do not accept labeling the US embargo as a war. War should be respectfully reserved for places like Syria and South Sudan. Food, as you well know, is exempted from the US embargo. The lack of food availability and choices are attributed to Cuba’s self-imposed internal embargo.
The lack of food in Cuba has little to do with the US embargo. Especially because food, like medicine sales, are expressly permitted under the embargo. Even if there were not limitations to business between the two nations, Cuba lacks the hard currency to purchase additional foods. Ironically, Cuba recently began to tax the food brought in by Cubans who travel to Cuba to visit family. My wife, who recently returned from visiting her family in Guantanamo for the yearend festivities, brought a box of spices and food products for her family. She had to pay about 20 cuc in additional duties on the food she brought with her. How counterproductive is that? These foods are mostly not available at any price to buy in Cuba and certainly not in Guantanamo. The food problem in Cuba is largely due to the low productivity of Cuban agriculture. Given the high quality soil, tropical climate, and able-bodied labor force, there is no justification as to why Cuba can not feed themselves. Before Castro, it is estimated that there was at least 6 million head of cattle or almost 1 cow per person. Today, although the population has almost doubled to 11 million people, there is estimated to be slightly more than 1 million cows in Cuba. Cuba officials blame poor planning and inefficiency on the decline in beef cattle not the embargo. Maintaining the embargo hastens the departure of the brutal Castro regime which has brought about the near destruction of the a once bountiful Cuban society.
Cuba alone amongst Latin American countries has NO childhood malnutrition and this with an economic war being waged by the U.S across the Cuban economic spectrum and including food supplies.
Moses,
Have you ever wondered how much more would be available to all in Cuba were the U.S to normalize relations with Cuba as it has with just about every other CAPITALIST totalitarian regime over the past 100 years or so ?
But then, thinking that way would hardly serve your purposes of having Cuba return to the same feral capitalism that existed previous to the revolution and in which a large percentage of agricultural workers NEVER got to eat meat being out of work for half the year and in perpetual debt from that season-only employment .
Oh, the stores were FULL of marvelous steaks and such then but only the few rich could afford them .
Yes , by all means , lets keep the pressure on the Cuban people so that they’ll see the error of their thinking and return to the good old days .
Besides… just think..
WERE the U.S to call off its war, the “communist/socialist” Cuban system could then collapse of its own intrinsic shortcomings and prove to the world that such systems do not and cannot work.
A bodega for dry goods and a bodega for meat and fish are located just across the street on opposing corners from my favorite casa particular in central Havana. The real problem that I witness beyond the limited quantity of basic foods allocated monthly to the “libreta” or ration book that most Cubans use is that both of these bodegas and from what I have been told, most others as well, seldom receive the allotment of food necessary to satisfy the demand in their service area. Especially the meat and fish, these products run out long before the line of Cubans with their ration books are able to make their limited purchases. As hard as it is to imagine, the bodega that sells dry goods will even sometimes run out of sugar. Incredible when you realize that Cuba, less than 100 years ago, led the world in sugar exports. More inexplicable is how an island nation should run out of fish. By most estimates, the ration book, which is based on estimated monthly consumption, in reality runs out in less than two weeks. Most homes are then forced to meet their basic food needs by buying from the more expensive stores that sell food in CUC or from the black market. Beef, lobster and shrimp, and other high-end foods are available to purchase on the street but at very elevated prices. As a result, I know Cubans who can count the number of times they have eaten steak and even some who have never eaten lobster. Keep in mind that Cuba is an island in the middle of the Caribbean! Food distribution is yet another example of the mismanagement owed to the Castro-style socialist system.