Cuba after the Fall of the Soviet Union

Solidarity, Love and Despair

By Xiomara Reinoso Gomez

HAVANA TIMES — “The socialist bloc has collapsed! The Soviet Union has disintegrated!” These were the kinds of remarks the medical personnel at the hospital were making. I wasn’t paying any attention to them. My two-month-old child had been hospitalized for diarrhea and, at the gastroenterology ward, he had caught a bacterial infection that had landed him in intensive care.

The doctor had told me that, if they couldn’t manage to find a vein for a transfusion and administering antibiotics in less than six hours, my son would die. Nothing else mattered to me in this desperate situation.

Finally, after poking his tiny body with a needle 39 times, they managed to channel a vein. But the danger wasn’t over: we had to wait an additional six hours to see how his body reacted to the treatment. I came close to losing my head. Luckily, everything worked out.

I barely had any contact with my family. We could only communicate through a pane of glass, making gestures and telling each other the essential things by reading each other’s lips. The only thing we spoke about was the child’s condition, I didn’t know about anything happening outside the hospital.

A few days later, my baby was discharged and prescribed a basic diet for four months. For those of you who don’t remember Cuba’s “basic diet,” it is a food preparation with green plantains, cassava, garlic, onion, peppers and beef (or chicken, if you can’t find the beef). As I was heading out of the intensive care unit, one of the nurses told me I could go get the ingredients at the hospital for a week. She was going to do me this favor so I had more time to find the ingredients myself.

I thanked her (and I am grateful to her to this day), but I walked out of there thinking: “How silly! It’ll be easier for me to buy the ingredients myself and do it at home.” What’s more, I had my old Russian blender. What else could I possibly need?

When I got to my neighborhood, I went directly to the market. I’d been away from home for fifteen days and my fridge was empty and the pots idling. I went directly to the preserves kiosk, my mind set on throwing together some food quickly and….my goodness, all of the shelves, absolutely all of them, were empty!

I asked a lady there what had happened. She gave me a surprised look. She probably thought I was from Mars. “They came and took everything.”

I was petrified. The words of the Apocalypse came to mind. We were indeed facing a great catastrophe, but not the one foretold by the biblical prophecy.

I looked at the child I was holding and thought of my 12-year-old daughter. I couldn’t help but cry.

The next day, I went to the produce market and all of the stands were empty, all except one. A large crowd of people were waiting for a truck to unload a shipment of cassava, shoving each other around violently. Then I remembered the nurse who had kindly offered me help.

Where had the products in the markets gone? Was that also being brought over from the Soviet Union? That was the beginning of the Special Period…just the beginning.

There are those who say another crisis is in store for us, but I’m no longer worried about it. My kids have grown up to be adults and, after so many such crises, I’m no longer afraid of anything.