Tackling Cuba’s Food Service Blues

Yusimi Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES, Dec. 17 – In a previous piece I wrote about the many tasks that a State gastronomy, or food service, worker has to perform in this country in order to carry out their job.  This isn’t an isolated instance.

The service and the quality of the products that are offered by the State food establishments leave much to be desired, although we should recognize that things have improved in relation to the decade of the nineties.

However, the quality of these eateries is still far below those where you pay in hard currency or in the so called private cafeterias.  Such comparison by the clients is nearly inevitable.

The salaries in the food service sector also offer no stimulus to the workers.  Hence, it has become a normal practice to give the client less than the portion established by the companies in order to generate leftovers that can be sold later under the table.  This has become the principal goal of a food service worker.

The 1968 Offensive and its Consequences

Could this be the consequence of erroneous policies from the past?

On March 13, 1968, five months after the death of Che in Bolivia, Fidel Castro announced a “Revolutionary Offensive” against “the last vestiges of capitalism and the bourgeois morality.”  Previous to this, in the years immediately following the 1959 revolution, the large US owned companies in the country had been nationalized and the Agrarian Reform law had been proclaimed.

However, the revolutionary offensive of 1968 came out of the goal of constructing “true communism” in Cuba.  Under communism the means of production should be placed in the hands of the workers, who up until that moment owned nothing more than the force of their labor.  As such, they were forced to work for a salary – minimal to say the least – and to put up with very long work days.

In the 24 hours that followed the 13th of March of 1968, 58,012 small businesses including shoe repair shops, tiny watch repair shops, barber shops, old linotype businesses, fried food stalls, small businesses and even ovens for making charcoal were nationalized or closed.

The Cuban workers who, as I’ve said, up until that moment owned only the force of their labor…continued to possess nothing more than this force, since all of the means of production then became property of the State.

But in this way the State also acquired a burden.  It wasn’t really evident during the eighties, because we still enjoyed a comfortable economic situation, thanks to our trade with the now defunct socialist camp.  The state establishments were well stocked with merchandise at prices affordable to the public.

The Government Had No Choice

But in the decade of the nineties, with the arrival of the so-called Special Period there was less and less available in the cafeterias and restaurants.  An acquaintance who worked as an administrator during that era told me of his experiences.

The company directors told them that they had to be apt administrators and be able to work within the circumstances of the Special Period; they had to find a way to supply the eating establishments and resolve problems regarding transportation of the supplies they obtained, all without making waves within the State enterprise, since the company couldn’t take on these problems.

The government had no choice but to permit individuals to work for themselves; not only to cover those necessities that the State couldn’t, but also as a source of employment.  People received licenses to open small culinary establishments, or to make handicrafts on their own, repair household appliances, etc.  But the State has continued to control a large part of the small eating establishments and stands.

As of almost a year ago, Granma, the newspaper that is the Official Organ of the Cuban Communist Party, has included a page where readers have the opportunity to discuss and offer their criteria regarding the realities of Cuban life (as long as they aren’t directly criticizing the government or the system).  This page is published each Friday.

Getting Beyond a Burden

On November 27, a revolutionary comrade who is also a member of the Cuban Communist Party recalls how he supported the Revolutionary Offensive in its time.  Years later he came to understand that the State had taken on a burden.

This comrade argues that today the State should stop running small food service enterprises; that the food service workers should all become self-employed workers.  In that way, the State doesn’t have to supply them with the merchandise that they offer, nor pay their salaries.

I share his opinion. Perhaps the State could sell them products at a lower price than the general population pays, since they would be buying wholesale.  This would allow them to obtain a profit from their work without having to sell their finished products at prices so high as to affect the population as a whole.

I also believe that the State could rent them their sites at a price that’s not too high, so that these independent food service workers could carry out their work.  They could be the same people who currently are working in food service, but the State wouldn’t have to supply them with merchandise or pay a salary.

The State would then not have to concern itself with theft or misappropriation of resources.  By working for themselves, the worker would become the owner of the means of production and would not want to steal from themselves.