The Mangoes Bloom in Cuba and the Nightmare Begins

By Aurelio Pedroso (Progreso Semanal)

HAVANA TIMES – Each year, the mango trees begin that beautiful process of blooming to give life to the fruit as coveted as it is nutritious. You can already see those trees in peoples’ patios with dozens of ochre-colored bouquets hanging from their branches. They encourage the arrival of bees and the tiny bee hummingbirds (zunzunes) in search of the raw material for honey and vital food.

It is a beautiful spectacle of our mother nature. Despite the upheavals of climate change, she fulfills her duty to announce a good harvest at the start.

Perhaps some mathematician, agronomist or a simple peasant can tell us how many boxes of the fruit could be obtained without major meteorological problems like those winds that will soon attack the tiny fruits. And if a farmer had them for sale or marketing, how much would go to the industry or the consumer’s table.

But if he/she already has experiences from other seasons, it could also be like other years  when much of the harvest is lost because no one came for it at the right time.

And that, precisely, is the unknown factor in this year’s mango season. Will the routine that repeats year after year happen again? Fruit rotting and going to the happy pigs in the best of cases, and those survivors that reach the market going for inaccessible and incomprehensible prices.

Optimists like those who invented the airplane, hope it will be different under more flexible, practical, and less restrictive rules in free trade. Pessimists like those who devised the parachute, believe we will collide again with the same stone. Such as the owner of the mangoes taking it out on the road to sell and being fined or sent to jail.

Let’s follow the route. We will have enough time to determine which virus we blame for a new failure. Be it to Covid-19 or to that of economic or ideological bureaucracy.

Read more by Aurelio Pedroso here on Havana Times.