Food Shortages

If you were to drop in from outer space and read an article on Cuba, you would never know that hunger, deprivation and rationing existed in Cuba well before the island was ravaged by hurricanes, as this erroneously report in this SFGate article claims:

… the government of Cuban President Raúl Castro this week announced a nationwide food-rationing policy.

Now, consumers will only be permitted to purchase limited amounts of rice, beans, root vegetables, plantains and other basic foods…

Cubans have been suffering the indignity of “la libreta” for 46 years now.
The regime, of course, blames the 46 year shortage of food on the “embargo” and the miscreants and useful idiots in the US blame the “embargo” of the Cuban Exiles in Miami.

Now that the regime has basically shut down the farmer’s markets, Havana has 40, by decreeing a freeze on prices, the shelves are bare:

In markets around Havana, customers found stretches of mostly vacant vendor stalls and limited supplies of food. A market in the Vedado district offered only papayas, a small stack of melons and a few bulbs of garlic.

The regime is forcing all goods into its own stores where the rationing cards must be used including “humanitarian aid” which it is diverting to its hard currency stores.

As a matter of fact, Guillermo Fariñas of Cubacan press reports that there was a spontaneous protest in the city of Santa Clara when some 500 citizens witnessed boxes clearly marked “humanitarian aid” in Portuguese being unloaded from a truck and delivered into the “Siboney” hard currency store. The police, state security and rapid response brigades were called in to repress the citizens who where verbally abusing the truck drivers for diverting the humanitarian aid into a for profit state – run store.