Cuban ministers reveal details of food, fuel shortages amid economic crisis (www.reuters.com)

submitted 11 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/world@lemmy.world

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[-] nix@merv.news 38 points 11 months ago

Still unbelievable the US maintains the sanctions on Cuba

[-] mwguy@infosec.pub -2 points 11 months ago

Hold free, multiparty elections and we'll lift our sanctions, just like we did in Venezuela.

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

You don't actually believe this, do you? The US is verrryy happy to deal with and even support antidemocratic regimes, as long as it suits our geopolitical interests. The "freedom and democracy" bullshit is so threadbare at this point, that it strains the imagination to think that there is anyone left who actually believes it.

In the specific case of Cuba, the US has tried everything it could to undo the revolution in Cuba. Do you think "free, multiparty elections" would be held without overwhelming US interference?

Just as a reminder: before the revolution, Cuba was run by a dictator who was hated by the Cuban people, but loved by the US political/corporate interests. Also, the nations of the UN regularly vote overwhelmingly to end the US sanctions, which the US vetoes.

[-] mwguy@infosec.pub -1 points 11 months ago

You don't actually believe this, do you?

We just did it in Venezuela. And politicians in the US have been looking for a reason to normalize relations with Cuba since the fall of the USSR.

Elections are hardly some crazy thing to ask for.

Do you think "free, multiparty elections" would be held without overwhelming US interference?

Probably. Without the support of the USSR, we don't have as much of an existential threat posed by Cuba. Especially since the support for the embargo in the US has fallen below 50% in recent years. Neither party will end it while the Castro Dictatorship is in power because of the political pull survivors concentrated in Florida have. So whomever does it needs a "see it worked" in order to do so.

Just as a reminder: before the revolution,

Bautista predats the Cold War. We supported a lot of dictatorships in the Cold War that we wouldn't end up supporting long term. Gaddafi and Saddam are excellent examples of dictatorships we supported and then opposed post Cold War.

[-] naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca 13 points 11 months ago

The US embargo of Cuba has been widely condemned by every country except Israel and Ukraine. The UN General Assembly has tried time and time again to get the US to end the embargo, but to no avail.

[-] PugJesus@kbin.social 12 points 11 months ago

It's very saddening. The level of poverty experienced by Cuba in the past few years is absolutely devastating.

[-] pan_troglodytes@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago

Cuba imports most of the food and fuel it consumes

fuel, that makes sense - after all, Mexico is right next door, but food? cant they grow food? seems like Cuba would be perfectly situated for farming.

[-] dirtypirate@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

Most of their farm land is devoted to cash crops, tobacco, coffee, sugar, the trifecta of colonial slavery. They still run steam trains on sugar cane farms on the west side of the island, there's ancient soviet tractors working the fields too.

[-] VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social 2 points 11 months ago

To add on to what you said, a lot of their farm equipment is either Soviet, made like you said, which makes it basically extremely difficult to find replacement parts, or US-made, which also makes it nearly impossible to trade in replacement parts. They often have to leave machines just sitting there or switch to old-school animals.

Oil to run their machines is also extremely difficult to get a hold of because of things like the embargo, since they try to stop other country's ships from trading with them. They were able to make a deal with Venezuela, and Russia to a lesser extent, that helped, but not enough to meet demand, and it's been even more difficult since they've dealt with sanctions and crises of their own. Mexico is now helping, too, in defiance of the US so hopefully that helps, but it's difficult and complicated to trade around the regulations with both the US and Cuba. They also don't have much equipment or foreign expertise to refine received crude oil.

The sanctions also make the country generally poorer, making it difficult to pay for traded food.

Other colonized states that focused on cash crops for hundreds of years generally deal with the same issues: Puerto Rico imports 85% of its food, for example. Jamaica gets 43% of its food imports from the US (imagine if they emmargoed Jamaica with those statistics). Haiti imports 80-90% of its rice and wheat (a staple foods for them). Fiji produces about half the food their population needs. Some of these countries are trying to change it and have ongoing or new agricultural programs, but if you already have the infrastructure and trading partners for your cash crops (like sugar or whatever) from your colonized days, I guess it must be hard to switch over.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 0 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Nov 22 (Reuters) - Senior Cuban officials have over several weeks provided an increasingly dire snapshot of a deepening economic crisis in a series of televised prime-time appearances, revealing the extent of the downturn in unprecedented detail.

Food production, the supply of phamaceuticals and transportation are down by at least 50% since 2018, the top officials said, and continued to decline this year in large part due to chronic fuel shortages and power outages.

Cuba imports most of the food and fuel it consumes, but revenues have plunged following the pandemic, hampered by stiff U.S. sanctions and floundering tourism, once a mainstay of the Caribbean island economy.

Production of pork, rice and beans - all staples on the Cuban dinner plate - are down by more than 80% this year over pre-crisis levels and eggs 50%, Agriculture Minister Ydael Jesus Perez said.

Hospitals, short on basic supplies such as sutures, cotton and gauze, have done 30% fewer surgical procedures compared with 2019, according to data shared on state-run TV during a presentation by First Deputy Health Minister Tania Margarita Cruz.

Local authorities, increasingly under pressure as the problems and tension ratchet up, have launched programs to contain hunger, build homes and improve the flow of transportation, but remain hamstrung by a lack of funds, they have said.

The original article contains 401 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023

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