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In Cuba Who Suffers the External and Internal Blockades?

HAVANA TIMES – Today I want to address the US government’s blockade against Cuba, the one that has existed for more than 60 years, but which is only now really being felt by those who should be feeling it: the dictators.

Of course it exists and has an impact on the population, especially because the State has tried to take responsibility for everything, from the daily production of bread to space exploration, and that is where everything gets complicated.

Two realities coexist in Cuba that, at first glance, seem incompatible.

On the one hand, there are denunciations of an economic blockade that limits access to markets, credit, technology and sources of financing, while on the other, social media displays daily offers of cooking oil, gasoline, diesel, food, spare parts and all kinds of imported goods. Many of these promotions come from private companies (MSMEs), which apparently manage to bring products onto the island with a frequency and variety that are difficult to ignore.

So the question is inevitable: if private businesses are now receiving containers of cooking oil practically every day, why does the product remain scarce or inaccessible to a large part of the population?

The answer cannot be reduced to a slogan: neither can everything be explained by the blockade, nor does the existence of imported goods demonstrate that this factor is irrelevant.

The problem lies in the way external restrictions combine with the domestic economic model, unequal distribution, prices, opacity and state control.

The fact that cooking oil, fuel or food reaches the country does not necessarily mean that these products are available to all Cubans.

In many cases, these are goods intended for a segment of the population able to pay in foreign currency, or in national currency at prices far above........

© Havana Times