Cuba request for U.N. food aid is admission of revolution’s failure
Cuba’s March 4 admission that it has requested the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) for subsidized powdered milk for its children got little international attention, but says a lot about the island’s economic collapse.
It’s the first time Cuba has asked for WFP help, agency officials say. And it may go down in history as one of the most vivid examples of the failure of the social experiment started by late guerrilla leader-turned dictator Fidel Castro.
“Cuba requested (WFP) assistance for the purchase of powdered milk in order to guarantee supply to Cuban boys and girls,” the state-run internet portal Cuba Debate reported, confirming a previous press report by the Spanish news agency EFE. A ship carrying 375 tons of powdered milk from Brazil sent by the WFP was due to arrive in Cuba shortly, Cuba Debate added.
The news came amid reports of growing shortages of bread, lentils and other essential food items, as well as of fuel and electricity shortages. In an effort to solve the crisis, the bankrupt Cuban regime announced on March 1 a 400% increase in gasoline prices, and a 25% electricity hike for many consumers.
Cuba’s hand-picked ruler Miguel Diaz-Canel on Feb. 2 fired his economy minister and former close friend Alejandro Gil, who had been in charge of the Cuban economy since 2018, and is now accusing him of corruption. Most Cuba watchers believe the regime has turned Gil into a scapegoat to try to justify the island’s desperate economic situation.
Emilio Morales, a former Cuban economic official who now heads the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group advisory firm, told me that this is Cuba’s worst economic crisis since the 1990-1993 “special period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cuba used to be a major world exporter of sugar, cigars and other agricultural products, but its private sector has been destroyed since the revolution. Nowadays, farmers are refusing to sell their milk, meat or other products to the state food distribution monopoly, because they prefer to sell it in the black market at much higher prices.
“Cuban agricultural producers are in a de facto strike,” Morales told me. “Milk producers, for instance, get paid five more times in the black market. They won’t waste their time and money selling their goods to the state.”
Cuba nowadays depends on imports for up to 80% of its food consumption, but is short of money to pay for its imported food items. Oil and food donations from Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and other friendly governments help somewhat, but not enough.
It’s very telling that the Cuban regime has conceded that it has requested WFP food assistance. That’s an embarrassing admission coming from a dictatorship that has always claimed it has improved the nutrition standards of the Cuban people.
One explanation for the regime’s admission is that the news was already out, and Cubans were about to see the WFP-labeled cartons of milk anyway once they arrived. The other explanation is that the regime fears a new wave of street protests like the ones that shook the island in 2021, and that it sought to calm down with the promise of imminent milk shipments.
As usual, Cuba’s state media — the only ones allowed on the island — are blaming the crisis on the U.S. trade embargo. But few in Cuba believe that narrative anymore because, among other things, the U.S. embargo excludes agricultural items. In fact, Cuba announced this month that it is also importing 500 tons of milk from the United States.
The bottom line is that, with Fidel Castro dead, his brother Raul Castro aged 92, a boring apparatchik like Diaz-Canel running the country and declining export revenues, Cuba’s future looks increasingly turbulent. Either the regime allows a dramatic economic opening, even if that could threaten its absolute political control, or we could soon see a new wave of massive street protests like the ones of nearly three years ago.
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