To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Food shortages in the time of COVID-19 and in Cuba in the 1970s, the continuing repression against journalists and the consequences for travelers to the island today.
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Mirta Ojito has written a powerful OpEd in The New York Times connecting her unnerving experiences in today's supermarkets in the United States in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing up in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s when food was also scarce for the average Cuban, although Soviet subsidies were plentiful for regime. Furthermore there were unexpected shortages for a tropical island such as fish, and seafood generally. The question that arises were these shortages due to a lack of resources, doubtful considering generous Soviet subsidies, or a method of control over the population?
"Many think that Cuba’s problems with food began with the fall of the Berlin Wall, once the Soviet Union stopped subsidizing the Cuban economy. But in the ’60s and ’70s — the years when much of the world was looking at the island as a beacon of progressive thought and lofty ideas — most Cubans didn’t get enough food, toothpaste or toilet paper to get them through the month. I remember standing in endless lines for potatoes only to be told, when it was finally getting close to my turn, that the potatoes had run out. I remember craving a ham and cheese sandwich. I remember running downstairs when I heard the sound of the ice cream truck, relishing the thought of a strawberry cup or a chocolate bar, and finding out they had only melted gallons of vanilla.
The freezers were broken. Again. They were out of strawberry. Again. Eventually, the ice cream trucks disappeared altogether. I remember wanting desperately to eat fish and not being able to find one anywhere. Imagine that. We were surrounded by water, and yet, there was no seafood. I’d sometimes dream of apples. I’d wake up just as I was about to bite into one, perhaps because I lacked imagination to conjure up the taste, never having seen an apple except in the movies. In time, I came to understand that talking about food — the yearning for certain kinds of food — was safer than talking about other needs. Food was a metaphor for our more pressing, but forbidden, needs.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a post on reporter Mónica Baró who has been fined for her Facebook posts. According to CPJ she "is at least the fifth independent journalist fined under Decree 370 since it was passed, according to the Association for Press Freedom, a group that advocates for press freedom in Cuba. Baró said she has refused to sign the official receipt of her fine and has not paid it. She told CPJ she plans to file an appeal. Cuba is one of the most hostile environments for the press in the world, and ranks among CPJ's 10 Most Censored Countries."
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