To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
The Castro dynasty's day of reckoning is approaching as coffee makers and croquettes continue to explode in Cuba due to inferior ingredients
Cuban coffee makers have been exploding for years on the island due to "the mixture of peas or wheat, badly roasted and ground, added to increase the volume of coffee in envelopes sold to the population by government stores is, according to technicians in the field, one of the main causes" of this phenomenon. The Castro regime has prioritized that its coffee production be exported, and they have failed to meet domestic demand, and continue to mix coffee provided to Cubans with roasted and ground peas or wheat. This has been going on in Cuba for over 20 years.
Explosive combination in Cuba: Cuban coffee and croquettes
Now another traditional Cuban staple, croquettes, sold by government stores in Cuba are also exploding, raising questions of how this is possible. According to NBC News, "Cubans say that in practice, they have little or no guarantee when they buy food in government establishments and that they are rarely compensated for having bought food that is in poor condition or otherwise defective." Considering what Cuban officials did to coffee, the obvious question that arises is what have they substituted in the croquettes that is causing them to explode? The NBC News article quotes "Verónica Cervera, a Cuban American chef and cookbook author, told Noticias Telemundo that she can't find any culinary explanation or logic to the 'explosive croquettes,' which, according to the company, contain only wheat flour, water, fish mince, vegetable oil, spices, salt and sugar."
Prior to 1959, "Cuba’s foreign trade, the overall value of Cuban exports to the United States surpassed her imports throughout the 1950s. Cuba’s exports amounted to $780.4 million while her imports only reached $277.4 million," reported Professor José Alvarez of the University of Florida's Department of Food and Resource Economics in a research publication.
According to the Cuban Studies Institute between 1952-1958 there was "a successful nationalistic trend aimed to reach agricultural self-sufficiency to supply the people’s market demand for food." Despite the efforts to violently overthrow the Batista regime in the 1950s, "the Cuban food supply grew steadily to provide a highly productive system that in daily calories consumption, ranked Cuba third in Latin America.
All of this came crashing down when the Castro regime seized and collectivized properties at the start of the revolution, and the rationing of food began in 1962 and has continued over the next 60 years with 80% of Cuba's food now imported. This included the years when Cuba was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, and was part of the East Bloc, and also during the peak years (2011 - 2014) when it received massive amounts of assistance from Venezuela's Chavez regime.
The secret that Cuban communists seek to maintain hidden is that the result of "decades of strict government control left the island dependent on food imports and farmers unable to earn a decent living." Their only recourse is to blame the Cuban Embargo, but the claim rings hollow when it is domestic production that has imploded, and Havana now depending on U.S. agricultural goods to feed Cubans.
Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy in his April 21, 2021 OpEd, "Cuba’s Day of Reckoning is Fast Approaching," cites that the embargo is a factor but that there are others in escalating order of importance: "Venezuela’s economic collapse dried up more than $5 billion a year in economic aid, and the pandemic gutted the tourism industry that was a principal source of hard currency." However he is clear that the most important are "the structural inefficiencies of Cuba’s command economy have caused chronic currency and export shortages that Raul has failed to address over the last decade." This command economy and regime priorities also explains how a coffee producer fails to provide sufficient coffee to the Cuban populace.
Ambassador Otto J. Reich responding to a question in the Latin American Advisor on the departure of Raul Castro from head of the Cuban Communist Party, explains that although "Díaz-Canel is no Gorbachev, but there is hope despite him: Cubans are losing fear of the secret police and challenging the party’s iron rule; they are aware of the fact that Cuba was not ‘a poor country’ before Castro, contrary to what Raúl repeated at the party congress; that their brethren who have escaped or managed to reach free, capitalist societies have thrived and that ‘with a little more sacrifice everything will be better soon’ is a worn-out communist lie."
Anselmo Lopez Galves shared on social media the burns he suffered after frying croquettes from Prodal. Courtesy of Abel Yadiel Arrieta Valdespino
The Castro regime has been incredibly successful in its propaganda campaigns, organizing terrorism on an international scaled in the 1960s and 1970s through the Tricontinental, sent thousands of troops to wage war in Africa and overthrew the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and backed the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and managed the succession of Nicolas Maduro, following Chavez's death. Despite these "successes", there have been many failures, but the most glaring have been and continue to be "breakfast, lunch, and dinner." These failures are a feature, not a bug of communism.
The Castro dynasty's day of reckoning is approaching as coffee makers and croquettes continue to explode in Cuba due to inferior ingredients that are given to Cubans in order for the Castro regime to export domestic production for profits that are not seen by everyday Cubans.
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