Press advisory
Tourists eat the bread that the Cuban government denies Cubans.
Contacts: John Suarez (612)-367-6845 and Janisset Rivero (786)-208-6056
Center for a Free Cuba. Washington DC, February 28, 2024, Washington, DC. The suspension of bread from the ration book, recently announced by the Cuban government, is not due to the U.S. embargo as Havana claims.
The US State Department in its fact sheet on the "Provision of Humanitarian Assistance to Cuba" clearly states: "While the embargo remains in place, the U.S. government prioritizes support for the Cuban people, and U.S. law and regulations include exemptions and authorizations relating to exports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to Cuba, as well as disaster response."
Trade in mainly agricultural products with Cuba amounted to $400 million in 2023, in contrast to only $241.8 million during the last full year of the Obama Administration's thaw with Havana in 2016.
The shortage of bread is due to the fact that the regime gives priority to the purchase of flour for tourists in luxury hotels, ignoring the hunger of Cuban families who suffer blackouts, piles of garbage on corners with infestations of mice, mosquitoes and cockroaches, plus sewage leaks and lack of drinking water.
The impact of the lack of flour to make bread is limited to the production that is distributed through the ration book on which millions of Cubans depend.
MSMEs and other non-state forms of production continue to buy flour (in foreign currency) and produce bread. The hotels will not suffer any consequences.
During the next few days the dimension of the disaster will be appreciated. In fact, in several provinces they have already announced that ration bread will only be for children. Hopefully, part of the flour destined for hotels and the government leadership, who lack for nothing, can be allocated to the sick and the elderly.
"After more than six decades of Marxist revolution, class differences, instead of having disappeared, have reached levels not seen during the 20th century. The repressive measures against farmers, published in the official press, will increase the scarcity of the most basic products, "said John Suarez, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.
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