FOOD-CUBA: Pangs of New Social Gaps Felt at Dinner Table

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 7 2001 (IPS) - The difficulties faced by lower-income sectors in Cuba when it comes to putting food on the table is a disturbing reflection of the social inequalities that have arisen in more than a decade of economic crisis.

“I used to love cooking, but not anymore,” says María Rivero, 39, a teacher. “There are days when just thinking about what I’m going to feed my children is a veritable torture.”

Her neighbour, who works in the tourism industry and who has relatives abroad who send him occasional remittances, is in a very different situation, says Rivero, who points out that “in his refrigerator there is always something to throw in the frying pan.”

The problem facing Rivero, a divorced mother raising her two school-age children on a salary of around 400 pesos a month, is no longer the scarcity of food items on the shelves suffered by Cubans in the early years of the recession. “No matter how far I stretch my pesos, they just don’t cover all of the needs of my family,” she complains.

At the official exchange rate, Rivero’s salary is equivalent to the same amount in dollars. But at the “semi-official” exchange rate used by government exchange bureaux, her monthly salary is equivalent to less than 24 dollars.

Since the 1960s, the Cuban state has provided certain basic items at subsidised prices through a system of ration books. But the products available through that system have been sharply reduced in over 10 years of recession.

In Havana, the basic basket of goods covered by the ration books meets less than 30 percent of daily calorie requirements, 60 percent of animal protein requirements, 58 percent of vegetable protein requirements, and 53 percent of required intake of fat.

Experts reckon that a family of four needs at least 700 pesos a month in additional income to complete a rounded diet in the network of stores that sell products at market price, whether in pesos or in dollars.

A government study carried out in Havana, home to 2.2 million of Cuba’s 11 million people, found that just under 80 percent of all household income spent on food goes to purchases in the free farmers’ markets.

The markets, where the public can buy meat – with the exception of beef, which is a state monopoly – and all kinds of fruit and vegetables, were set up for farmers interested in selling their privately-grown products to the public, as part of a series of measures adopted in 1993 and 1994 to alleviate the impact of the crisis.

As part of the reforms, the government also permitted the free circulation of dollars, and opened the country up to foreign investment and tourism.

But the reforms also led to new income gaps that the government has attempted to narrow through assistance programmes targetting the neediest sectors of society.

“The emphasis on social issues has moved to the forefront, and they now appear to be the top concern” of local authorities, said researcher Juan Triana Cordoví in a study of the performance of the Cuban economy last year.

The government’s concern has translated into “a concentration of efforts and resources…in the regions and among sectors of the populace that have the greatest needs,” he added.

A study focusing on children up to age 15 has provided the government with a map of the nutritional situation of a section of the population believed to be hit especially hard by food shortages and poor eating habits.

While the results of the study have not been made public, the surveys carried out by social workers paved the way for subsidies specifically tailored for cases of malnourished children or youngsters who lack the necessary family support networks.

The impact of the tough economic and social conditions of the early years of the crisis that broke out in 1990 initially had a relatively greater impact on women, due to their heavy domestic duties and family responsibilities.

With the disappearance of the east European socialist bloc and the break-up of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost, almost overnight, a market on which it depended in 1989 for food imports accounting for 53 percent of the population’s energy requirements and 56 percent of its protein requirements.

Due to shortages of other resources, domestic production also fell, especially of foodstuffs like milk, eggs and other sources of animal protein, which have not yet significantly recovered.

The proportion of women below their optimum weight at the start of pregnancy rose from 8.7 percent in 1990 to 10.4 percent in 1994, one of the worst years of the crisis.

Experts point out that a significant decline was seen in nutritional levels among Cubans in that period, the most dramatic effect of which was an epidemic of neuropathies in 1992 and 1993, which were blamed on a cumulative deficit of vitamins, especially B complex and essential amino acids.

“We cannot forget that at one point, in 1993 and 1994, we were consuming less than 2,000 daily kilocalories and 50 grams of protein per capita,” said Vice-President Carlos Lage in a late 2000 report on the economy.

To illustrate how much the situation had improved, Lage said that by late last year, per capita consumption stood at 2,585 kilocalories and 68 grams of protein.

While the vice-president admitted that nutritional levels were still too low in Cuba, he said the “slight but steady” improvements seen in living standards were “encouraging.”