SubscribeCubans Allowed DVDs, Rice Cookers - Farms!
From those lovers of communist dictators everywhere, the Associated Press:
Shoppers look at DVD players at a store in Havana, Tuesday, April 1, 2008.
Castro reforms: DVDs, farms for Cubans
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA - Cubans snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time Tuesday as Raul Castro’s new government loosened controls on consumer goods and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land.
Combined with other reforms announced in recent days, the measures suggest real changes are being driven by the new president, who vowed when he took over from his brother Fidel to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans…
Many of the shoppers filling stores Tuesday lamented the fact that the goods are unaffordable on the government salaries they earn. But that didn’t stop them from lining up to see electronic gadgets previously available only to foreigners and companies…
On Monday, the Tourism Ministry announced that any Cuban with enough money can now stay in luxury hotels and rent cars, doing away with restrictions that made ordinary people feel like second-class citizens. And last week, Cuba said citizens will be able to get cell phones legally in their own names, a luxury long reserved for the lucky few.
The land initiative, however, potentially could put more food on the table of all Cubans and bring in hard currency from exports of tobacco, coffee and other products, providing the cash inflows needed to spur a new consumer economy.
Government television said 51 percent of arable land is underused or fallow, and officials are transferring some of it to individual farmers and associations representing small, private producers. According to official figures, cooperatives already control 35 percent of arable land — and produce 60 percent of the island’s agricultural output.
"Everyone who wants to produce tobacco will be given land to produce tobacco, and it will be the same with coffee," said Orlando Lugo, president of Cuba’s national farmers association.
The change is a sharp contrast to the early days of Cuba’s revolution, when the government forced or encouraged private farmers to turn their land over to the state or form government-controlled collective farms. But without more details, it was difficult to tell the significance of program, which began last year but was announced only this week…
Cuba’s communist system was founded on promoting social and economic equality, but that doesn’t mean Cubans can’t have DVD players, said Mercedes Orta, who rushed to gawk at the new products.
"Socialism has nothing to do with living comfortably," she said…
Government stores offered all products in convertible pesos — hard currency worth 24 times the regular pesos state employees get paid. The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and the average state salary is just 408 regular pesos a month, about $19.50.
Still, most Cubans have access to at least some convertible pesos thanks to jobs with foreign firms or in tourism, or cash sent by relatives living in the United States.
Graciela Jaime, a 68-year-old retired clothes factory employee, complained that widespread corruption and greed has created a class of rich Cubans.
"Everyone wants to spend money and that is what’s happening," she said. "If everything they earned went to the state like it should, there wouldn’t be as much corruption as there is."
The truly criminal thing is that Cubans have been prevented from owning basics like pressure-cookers for sixty years, and we only hear about it from our watchdog media when the sanctions are finally removed.
But our "journalists" never want to make their idols look bad.
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8 Responses to “Cubans Allowed DVDs, Rice Cookers - Farms!”
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April 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 am
How magnanimous of them. Now if they could only hold a conversation without their “overseers” listening in.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
I would like to force all of Americas dumb assed suburban teens wearing their che and revolution t shirts to read this. I want to kick their stupid asses everytime they wear their stupid little cuban military clothes and run around town with their skate boards. If cuba is just now allowing pressure cookers, right nice of them, then what makes these stupid suburban teens think they could skate board in fiddles country? Sorry, need to vent. Also, if cooba was better, then why aren’t people making milk carton rafts and sailing away from Miami to cooba?
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
What a convoluted piece of journalistic tripe!
Cubans “snapping up” goods but two paragraphs later we have the “fact that the goods are unaffordable “. What…huhh..??
And then, this gem;
So why even make this statement? As a filler?
This AP a**hat, Weissert, actually gets paid to write junk like this.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Here’s an AP article crowing about the wonderous advances Cuba is now making. So Cuba now has gadgets (DVD Players) the average Cuban can’t afford and cooking accessories (pressure cookers) they have no meat to cook in and motorbikes they probably don’t have gas for. Just f***ing great! Things we have long taken for granted in most Western Countries for the last thirty years are now the latest rage. Good ole Cuba. A showcase example of Communism and its benefits.
I’m curious if Danny Glover and Oliver Stone have read this article. I wonder if the significance is lost on them?
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Now, if the average Cuban could only afford these items everything would be hunky dorey. Just more propaganda. What a joke!
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
1republicanscientist – I hear everything you are saying. I believe the reason they wear the Che shirts is because (1) They feel it makes them look chic (2) They don’t know any better (3) They suffer from what I call “Car Wash Syndrome” . . . remember the movie Car Wash with George Carlin, set in 70’s LA? The people working there were minorities and the owners were white . . . the boss’s son was constantly running around with Mao’s Little Red Book trying to inspire the workers and trying to fit in but they wanted nothing to do with him. I think that is why some of them wear the Che shirts . . . it makes them feel like they fit in with the working class and helps them get over their self induced capitalistic guilt complex.
A while back Mad Magazine had on their cover a spoof of the Che shirt . . . it had Alfred E. Newman wearing the beret with his “What, me worry” grin on his face and below it said “Viva la Stupido”. I wish someone would make a tee shirt like that, I would be the first in line to buy one.
One last thought, I too listen to the socialist lemmings who constantly regurgitate the “Cuba is so great and in the US there are 47 million people without health insurance blah, Bush lied 7 people died, blah, blah, blah” routine and then I throw the monkey wrench into their little diatribe and ask them the same thing . . . “If Cuba is so great why is it that there aren’t any Americans risking their lives and the lives of their families to sail the 90 miles to escape this god awful land? That is usually the end of the discussion.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I believe I read somewhere that the average Cuban earns the equivalent of $20 monthly.
With such a princely sum, it’s certain that these average Cubans will have enough money left over each month to buy a DVD player on the installment plan - - - first month they buy the “play” button, next month it’s “pause,” next the “menu” and, well, you get the idea.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
“Hmmm, let me get this straight. You put a disc in it? I though it was a panini maker.”