The international market was not made for us. It is the conclusion that one draws every time the National Assembly or a related institution analyses the ins and outs of the behavior of the economy. This 2020 painted ugly for all countries since covid-19 spread around the world and most governments were subjected to containment measures that hurt the good running of production processes. Social isolation was the only medicine capable of alleviating the spread of the disease, as long as the ultimate cure did not arise, and it was logical that this would result in a sharp decline in gross domestic product at all ends of planet Earth.
Our domestic product sins more gross than all others. If not, look at the number of times we have lamented the fall in commodity prices. An eminently agricultural country like Cuba – the explanation we hear – is limited in its exports and the existence of freely convertible currency to support social investment. It seems that the solution is for this picture to be reversed and international prices to raise their guarismos, but no, when that happens we come to regret that, being covered by much of the basic needs with the importation of food, the State is forced to spend large sums of money that were not provided for in the annual budget for these purposes.
Covid-19 has come to accentuate the dilemma. The Government makes huge efforts to minimize the impact of the disease on the island. To the already large amount of resources that annually allocate to health, it has added extra figures to cover, among other emergencies, the existence of numerous confinement centers where suspected of possessing the disease are isolated. And although the latter’s behavior has not escaped the curves and recurve typical of a pandemic, it is undeniable that Cubans breathe with relief, sleep peacefully and enjoy indicators of incidence that have nothing to do with those of the region and the world. That’s why we sway in trust and spray recklessness about playing with a virus that sneaks wherever you want.
I escape the temptation to echo the moralizing speeches we hear on the news every time, because trust and recklessness are not always – almost never – the result of the “I don’t have to” you use to careless. You have to take to the streets more than advisable for an endless search for the minimum to survive, with a depressed state trade about suicide and an illegal barter that no longer has to replace it.
“The Hour of The Furnaces” is a good title that we would borrow from the recently deceased Pino Solanas to define an opportunity that was painted bald to a country whose soil and climate has them all to export in the lacquers the opportunities. With sky prices and world productions down, Cuba would be supplying the world with any quantity of agricultural products, and even meat and milk, if it had fruited dream plans based on structures that curb them. Behold, we do not even have to consume them, and the pockets see salt flats emerge that are deepened by inflation that has no when to finish and that promises to be chronic and enter intensive care if the calculations of the Order fail.
The block doesn’t count, some ask. Of course, yes, but the “updates”, guidelines, rectifications and strategies have been designed with it there, without calculating its expiration date, as an uncomfortable sambenito with which we will have to live for a long time. It is immoral to continue to blame it for the inability to extract the fruits from a land that has been given to us to grow it and not for the parasitic shrubs and the idem economy to flourish.
A plant grows if it gives it light. The darkness of the locks, of the sick obsession of fearing enrichment from honest work, of running an economy like military maneuvering, only manages to kill any venture, and the potaje will not care if we the beans were given a certain quota of “revolutionary effervescence”.
That the swings of international trade will give us a damn in the future will depend on the cumin not having to look for it in China and make our land produce it, so that everyone, back from their work, can buy it at ease with the percentage of sweat invested, using only their legitimately conquered currency. Ω
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