07/15/2020 - 10:12
- Clarín.com
- World
Dr. Yasmín opens the refrigerator and examines her supplies. She misses a food she considers essential for her four-year-old son: beef . The last time the doctor received the state-subsidized delivery was in March, shortly before the global coronavirus pandemic broke out. It also failed to get on the black market. Street vendors who routinely walk the streets offering the pound (almost half a kilo) at 30, 40 or even 50 pesos (the equivalent of two dollars) no longer appear in the neighborhood.
Yasmín and his family live in the municipality of Nuevitas, in Camagüey, the largest province in Cuba (15 thousand square kilometers) and with better livestock yields. The productive leadership of the province does not seem to benefit those who inhabit it . Yasmín is in a similar situation to Maribel's just because she lives where they live. Just 59 kilometers from her house, in the province of Mayabeque, is the Matadero de Nueva Paz, one of the best known in the country. It is not far away, but not close enough either. And that's where a lot of the beef comes from for the local black market.
There are people who travel from different points to look for merchandise to resell in their communities. Every day a couple rides in a passenger truck. Clean, decent. She with a bag; him with a backpack. During the journey they listen to music with headphones. The police stop the truck and lower the passengers. They are not reviewed.
Until 7 years. The provision of red meat is guaranteed in some provinces until that age by the Government. In others, until 13
-They don't look like resellers- says a woman who travels with her partner.
They do check her.
-They're looking for something cold.
The municipalities of Nueva Paz, Los Palos and Vegas are the communities that benefit the most from their proximity to the slaughterhouse. There the meat comes with fewer restrictions. “The center has about 200 workers. Many of those who work directly with the meat are those who sell it to others who take it out on the street with a price greater than 25 pesos or a Cuban Convertible Peso (one dollar), because they have already paid at first hand. They take it out in the body and even with the waste, viscera and mondongos. There are others authorized to take out the trucks with meat and get their slices, ”says the woman.
It is difficult to live in Cuba without being part of the corruption plot associated with the sale of basic foods. The shortage pushes people to the black market , where what is extracted from the state sector is dumped by workers who seek to supplement an average salary of $ 40 a month. Few risk as much as the one who "sticks his hand" to take out red meat: the law establishes penalties of between 100 and 500 Cuban pesos, from 4 to 20 dollars. Some violations include additional penalties such as invalidation of the power to exercise.
Alejandro Gutiérrez lives in Las Tunas, more than 600 km from the capital. His daughter is three years old. Until he turns seven he will continue to receive subsidized meat. It is almost always second-class and can only last for two meals. Before, I used to supplement it with meat obtained "outside" that paid 30 pesos a pound.
"Now there is nothing," he says.
The pandemic and isolation measures made access to illegal meat difficult.
-It has decreased and prices have increased- regrets Dr. Yasmín.
"Not all of us have money to access the meat black market." The complaint that is repeated in Cuban homes.
Her husband, also a doctor, lives abroad and she alone has to take care of the child. The couple knows the strategies of the public health system to avoid childhood anemia. Yasmín speaks as a doctor and as a mother: “In the first months it depends on mothers complying with and taking prenatals, as well as folic acid during pregnancy. Children up to six months circulate with maternal hemoglobin. From now on, the consumption of red meat is oriented to them ”, she says, but she considers it an“ ironic orientation ”.
Thirty years ago, the Convention on the Rights of the Child spoke of the need to provide “adequate nutritional food” to combat malnutrition and childhood diseases. As a mother, Maribel also pays attention to her child's need for proper growth: iron and protein present in meat. "It is very important to include it in the diet," she says. At times she has turned to the black market for more, but she can't always. "Not all of us have money for that," he remarks.
***
Until recently, Maribel Montes de Oca lived without worrying that her son was missing beef and milk, at least in small, subsidized portions. But when she returned from Havana to her native Matanzas, the alarms went off: her little Darío turns seven in October and will stop receiving the pound of meat assigned by the State every month, as well as milk. By this time she will have given birth to another child and the diet corresponding to her pregnancy will also expire, which will be replaced by a baby diet. More often Maribel will have to assess the option of buying on the black market to feed two minors.
In Havana, Santiago de Cuba or the Isle of Youth, the state regulation establishes the delivery of the two products until the age of 13, while for the other provinces only up to 7 years.
Living in Matanzas, Maribel already knows, is a disadvantage due to this "strategic distribution" between pregnant women, the elderly, people with chronic diseases, and children, which regulates the same portion of meat for all children in the country, but for less time for those from provinces like Darío.
***
Only boys from Havana, Santiago de Cuba and the Isle of Youth receive meat and milk until they are 13 years old. The rest of the provinces, until 7
All cattle in Cuba must have, by law, an identity number that will accompany them in the body from the first year of life until their death. All cattle reported to the Livestock Registry are controlled by their real owner, the State. Each number stamped with red iron on your skin will give the necessary information about the place of birth, race, sex and age. It guarantees that "if a lost beef appears in Pinar del Río in Santiago, everything is known about it and it can be returned to its place of origin," explains Ileana La Rosa, a livestock engineer who for a decade worked in the local industry of Palma Soriano, in Santiago de Cuba.
The engineer uses the word sacrifice. In the country, cattle are not killed except in state slaughterhouses; the rest is "slaughter of larger cattle", almost always accompanied by theft, which provides for prison terms of between four and ten years.
Denia Caraballo and her husband, peasants from the Santa Rita community in Santiago de Cuba, have been robbed more than once. "Even the horses have taken us," he says. Every time they are robbed, Denia and her husband must pay the State the value of the lost animals.
At dawn on July 5, Cuban Yamisel Díaz Hernández, 38, tried to flee with two other men after stealing eight horses in the province of Artemisa. A policeman intercepted them. As reported by the state press, Yamisel attacked him with a machete. The police shot and killed him .
The legal protection that has the highest cattle in Cuba has nothing to do with agendas of animal welfare, but a state policy aimed since the triumph of the Revolution to increase the number of cattle, experimenting with crossing species looking of genetic improvements and super productivity of milk.
Six decades later, in a country that produces only 36,363 tons of boneless beef a year, compared to 11.2 million inhabitants, there are neighborhoods such as Rossalia Benítez in El Cerro, where little is said about socialist rationing and vendors They offer food door to door. "They sell everything, quality depends," he explains. She only buys beef from acquaintances, otherwise she goes to the store although there it costs around $ 20 each kilogram of red meat.
The national economy plans (and their disaggregation at the local level) must break down the amounts corresponding to the state order between Tourism, Foreign Currency Collection Stores (TRD) and National Balance. The latter includes what is supplied for the standard basket, according to a report in which the quantities are not specified.
"My daughter was given a meat diet when she was pregnant," says the orange-haired grandmother. "But then our building collapsed and we had to go from Cerro to Old Havana and we lost almost all the meat because we did not know about her arrival." And what is not delivered does not return to any state warehouse, it goes to the butcher. State butchers also feed the black market.
***
"Carla is an Argentine based in Cuba who has brought vegan culture to the country from her culinary business but understands that despite the boom in veganism in the world it is not relevant for Cuba, due to prices and the systematic shortage of products. Although he advises against eating meat and only approves fish once every two or three months, he knows that the Cuban is convinced that meat is the best and tries to keep it in his diet. "
On the Isle of Youth, another protected territory, it is easier to get fish than red meat. Lia and Leandro's mother, aged six and thirteen respectively, was expecting the beef on May 16. Until that day it had not arrived and she feared that the same thing would happen as the previous month, when she received chicken for meat. It is standard practice in state butchers.
2020, and not only because of the Covid-19, is problematic for this mother: the six bags of milk that the girl receives, plus the two that the boy receives, will remain only two because Lia turned seven this month and, in August, Leandro will arrive at his fourteen. The same will happen with beef. The mother, she says, will have to resort more frequently to the black market .
Other parents have made it clear since their children are born and, in order to feed them, they don't even wait for the “state gratuity”.
The statistic that 59% of children around the world do not receive the much-needed nutrients from animal foods is alarming. Meanwhile, Infomed, the website of the Ministry of Public Health, assures that Cuba does not have these problems, it is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean that has eliminated severe child malnutrition, thanks to "the Government's efforts to improve nutrition of the people, especially that of those most vulnerable groups ”.
Those "efforts" do not speak of the black market . And the “most vulnerable” does not include a floating child population that, when emigrating to the capital or other cities with their parents without a change of address, falls outside the strategic distribution.
* The names of the protagonists of this story were changed to protect their identity.
Text: Darcy Borrero Batista. Photos: Sadiel Mederos Bermúde z
This article was produced within the framework of the Located Journalism Laboratory.