@CanCuba
What's going on?
The boilover has been caused, primarily, by the deficit in electrical generation. Two years ago, it was the power plants that were in need of repair and caused widespread blackouts due to load-shedding. Now, the power plants are in better shape (relative term) but there's a shortage of fuel to run all the plants at their capacity.
Due to more demand than supply in the mid-2000s, Cuba installed several (I want to say around 100) centres that produced electricity for the national grid. These centres are essentially one, often several, diesel generators in shipping containers. Of course, these require diesel which has been in short supply the last few months.
And because of pressure from the US, Mexico has reduced the amount of diesel and crude that is being shipped to Cuba. Cuba does have crude deposits but their sulphur heavy making refining it expensive and complicated.
So the provinces other than Havana, Havana being a province of several municipalities, have endured often having more hours of blackouts than regular electrical supply. Not an entire province at one time but different "blocks" of a province and/or municipality. Havana does have load-shedding blackouts but things get spicy quickly in Havana.
So, in Santiago de Cuba on Sunday, people were in the streets. I have friends who live there and the internet was cut during the protests which didn't last that long. And weren't as widespread as the media would have people to believe. One friend lives only a couple hundred meters from where the major protest was and didn't even know it was happening until I called her and asked if she was okay.
And food....there's actually MORE food in Cuba than I've seen in my 20 years travelling/living here. But it's virtually all imported which means the prices correspond to USD/EUR prices when sold on the street. Which would be fine if the Cuban Peso (CUP) wasn't devaluing by the hour. In January of 2021, the CUP was at 24:1 to the USD. It's now 325:1 as of today.
So people, the vast majority, who get paid in CUP have far, far less buying power than they did 3 years ago. But because of the lack of domestic production, chicken, cooking oil, sugar (yes, sugar production has gone in the shitter), flour, etc, etc is imported. And the private corporations (legalized at the end of 2021) importing must use the informal street exchange of 325:1 when selling their good. And then they have to take all the CUP they've gathered, change it to USD/EUR (usually in the "informal" currency market) and then buy more goods from abroad.
And because of the demand for USD/EUR (any foreign currency really), the CUP continues to devalue.
Go to
elTOQUE | Todas las historias cuentan and check out the graphs there. It's quite phenomenal. And no one has the slightest idea how to stop the devaluation of the CUP.
But, hey, it's almost beach weather!
