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10/10/09 - Associated Press - Could Cuba be ready to get rid of ration
book?

By PAUL HAVEN
HAVANA - Cuba may soon be saying adios to ration books.
The system that allows islanders to buy food at deeply subsidized prices
each month has long been one of the central building blocks of the country's
socialist system, providing everyone from surgeons to street-sweepers the
same allotment of basic foods like rice, beans and a bit of chicken.
Now, state-run media are suggesting the "libreta" that Cubans have depended
on since 1962 to put meager helpings of food on their tables has outlived
its usefulness and is hamstringing the government as it tries to reform the
ever-struggling economy.
"The ration booklet was a necessity at one time, but it has become an
impediment to the collective decisions the nation must take," Lazaro Barredo
Medina, editor of the Communist Party's Granma newspaper, wrote Friday in a
full-page signed opinion.
He said the government ought not do away with rations by decree, but
suggested readers should start preparing for life without a system that
people on this island both covet as a birthright and complain is woefully
insufficient to meet even the most modest needs.
Barredo's words carry no immediate policy weight, but such a lengthy and
frankly worded editorial penned by the editor of Granma could very well
presage major governmental changes down the road - though it is impossible
to know exactly when.
The thick brown ration booklet offers 11.2 million Cubans a diet including
rice, salt, legumes, potatoes, bread, eggs, sugar and some meat. Many
complain it only provides 10 to 15 days of food and that quotas have gotten
stingier over the years.
The idea of such a transcendental change in the Cuban experience made
Barredo's opinion piece the talk of the town, with strong opinions on both
sides.
"I was born and raised under the revolution and I have no idea what would be
available to buy on the free market," said a skeptical Silvia Alvarez, 50.
"It seems to me that in these critical times ... we ought to keep it at
least for a while longer."
Economist also had their doubts.
Antonio Jorge, who once served as Cuba's vice finance minister and now is a
professor emeritus at Florida International University in Miami, said he
"cannot imagine how this proposal could be implemented."
"This is the bare minimum of food, of nutrition," Jorge said, especially for
the half of the Cuban population that has no access to remittances - money
sent from abroad, usually by relatives in the U.S. "How will they live? How
will they fend for themselves?"
Cuban President Raul Castro has said several times that the ration book
costs too much and provides too little. Since taking power from his brother
Fidel in February 2008, he has been critical of Cuba's paternalistic system,
saying deep state subsidies don't give people an incentive to work.
Barredo called his column "He's Paternalistic, You're Paternalistic, I'm
Paternalistic," a swipe at the cradle-to-grave guarantees Cuba has always
provided its citizens, and which now are losing favor.
With the country's economy hit hard by the global credit crunch and three
disastrous hurricanes last year, Raul Castro has been looking at ways to cut
state costs while imploring his countrymen to produce more.
While Cubans make low wages - about $20 a month - the state pays for or
heavily subsidizes nearly everything, from education to health care, housing
to transportation. Even honeymoon suites and children's toys were doled out
at sharp discounts in years past, though the government has phased out some
of the most generous perks.
Last month, the government announced plans to close almost-free cafeterias
in state ministries and instead give employees a stipend to buy food. And
Castro has suggested other big changes, like doing away with the nation's
dual currency economy, which puts many imported items outside the reach of
most citizens.
He has also promised to reform the country's pay structure, allowing better
workers to earn more, and he has made modest openings in the economy that
have allowed for some limited free enterprise.
Scrapping the ration book - presumably in return for higher wages - would be
a far more fundamental shift in the egalitarian communist system the Castro
brothers have striven to build since shortly after their rebel force won
power on New Year's Day 1959.
Jorge, the former finance minister now in Florida, said that if food
subsidies evaporate, the government will struggle to hold down the price of
basic staples, further squeezing already poverty stricken Cubans.
"If you were to allow the market to determine the prices, they would
skyrocket immediately," he said. "Ideologically, the regime will see the
free market as unthinkable. But, as an economist, I don't see what else is
possible."
When it began in 1962 - shortly after the U.S. cut off trade with the
island - rationing was characterized as a temporary program to guarantee a
low-priced basket of basic foods. But as Cuba struggled to feed its people
with help from the Soviet bloc, the program endured. Today, Cuba spends more
than $1 billion a year on food subsidies.
Despite those efforts, most Cubans find themselves forced to invent ways to
stretch limited rations as far as possible, including bartering or selling
on the black market some of the monthly food they don't use as a means of
obtaining more of the items they do depend on.
Still, some believe it is time the government end the handouts and make
citizens take more responsibility for their lives.
"If you don't work, you won't eat," said Caridad, a 67-year-old retiree
emerging from a government-subsidized shop in Havana's historic district.
Like many Cubans, she did not feel comfortable having her full name appear
in the foreign press, but admitted that to supplement a pension of less than
$10 a month, she had been forced to go back to work cleaning streets.
"People need to understand that it is up to them to provide for their
families, just like in the rest of the world," she said. "Nothing falls from
heaven except the rain."
___
Associated Press Writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.