Havana’s El Trigal Market Reappears

Havana's El Trigal Market Reappears / Ernesto Garcia Diaz

Posted on November 23, 2013



Havana, Cuba, November, www.cubanet.org — The Cuban regime, in pursuit

of "unleashing the productive forces," has established, through Law

Decree No. 318/2013, the new "Rule About the Commercialization of

Agricultural Products in the provinces of Artemisa, Mayabeque and

Havana." The communist leaders say that this new regulation is directed

to eliminate the mechanisms that hinder the process of agricultural

commercialization, as well as the "quest to make it more dynamic,

efficient and flexible."



The official newspaper Granma circulates, with optimism, various

articles about this new Commercialization System which will begin to

function this coming December. The Havana population receives the news

with despair and reservations, because it does not see substantial

changes in the scarcity of food, their high prices, or the lack of

quality and variety.



Producers continue to be circumspect because although the regulation

permits the sale and purchase of the surplus once the contracts with the

State have been fulfilled, the control and Statism that the regime

maintains make them doubt that this will happen. Also because the State

does not sell them the necessary equipment to assure the safety of their

products to their final destination.



It is reasonable to remember that during the decade of the '80's, in the

capital of the Island, three farmers market hubs operated: Berroa, Ocho

Vias and El Trigal. These centers have been led by the Council of the

Administration of Provincial Popular Power of Havana and the ministers

of Interior Commerce and Agriculture.



For many years, the commercial organization created facilitated the

illegal markets or "black market," which occasioned crimes of larceny,

theft and diversion of resources, with the consequent loss of millions.

Audits and inspections by the Agricultural Ministry and other State

agencies have reflected excessive costs and alleged losses. El Trigal,

not a few times, was implicated and closed for said causes.



On the other hand, on the esplanade of 114th Street and the Pinar del

Rio Highway, belonging to the Marianao township, a wholesale

agricultural market functions in the open, attended by productive

methods, points of sale and brokers. This structure, headed by Colonel

Samblon, will close in December, and has not been exempt from acts of

vandalism and a regulated commercial organization.



The peculiar and striking thing is that the colonel mentioned, converted

into the president of the non-agricultural cooperative who will operate

the El Trigal market, will head that center under the supervision of

General Colás, according to what I was able to learn there.



The farmer's market will offer to sellers and buyers a night service

between six in the afternoon and six in the morning. To that end, it

will rent spaces for the sale of merchandise. The entry (as much for

trucks as for persons), the loading and unloading, the weighing and

other secondary services will be leased and collected by the cooperative.



Also, the competitors will be obliged to leave the market at six in the

morning with their unsold merchandise in tow, in order to get in a new

line and enter the enclosure again at six in the afternoon. An

agonizing way of marketing, conserving and preserving perishable

products in an installation whose refrigerators are not operational! In

the daytime they will weigh the trucks that come from the provinces, for

their distribution to the basic units or network of markets.



It is anecdotal to remember when the communist ex-dictator Fidel Castro

Ruz, in August 1960, before 600 cooperative coordinators, said, "Now we

enter a higher level, now we enter into a new project, a new purpose, a

new aspiration: the aspiration to diversify agriculture." The

ex-leader, with his "development programs," years later destroyed the

productive and industrial base of the Cuban economy. Will we now be

journeying through the dreams and deliriums of the General President?



In summary, the new commercial organization that the regime tried to

implement will enrich the cooperative businessmen of military ancestry,

at the expense of producers, private sales representatives and the

people, who will continue enduring the experiments of the dictatorship

of the Castro brothers.



Ernesto Garcia Diaz



Cubanet, November 12, 2013



Translated by mlk



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