214
edits
Changes
Carlos Prío Socarrás
[[Carlos Prío Socarrás]]
The influx of investment fueled a boom which did much to raise living standards across the board and create a prosperous middle class in most urban areas, although the gap between rich and poor became wider and more obvious.” <ref> José, Alvarez 2004 Cuban Agriculture Before 1959: The Social Situation. FE480 Extension Service/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences/University of Florida http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE48000.pd” Law No. 5 created the Banco de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial de Cuba (BANFAIC), which was enacted on December 20, 1950, by President Carlos Prío Socarrás. (In fact, Law No. 13 of 1948, establishing Cuba's national bank, envisioned an agricultural bank as a necessary complement.) Law No. 15 of 1949 authorized the issuance of $200 million in bonds. Of the $25 million going to BANFAIC, an equal distribution went to the agricultural and industrial branches. … It is clearly stated in the ACU study: “The city of Havana is living an epoch of extraordinary prosperity, while in the countryside, people, especially the agricultural workers, are living in sluggish, miserable, and desperate conditions too difficult to believe” (Gastón et al., 1957, p. 6).
Thus it is obvious that the living conditions in the city of Havana, and perhaps in a few other urban areas of Cuba, did not parallel those described in this fact sheet for the countryside.” </ref> However, during the last almost fifty years of Castro government rule, the good economic conditions of urban areas decayed, and the level comfort as judged by foot rationing of the whole populations rural or urban became far worse. <ref> José, Alvarez 2000 Rationed Products and Something Else: Food Availability and Distribution in 2001 Cuba in Transition 11 pp. 305-322 http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume11/alvarez.pdf “To blame the U.S. economic sanctions for the existence of a rationing system of basic food products is not a very intelligent argument to justify Cuba’s socialist system. It is an admission that Cubans cannot even produce what grows very easily on Cuban soil. If one lists the food products that have been rationed since 1962, it becomes evident that almost all of them were in abundance before the 1959 revolution. Granted, all Cubans were not able to consume a wide variety of products because the instrument for rationing was the price system. But even after the rationing
system was established, there have been periods in
which the abundance of several products demonstrated
the feasibility of returning to a stable and ample
supply of food products. I remember the proliferation
of a chain of government stores called FrutiCuba
devoted exclusively to the selling of numerous fruits
and vegetables in the mid-1960s. The existence of
the free farmers’ markets in the 1980s, the free agricultural
markets after 1994, and the new food outlets
described below testify to the ability of Cuban farmers,
now including urban inexperienced farmers, to
produce abundant food supplies despite the U.S.
economic sanctions, that could do away with the
food rationing system. It is interesting to recall that,
when the Soviet bloc was subsidizing the Cuban
economy to the tune of five billion dollars per year,
food was still rationed in Cuba.”</ref>
The influx of investment fueled a boom which did much to raise living standards across the board and create a prosperous middle class in most urban areas, although the gap between rich and poor became wider and more obvious.” <ref> José, Alvarez 2004 Cuban Agriculture Before 1959: The Social Situation. FE480 Extension Service/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences/University of Florida http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE48000.pd” Law No. 5 created the Banco de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial de Cuba (BANFAIC), which was enacted on December 20, 1950, by President Carlos Prío Socarrás. (In fact, Law No. 13 of 1948, establishing Cuba's national bank, envisioned an agricultural bank as a necessary complement.) Law No. 15 of 1949 authorized the issuance of $200 million in bonds. Of the $25 million going to BANFAIC, an equal distribution went to the agricultural and industrial branches. … It is clearly stated in the ACU study: “The city of Havana is living an epoch of extraordinary prosperity, while in the countryside, people, especially the agricultural workers, are living in sluggish, miserable, and desperate conditions too difficult to believe” (Gastón et al., 1957, p. 6).
Thus it is obvious that the living conditions in the city of Havana, and perhaps in a few other urban areas of Cuba, did not parallel those described in this fact sheet for the countryside.” </ref> However, during the last almost fifty years of Castro government rule, the good economic conditions of urban areas decayed, and the level comfort as judged by foot rationing of the whole populations rural or urban became far worse. <ref> José, Alvarez 2000 Rationed Products and Something Else: Food Availability and Distribution in 2001 Cuba in Transition 11 pp. 305-322 http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume11/alvarez.pdf “To blame the U.S. economic sanctions for the existence of a rationing system of basic food products is not a very intelligent argument to justify Cuba’s socialist system. It is an admission that Cubans cannot even produce what grows very easily on Cuban soil. If one lists the food products that have been rationed since 1962, it becomes evident that almost all of them were in abundance before the 1959 revolution. Granted, all Cubans were not able to consume a wide variety of products because the instrument for rationing was the price system. But even after the rationing
system was established, there have been periods in
which the abundance of several products demonstrated
the feasibility of returning to a stable and ample
supply of food products. I remember the proliferation
of a chain of government stores called FrutiCuba
devoted exclusively to the selling of numerous fruits
and vegetables in the mid-1960s. The existence of
the free farmers’ markets in the 1980s, the free agricultural
markets after 1994, and the new food outlets
described below testify to the ability of Cuban farmers,
now including urban inexperienced farmers, to
produce abundant food supplies despite the U.S.
economic sanctions, that could do away with the
food rationing system. It is interesting to recall that,
when the Soviet bloc was subsidizing the Cuban
economy to the tune of five billion dollars per year,
food was still rationed in Cuba.”</ref>