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Ending one of Cuba's few capitalist experiments

FROM AP

HEAD: Cubans fear government takeover of farmers markets

SUB-HEAD: Price controls would end one of country's few capitalist tests


Havana -- The habanero peppers, oranges and peanuts cost more at Cuba's
free-market "agros" -- farmers markets where vendors, not the government,
set prices. But food stalls overflow with abundance not seen elsewhere on
the shortage-plagued island.

So when the Communist Party served notice that it plans to impose price
controls at those agros -- ending one of Cuba's few capitalist
experiments -- angry shoppers fearing yet more shortages turned on state
inspectors in an unprecedented public rage.

Police were called to one farmers market last month when customers shouted
and chanted at state workers conducting a routine inspection.

"It's going to be a mess. There will be less merchandise," said Antonio
Gutierrez, whose farm cooperative outside the capital sells vegetables to
vendors at Havana's 42nd Avenue and 19th Street agro, where the disturbances
occurred.

Price controls would end one of the country's few private business
initiatives just as Cubans hoped the economy would loosen up under Raul
Castro, who took power from his ailing brother, Fidel, in February 2008.

"Control is now what the Cuban government is trying to lock up more than
ever," said Bill Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of
Florida in Gainesville.

The free-market agros, where the state allows vendors to set prices based on
supply and demand, have been very successful in getting food into people's
hands, Messina said.

"But it does reduce government control of food," he added.

With the proposed change, shoppers accustomed to tables piled high with
lettuce, spinach, grapes and green peppers fear either the empty shelves or
unbearable lines that are routine at government-controlled produce markets.

At one such market last week, a chalkboard read "there are potatoes,"
meaning spuds could be purchased with Cubans' monthly ration cards. Besides
that, a single produce stand sold only plantains, taro root and onions.

"They want to make all the markets like this. Sad," the lone vendor said.

Producers, sellers and customers said they heard from party officials that
new price controls were set to begin Nov. 1 -- but were postponed until
January after a public outcry unheard of under the totalitarian government.

The government has not commented. But a member of Havana's municipal
parliament confirmed the change had been scheduled to take effect this week.

The would-be takeover is part of President Raul Castro's overall crackdown
on corruption -- in this case on farmers who are required to meet government
quotas but instead sell to free-market vendors through unlicensed truckers
because they make more money.

By law, small producers and cooperatives can sell leftover fruits and
vegetables at their own prices after they meet production quotas -- usually
around 70 percent of everything they grow.

But the state often takes more than six months to pay farmers, while the
truckers offer cash on the spot, said Ismael, a cabbage vendor who only gave
his first name because he admitted flouting the law.

"We are bandits," he said. "But without us, none of this works."

Bringing trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables into Havana without
permission is illegal, but Ismael said, "we've got the police more or less
paid off."

The agros first appeared in the 1980, when food shortages forced a reluctant
Fidel Castro to allow farmers to sell produce at prices driven, at least in
part, by the free market. Castro shuttered them six years later to improve
foundering state agriculture.
************
So, when do you lib loons in love with Infidel, The Chicken Plucker, and his
brother, Raul, The Rat Sucker, think they'll get the toilet paper shortage
fixed on their island socialist paradise?

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates"--Tacitus

"if you want economic growth and greater affluence for all, there is simply
no alternative to "trickle-down economics," which is just another name for
growth economics."--Irving Kristol

"Much better is this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without
wealth there can be no Maecenas. The 'good old times' were not good old
times." --Andrew Carnegie

" Everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free
society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices." -- Ann
Coulter

Dionysus

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