Recession hits Cuba's toilet paper supply
Filed under: Recession
And I thought the United States had it bad with the recession.The global economic crisis is hitting Cuba so hard that it is running out of toilet paper and may not get more until the end of the year, according to a Reuters story quoting officials from state-run companies.
Cuba imports toilet paper and produces its own, but doesn't have enough raw materials to make it.
Officials are lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help citizens get through difficulties from the global financial crisis and three hurricanes that struck the island last year.
Increased spending for imports and reduced export income have depleted the financial reserves of the communist-led government as it tries to keep the economy afloat.
"The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper," said an official with state conglomerate Cimex on state-run Radio Rebelde.
It will allow the state-run company to "supply this demand that today is presenting problems," he said.
We don't need to get specific of what those problems are, but I'm betting leaves are becoming a commodity in Havana.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-12-2009 @ 10:28AM
Steve Marquardt said...
Lack of toilet paper seems (at least intermittently) to be a chronic condition in Cuba, but there are useful alternatives:
Nursing student Katherine Hirschfeld describes her hospitalization during the 1997 dengue fever outbreak: “Sixteen patients shared one large bathroom that consisted of two toilet stalls, two sinks and two showers (with no soap or toilet paper).” From page 58 of her book Health, Politics and Revolution in Cuba since 1898 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007)
“The toilet paper at Elizardo Sanchez’s house was made from Granma, the newspaper, which he cut up into small squares and stacked by the commode.” From page 160 of The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile, by Patrick Symmes (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007)
Ben Corbett, in This is Cuba: an Outlaw Culture Survives (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002) describes journalism as toilet paper on pages 142-143:
One morning I was sipping on a café under the stained glass transom of Enrique’s solar when the newspaper man hobbled by. As always, I jumped up and chased him down, returning with the morning edition of Granma.
“I can’t believe you read that stuff,” said Enrique. “Nobody reads the daily papers in Cuba.”
“Then why is everyone buying them?” I asked.
“We use it for toilet paper,” he said. “It’s cheaper. Everybody buys the dailies to clean their asses. That’s all it’s good for. The toilet paper at the stores costs 4.5 pesos per roll. With this many pesos, I can buy twenty-two newspapers, mas o menos.”
That this is how Cubans valued their national news media struck me as a hilarious irony. So much for “The Official Organ of the Communist Party,” Granma’s theme line.
“I never buy Granma,” Enrique chuckled. “I wait until Monday and buy the weekly Trabajadores. It has more pages. Your Granma there has only two pages folded. Trabajadores has twice as many pages at the same cost.”
I described the hefty, five pound Sunday papers sold in the United States. “¡Cojones!” he said. “You must bring me one the next time you come.”
[Corbett also relates an incident when Cubans stop during a hike to relieve and clean themselves with book pages from the collected letters of Lenin to Russian friends and functionaries, circa 1922.] “Yes, it’s true,” said a rural cousin visiting from a distant province. “”The campesinos use book pages. When we visit the city, we always bring a good book along. And when the habaneros visit the campo, they always bring us a supply of Granmas.” (pp. 142-143)
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