Going Back to the Farm in Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

Going Back to the Farm in Cuba
By Ivet González

HAVANA, Aug 7 2014 (IPS) - Scattered houses amidst small fields of vegetables and other crops line the road to the La China farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital. This is where Hortensia Martínez works – a mechanical engineer who has been called crazy by many for deciding to become a small farmer.

“Our story isn’t common,” Martínez, 48, told Tierramérica at the entrance to the six-hectare farm that was granted “in usufruct” to her husband Guillermo García in May 2009 in Punta Brava, in the municipality of La Lisa, a semi-urban suburb west of Havana.

Since Cuba adopted economic reforms in 2008, land has begun to be granted to people “in usufruct”, to stimulate agriculture.

From one edge of La China, scrubland can be seen stretching all the way to the horizon. In 2013, according to official figures, 1,046,100 of the 6,342,400 arable hectares in this Caribbean island nation were idle.

A scarcity of people not only interested in farming but who also have the skills and resources to produce more food is one of the hurdles to making headway towards the goal set as part of the broader economic reforms that put a priority on the agricultural sector in a country in dire need of boosting production and reducing food prices.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/08/going-back-to-the-farm-in-cuba/

[emsimon33]

1. Very interesting

The last few days, I find that the posts that I am drawn to most are yours. Thank you for all the informative posts.

[Judi Lynn]

2. If you find anything within them helpful, I'm so glad.

I am in a rush to find out all I can myself, once I learned how little our own corporate media has felt it needs to share with us about our fellow human beings just south of our own border, for all of our lifetimes.

They must feel a real sense of power, trying to keep us all dumb and in the dark. Since people sharing their own information opened my eyes about Latin America, I am bound to keep on spreading the news.

Thank you, so much, emsimon.

[emsimon33]

3. Good!

[Socialistlemur]

4. A reversal of 50 years of failed policies

What we are seeing is the gradual reversal of 50 years of failed Marxist policies. The "communist" party likes to cover up what's going on, but the Cuban people know it. After all these years, the dictatorship has to come clean, is throwing out collective farming and the other failed ideas, and trying to create a weird combination of fascism, capitalism and feudalism with a red veneer.

The red cover is important. Raul Castro can't confess communism has failed, because the little legitimacy they may have is associated with their imposition, by force, of a Stalinist regime. This failure is now so evident, the Cuban people have become extremely cynical about the whole thing. They realize the regime is now a hereditary fascist autocracy, which shelters the perks of a tiny party elite. History shows they are unlikely to succeed, the people will have their true revolution, and the current regime will be buried in the garbage dump of history.