When pigs fly

HAVANA – “When pigs fly” was an expression used by my grandmother when things seemed impossible. I’ve been reminded of her lately when Cubans on the Island, without notice or fanfare from even Rubiera, our famous hurricane expert and forecaster, who would have informed us of the news, or even a simple notice from our Civil Defense team, that pigs on this Island one good morning began to fly.

And before that, it was the chickens that disappeared. And even before that, it was the oil and the rice, and the flour and the bread… and as everything seems to have been lost, we came to the realization that more than the roofs on houses in Havana seemed to have flown away on January 27 as a result of the tornado that cut across half the city. Yet still worse than that occurrence, and slower, is what remains that may befall us. 

And now the TV news is telling us that natural causes are to blame for the high price of pork, which has skyrocketed through the proverbial roof lately.

All this is actually happening. Because if you suddenly decide to suspend up to 70 percent of the supply of imported feed expected by the private and successful pig farmers, while at the same time applying a progressive tax rate (as established by Law 113 of the Tax System of 2012, and frozen for seven years as counterproductive and suddenly activated after “arduous work that required resources, time and personnel”) that can reach 50 percent for top end producers, then the most logical and foreseeable future is that pigs will be hard to find. They will disappear and their price, as a result, will fly through the roof.

One of those successful producers who appeared before the TV cameras explained that after having to pay 450,000 pesos in taxes, he quietly rethought his production strategy. He no longer fattens his pigs to at least 110 pounds each as before. He now delivers them as soon as they hit the 90 pound mark. How much does this represent in less meat that reaches sales counters, or people’s tables, as a result of this decision?

As hot as it is out there that almost evaporates one’s desire to work, and then we hear these things coming from air-conditioned ministry offices.

In any case, the pork issue — but also that of the oil, flour and everything else — is a crisis that did not begin the day the last chicken left the refrigerators. It started before that, much earlier than that, maybe six months to a year ago, when it was left — for whatever reason, justified or not, and hopefully for good reason — without paying the foreign suppliers, or maybe it was that we could not buy any more of what until then had been imported regularly.

It was at that crucial moment that this crisis began. Not now when the refrigerators, the counters and shelves are finally empty. Anyone with any sense knows, even with eyes closed, that two and two makes four, and seeing what was coming should have been calculated, back then, in order to prepare for what was to come. Or at least look for real and viable alternatives to compensate for absences.

Knowing what was coming and not planning for it, and to sit idly by and allow necessary products to disappear one by one; to raise prices and speculate; and then to see the endless lines of people and the discomfort that it produces in the population; all this only confirms that we have a problem. And to start looking for solutions now without analyzing what was previously done, or not done, carelessly and wrongfully, and without an idea of what to look forward to, all of this, to say the least is wrong, very wrong. Truly, truly wrong.