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HAVANA, May 29 (www.cubanet.org) - The government ban on private sales of
charcoal and wood has provided a boost for a thriving black market in these
substitutes for cooking fuel in Santa Cruz del Norte, a small community not far
east of Havana.
"Every day is a new headache, just trying to figure out what we are
going to eat and how we are going to cook it," said one local man who
refused to give his name. "As far as I know, the government of the United
States has not forbidden the Cubans to cut down 'marabú,'" he said,
referring at the same time to the U. S. embargo, which the Cuban government
blames for every economic mishap except rain, and to a local woody shrub people
are harvesting to make charcoal.
"Marabú" (Dichrostachys nutans) and the related "aroma,"
noxious, thorny, invasive weeds that reproduce by airborne seeds, can invade a
pasture in a very short time and prove extremely difficult to eradicate.
Local residents, puzzled by the government's restriction on an activity that
promises to clear the fields and provide otherwise unobtainable cooking fuel,
meekly speculate that it might be the "private" aspect of the
operation that brought down the prohibition. Increasingly, the government has
been clamping down on any sort of private economic activity.
The local man who would not give his name pointed out that it used to be
easier to obtain fuel when the sugar mill was still in town, simply because of
pilfering.
The "Camilo Cienfuegos" mill, an important economic factor in the
town of 31,400, was recently shut down and is in the process of being
dismantled.
Versión
original en español
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