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Consumption
Rationing has been a staple of
Cuban life since the early 1960's. During the early 1990's, Cuba's food
consumption deteriorated sharply, when massive amounts of Soviet aid were
withdrawn. On its own without Soviet largesse and abundant food imports,
Cuban agriculture was paralyzed by a scarcity of inputs and poor production
incentives resulting from collectivism and the lack of appropriate price
signals. In pre-Castro Cuba, by contrast, food supplies were abundant.
The 1960 UN Statistical yearbook ranked
pre-Revolutionary Cuba third out of 11 Latin American countries in per
capita daily caloric consumption. This was in spite of the fact that the
latest available food consumption data for Cuba at the time was from
1948-49, almost a decade before the other Latin American countries' data
being used in the comparison. Looking at the same group of 11 countries
today, Cuba ranks last in per capita daily caloric consumption, according to
the most recent data available from the UN FAO Indeed, the data show Cuba
with a poorer food supply situation than even Honduras.
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LATIN AMERICA: |
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PER CAPITA FOOD CONSUMPTION |
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(CALORIES PER DAY) |
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LATEST |
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DATA |
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1954-57 |
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1995 |
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MEXICO |
2420 |
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3135 |
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ARGENTINA |
3100 |
|
3110 |
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BRAZIL |
2540 |
|
2834 |
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URUGUAY |
2960 |
|
2826 |
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CHILE |
2330 |
|
2769 |
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COLOMBIA |
2050 |
|
2758 |
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PARAGUAY |
2690 |
|
2560 |
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VENEZUELA |
1960 |
|
2442 |
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ECUADOR |
2130 |
|
2436 |
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HONDURAS |
2260 |
|
2359 |
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CUBA |
2730 |
(A) |
2291 |
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(A) - FOR 1948-49. |
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SOURCE: UN FAO FOOD BALANCE SHEETS |
A closer look at some basic food groups
reveals that Cubans now have less access to cereals, tubers, and meats than
they had in the late 1940's. According to 1995 UN FAO data, Cuba's per
capita supply of cereals has fallen from 106 kg per year in the late 1940's
to 100 kg today, half a century later. Per capita supply of tubers and roots
shows an even steeper decline, from 91 kg per year to 56 kg. Meat supplies
have fallen from 33 kg per year to 23 kg per year, measured on a per capita
basis.
Although some would blame Cuba's food problems on the U.S. embargo, the
facts suggest that the food shortages are a function of an inefficient
collectivized agricultural system -- and a scarcity of foreign exchange
resulting from Castro's unwillingness to liberalize Cuba's economy,
diversify its export base, and pay off debts owed to its Japanese, European,
and Latin American trading partners during the years of abundant soviet aid.
This foreign exchange shortage has severely limited Cuba's ability to
purchase readily-available food supplies from Canada, Latin America, and
Europe. The U.S. Embargo has added, at most, relatively small increases in
transportation costs by forcing Cuba to import food from non - U.S. sources
elsewhere in the hemisphere.
The statistics on the consumption of nonfood items tell a similar story. The
number of automobiles in Cuba per capita has actually fallen since the
1950's, the only country in the hemisphere for which this is the case.
(Unfortunately, the latest available data for Cuba are from 1988.) UN data
show that the number of automobiles per capita in Cuba declined slightly
between 1958 and 1988, whereas virtually every other country in the region
-- with the possible exception of Nicaragua -- experienced very significant
increases in this indicator. Within Latin America, Cuba ranked second only
to Venezuela in 1958, but by 1988, had dropped to ninth.
The 1988 data on automobiles also reveal that countries in Asia and Europe
that once ranked far behind Cuba in this measure have since surpassed Cuba
by a wide margin. Japan, with four cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 1958, was
far behind Cuba (24) that year, but by 1988, Japan's number had grown to
251, whereas the figure for Cuba remained frozen at its 1958 level. Similar
comments could be made for Portugal (increased from 15 in 1958 to 216 in
1988), Spain (increased from six to 278), and Greece (increased from four to
150). Indeed, Italy's 29 cars per capita was not far ahead of Cuba's 24 in
1958, but by 1988, Italy boasted 440 cars per capita, whereas the figure for
Cuba was unchanged from the 1950's.
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LATIN AMERICA: PASSENGER CARS PER CAPITA
(A) |
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(CARS PER 1,000 INHABITANTS) |
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Average |
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Annual |
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Growth |
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1958 |
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1988 |
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(PERCENT) |
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ARGENTINA |
19 |
|
129 |
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6.6 |
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URUGUAY |
22 |
(F) |
114 |
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5.3 |
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VENEZUELA |
27 |
|
94 |
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4.3 |
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BRAZIL |
7 |
|
73 |
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8.1 |
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MEXICO |
11 |
(C) |
70 |
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6.4 |
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PANAMA |
16 |
(B) |
56 |
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4.3 |
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CHILE |
7 |
|
52 |
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6.9 |
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COSTA RICA |
13 |
|
47 |
(C) |
4.4 |
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CUBA |
24 |
|
23 |
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-0.1 |
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC |
3 |
(B) |
23 |
(G) |
7.3 |
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COLOMBIA |
6 |
|
21 |
(D) |
4.3 |
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PARAGUAY |
3 |
(C) |
20 |
|
6.5 |
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PERU |
7 |
(E) |
18 |
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3.1 |
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ECUADOR |
2 |
|
15 |
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7.0 |
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BOLIVIA |
3 |
(C) |
12 |
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4.7 |
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GUATEMALA |
6 |
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11 |
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2.0 |
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EL SALVADOR |
7 |
|
10 |
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1.2 |
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NICARAGUA |
7 |
(B) |
8 |
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0.5 |
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HONDURAS |
3 |
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6 |
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2.3 |
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(A) - FOR MOST COUNTRIES, EXCLUDES POLICE
AND |
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MILITARY CARS. |
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(B) - EXCLUDES ALL GOVERNMENT CARS. |
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(C) - INCLUDES POLICE CARS. |
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(D) - INCLUDES CARS NO LONGER IN USE. |
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(E) - 1957. |
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(F) - 1956. |
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(G) - 1987. |
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SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS. |
Telephones are another case in point. While
every other country in the region has seen its teledensity increase at least
two fold -- and most have seen even greater improvements -- Cuba's has
remained frozen at 1958 levels. Today, Cuba has only 3 telephone lines per
100 people, placing it 14th out of 20 Latin American countries surveyed in
1994 and far behind countries that were less advanced than Cuba in this
measure in 1958, such as Argentina (today 14 lines per 100 inhabitants),
Costa Rica (13), Panama (11), Chile (11), Venezuela (11), and several
others.
Cuba also has not kept pace with the rest of Latin America in terms of
radios per capita. During the late 1950's, Cuba ranked second only to
Uruguay in Latin America, with 169 radios per 1,000 people. (Worldwide, this
put Cuba just ahead of Japan.) At that time, Argentina and Cuba were very
similar in terms of this measure. Since then, the number of radios per
capita in Argentina has grown three times as fast as in Cuba. Cuba also has
been surpassed by Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and Brazil in
this indicator. Today, Cuba ranks just above average for Latin American
countries.
In terms of television sets per capita, 1950's Cuba was far ahead of the
rest of Latin America and was among the world's leaders. Cuba had 45
television sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1957, by far the most in Latin
America and fifth in the world, behind only Monaco, the United States,
Canada, and the United Kingdom. In fact, its closest competitor in Latin
America was Venezuela, which had only 16 television sets per 1,000 people.
Today, Cuba has 170 televisions per thousand, behind Uruguay (232 per
capita), Argentina (220), and brazil (209). Of these three countries,
Uruguay in 1957 had fewer than one television per 1,000 people, and
Argentina and Brazil each had five per 1,000 people -- far behind Cuba's 45
per capita.
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