Some Interesting Information

Some Interesting Information / Fernando Dámaso

Fernando Damaso, 10 June 2016 — Reading the few independent media which,
against all odds, are published in Cuba, I learn about things that
happen and that aren't published in the official media, as well as what
high taxes we Cubans pay compared to our Latin American neighbors,
despite the fact that the nominal wages of our workers are, possibly,
the lowest in the world, being even less than half of those in nearby
Haiti ($20 a month in Cuba, $53 in Haiti).

All this is added to exploitation of slave labor as practiced with
professionals loaned out to provide services in other countries, to
which will be added those who will work in the so-called Mariel Special
Development Zone here in Cuba, where the state will appropriate 20% of
what foreign investors will pay in hard currency, in addition to
converting the 80% remaining into Cuban pesos (CUP) at a rate of one US
dollar per 10 CUPs, instead of the nationally established rate of 1
Cuban Convertible Peso (1 USD) per 24 CUPs, which will result, in
reality, in the state appropriating the majority of the wages paid by
foreign investors.

Even worse will be what happens with workers associated with foreign
investments where the exchange rage will be 1 USD per 2 CUPs. Currently
the sale of food between farmers and hotels is carried at at 1 CUC per
11 CUPs. Pure exploitation of slave labor!

In this context, I recalled Article 6 of Regulation of Slaves by the
Government and Police of the Island of Cuba, instituted by Don Geronimo
Valdes, President, Governor and Captain General in 1842, reproduced by
the eminent Cuban historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals in his work "El
Ingenio," which I transcribe verbatim:

"The masters will give their field slaves two or three meals a day as
they see fit, provided it is sufficient to maintain them and replenish
them from their labors; it being understood that as a daily and absolute
need for food for each individual, six or eight bananas or its
equivalent in sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, or other root crops, eight
ounces of meat or cod, and four ounces of rice or other vegetable stew
or flour." These products, at current prices, would not cost less than
80 Cuban pesos.

At least, those slavers were busy keeping their workforce well-fed,
something very different from the current practice of our political
alchemists and medieval economists.

Source: Some Interesting Information / Fernando Dámaso – Translating
Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/some-interesting-information-fernando-dmaso/