Reuters reported yesterday that revolutionary Cuba, unable to pay its national debts and adrift in a sea of exponential cuts in basic goods, is now facing a severe shortage in toilet tissue. According to the news report, an official from CIMEX, the island’s commerce and trade ministry, stated on Radio Rebelde that they have “taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper.” The official went on to explain that Cuba both imports and manufactures it’s own toilet tissue. However, production has been halted due to a lack of raw materials.
Meanwhile, Fidel Castro turns 83 this Thursday, and to celebrate, the Cuban government released a new 339-page paperback dictionary of Castroisms called Pensamientos de Fidel Castro en un diccionario (Fidel Castro’s Thoughts in a Dictionary). Published by Editora Política, a homegrown Cuban press, the compilation of speech snippets and ideology is now available for purchase across the island and includes 2,000 entries in alphabetical order, including “Lucha” (struggle against the United States) and “Patria o Muerte” (homeland or death).
What Reuters failed to mention is that average Cubans, unable to afford toilet tissue at five pesos per roll, never use it anyway, opting instead to tear pages from the daily newspaper Granma, “The Official Organ of the Communist Party of Cuba,” which costs mere centavos. More shrewd Cubans wait for the 24-page weekend edition, getting three times more paper for the same cost. In hard times and in rural areas, book pages are just as often employed. In a stroke of delicious irony, rather than using the pulp to manufacture toilet paper, the socialist government decided the raw material would be better served in printing thousands of copies of an ideological Castro dictionary.
Demonstrating that beautiful Cuban sense of humor, people are already joking in the streets of Havana that you can choose between the perforated and unperforated editions. In a chat room with a Cuban friend on Sunday, upon mentioning the Castro dictionary, he wrote, “You already know they won’t include the word ‘hunger.’”
Welcome to the real Cuba….
Photo courtesy of Radio Caribe.